Royal Hotel South Grafton

After departing Taree and spending a night in Coffs Harbour, the Tour rolled on to the northernmost point of this leg: the Royal Hotel South Grafton.

While I won’t dwell on it, the night spent in Coffs Harbour was not, on the whole, amazing. We went to the stadium in Coffs and watched what I’m pretty sure were the Sharks playing (poorly) in the distance, then were stranded at the stadium due to the fact that apparently only 3 buses had been arranged for the crowd of 10,000. And all this while navigating mud levels comparable to the Battle of the Somme. One point in Coffs’ favour, however, was the excellent King Tide Brewery which really salvaged the night for us.

But this isn’t a blog about Coffs Harbour or breweries. Well it is sometimes about breweries, but not this post. This post is about Royals. Specifically the one in South Grafton.

South Grafton was another of the Royals that we arrived at just as they opened. As I’ve written previously, being the only ones in the pub as the doors open at 10am can sometimes feel a little awkward. Not a problem in South Grafton. We were far from the first patrons there.

We entered through what turned out to be the side door and were surprisingly greeted by a full array of Coopers beers on tap. Now I’m not the biggest Coopers fan around, but when you’re used to only seeing VB, New, and Carlton Draught on tap, that’s still a very pleasant surprise.

So with three different varieties of Coopers in hand, we wandered out the back to enjoy our AM ales in the beer garden. The interior of the pub was fairly nice and fairly standard. But the beer garden was the kind of simple comfortable space you could easily sit in the sun and have a solid session in. It had very strong Sunday recovery session vibes.

Out in the beer garden we also discovered a first for the Tour (and 60 Royals in, we’re kind of starting to run out of potential ‘firsts’): a wishing well. I’m not sure if there was any additional story behind it, but it was pretty cool and definitely unique.

This was another one of those morning Royals that would undoubtedly be completely different if we had visited at a different time of day. Even when we visited, it would have been very easy to sit in the sun and get properly stuck in.

The whole placed just had a pleasant and relaxed feel. And that’s not something we were necessarily expecting when we pulled up in the morning to see a couple of grizzled locals already out front. South Grafton as a whole definitely felt like a sleepy town. But that’s probably fair enough on a Saturday morning where weekend sport was the more common option as opposed to a pub crawl stretching hundreds of kilometers. And again, the Royal and the town itself may well have been completely different if we were there a different day and time. But I genuinely enjoyed the short time we were there.

The Royal Hotel South Grafton isn’t the fanciest or most unique Royal we’ve hit by a long shot. But we were definitely disappointed when it came time to climb back into the car and head south. That beer garden was just screaming out for a lazy day. But lazy days aren’t what the Tour is about. So instead we stoically set off for our next destination. Fortunately that was also a pub.

Royal Stats

• Town/Suburb: South Grafton, NSW
• Population: 6,068
• Date Visited: Saturday, July 6, 2024
• Visited By: Cory, John and Anthony
• Beer Sponsorship on Sign: Tooheys New
• Beer Consumed at Pub: Coopers Lager
• Price of Schooner of Said Beer: $8.50
• Unique Award: Best Royal Wishing Well
• Tour Progress: 43.8% (60/137)