Royal Hotel Tambar Springs

After finishing the Day 2 Royals with Warialda and an awesome night with the Jatz-loving emu in Narrabri, we set out bright and early for Day 3 of the trip. And the first stop on Day 3, was the Royal Hotel Tambar Springs.

Tambar Springs is one of those places where you put it into your navigator and set off. But when you get to (apparently) 1 km away, the landscape and countryside look like there’s nothing within 50km of where you are. But sure enough, then it opens up and there is indeed a town (in this case a town with an awesome pub).

And so it was on a gorgeous day with nothing but blue sky, we pulled up in front of the countriest looking of country pubs, the Royal Hotel Tambar Springs.

The place looks exactly like you’d expect a country pub in New South Wales to look. Especially one in a slightly mountainy area. To be honest, I don’t know exactly what I mean by that, but it’s true.

And the inside is classic small town Royal. They clearly adhere to the ‘random stuff on the walls’ school of pub decor. But a lot of times you walk into a pub with decor like that and it looks like carefully curated ‘from-a-pub-decoration-catalogue’ random stuff. That’s definitely not the case at the Royal Hotel Tambar Springs. Everything in the place feels organic and like it has a story behind it. This pub felt every bit lived in and authentic.

But it wasn’t just the look and decor of the place that was welcoming. The bar staff were super friendly with none of the tinge of wariness about four random dudes rolling into their small country pub before noon. We had a good chat and headed out to the beer garden with schooners in hand.

This was our lunch stop as well so as we worked our way through our first schooners, we perused the menu. There was everything you’d expect from a country pub (burgers, schnitzels, stuff like that). But there was a good variety of everything, including a solid pizza menu. And it turns out said pizzas were freaking huge.

And so we found ourselves in the beer garden of an awesome small town pub in the mountains, working our way through heroic amounts of pizza on a clear and sunny winter’s day. The beer garden wasn’t overly huge, but it was big enough. And, like the rest of the pub, it felt like it had seen (and continued to see) a lot of good times. The only slight bummer was that the pool table wasn’t in operation. But the fact that it was an outdoor pool table, and the area around it was decorated with just as much random stuff as the interior of the pub.

And if this Royal wasn’t already kicking goals and ticking all of the boxes, they one upped themselves even further with one thing the Tour absolutely loves: an excellent merch selection. There was a great selection of shirts and stubby holders (although a somewhat limited selection of each type). But the thing that really stood out (and that came home with me) was the Royal Hotel Tambar Springs whiskey set. Definitely haven’t seen one of these on the Tour so far and definitely couldn’t pass it up.

Great vibes, friendly people, excellent food, and a good beer garden. What more could you possibly want in a pub? Sometimes when we show up at a pub in the morning, it’s hard to get a read on the kind of place it would be when busy. Our recent visit to Moree was a great example of that. But with the Tambar Springs, I feel like we got a good sense of the pub. I think this is a pub I’d enjoy having a beer and a feed at basically any time on any day of the week. It’s not reliant on having a crown. But it would be awesome with a crowd as well.

This was definitely a Royal that we wanted to hang out and a linger at bit longer. So there were a few schooners consumed in addition to the excellent pizza. And here comes the well-worn, cliche, but completely true comment: we could’ve very, very easily stayed at the Royal Hotel Tambar Springs all day.

I’ve often finished posts with the phrase, ‘it was a good pub but probably won’t trouble the Top 10 list’. That’s not the case with the Royal Hotel Tambar Springs though. I strongly suspect that when we get to our next Top 10 list, Tambar Springs will almost definitely feature. This was a great Royal, a great pub, and the highlight pub of the trip.

Royal Stats

• Town/Suburb: Tambar Springs, NSW
• Population: 187
• Date Visited: Saturday, June 6, 2026
• Visited By: Cory, John, Ben, and Anthony
• Beer Sponsorship on Sign: Toohey’s New
• Beer Consumed at Pub: Toohey’s New
• Price of Schooner of Said Beer: $8.00
• Unique Award: Best Ton-of-Random-Stuff-on-the-Wall Decor
• Tour Progress: 83.8% (109/130)