Royal Hotel Warialda
We departed the sporty Royal at Moree and headed east for a not-too-long drive this time. And soon we arrived at Royal number two for the day: the Royal Hotel Warialda.
I must admit, I was expecting a tiny barely-there town. But Warialda has a bit too it. There were multiple decent looking pubs and a lot of people out and about. We drove past the Commercial Hotel on the way in and eventually found our way to the Royal. The Royal Hotel Warialda is every bit a classic country pub from the outside. Nice, no-nonsense, with a decent veranda.
Walking in, it was very apparent that this was a locals pub. Nothing swanky or pretentious here. Just an honest pub with a warm fire and a scattering of locals at the bar for lunch. When I say ‘locals pub’ I definitely don’t mean that it was unwelcoming at all. We’ve been in pubs where we walked in and immediately felt all eyes boring holes into us and wishing we weren’t there. But this was not one of those. It is just a comfortable pub that’s not trying to be something it’s not.
We rocked up right about noon so this was our lunch stop for the day. The menu was pretty much what you’d expect from a pub like this. Pretty standard pub fare, but all sounding pretty good. As we were ordering we had to resist the urge to just get our lunch from the generously stocked lolly cabinet at the front of the pub. All the classics were there, but the overflowing tub of freckles was especially tempting.
Luckily, we resisted the urge as the portion sizes were generous to say the least. While it wasn’t overly packed, there was a decent crowd for a lunch time on a weekday.
Emphasising the local-pubness of the place was the signage on the walls. They had everything from slightly lurid posters in the pokie room, to signage for the local rugby league team, to threats of banishment for glass theft. It all added to the local ambiance.
The Royal Hotel Warialda is firmly one of those Royals that isn’t likely to feature in the next top 10 list. But it is nowhere near the bottom either. This is a good solid Royal. While we obviously didn’t stop in at the Commercial, I dare say that if I was a Warialda local, I’d be spending a fair bit of my time there.
But we had to get back on the road. We were heading for Narrabri for the night. And while Narrabri was just a stopover and didn’t have a Royal itself, it did have an agave spirit distillery (don’t you dare call it tequila!) and accommodation featuring a Jatz-loving emu. So we didn’t want to keep either of them waiting.
Royal Stats
- Town/Suburb: Warialda, NSW
- Population: 1,130
- Date Visited: Friday, June 5, 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: $7.50
- Unique Award: Best Pub Lolly Selection
- Tour Progress: 83.1% (108/130)