The Telegraph Hotel is a beloved Hobart icon. Built in 1858, just 55 years after the establishment of Hobart Town at Sullivan’s Cove, it has been a beloved meeting place in Hobart for more than 160 years. From a meeting place for young political firebrands discussing Hobart’s future in the 1860s and, in later years, wild times celebrating after the Sydney to Hobart yacht race, The Telegraph has a long & colourful history.
Over those 160 years The Telegraph would have welcomed flour mill workers, whalers, sealers and those working in the shops and warehouses along the waterfront who would have wandered into The Telegraph and had a drink, probably a warming whiskey or a rum. They may have taken a room, the windows of the second-floor accommodation looking out across Franklin Wharf and the busy waterfront with ships being loaded and unloaded.
The stories the walls of this pub could tell…
Sitting on the north-east corner of Morrison and Brooke Streets on Hobart’s waterfront, it was originally known as The Electric Telegraph Hotel as it was directly opposite the Chief Telegraph Office. When the first telegraph line between Hobart and Launceston was completed in 1857 the Chief Telegraph Office was located on Franklin Wharf, just a few hundred metres away. The pub clearly felt had a strong connection with this exciting new technology which was revolutionising communications. On the walls of the pub todays sits a photograph of the Tele possibly from the late 1800s which shows a pole carrying electric wires just across the road. In 1877 the name was changed to The Telegraph Hotel.
Among the many public houses in Hobart Town – and especially along the waterfront – The Telegraph soon became one of the colony’s best. It was built by publican Peter Albertus De Roock who had been leasing the nearby Custom House Hotel. In 1858 he built the Tele, becoming the first of many licensees over the next 165 years who each brought their own vision to the pub.
De Roock created a luxurious venue that was unrivalled in the colony. It featured gas lighting throughout and multi-panel wallpaper depicting scenic panoramas including the frozen Arctic, a mountain scene in Switzerland and a tropical country with palm trees.
The Telegraph’s location was superb. It sat right in the heart of the wharf area, attracting workers from the warehouses on the docks, sailors, whalers and the flour mill which operated immediately behind it. From the bedrooms on the second floor – where the Dining Room currently operates – one could see the hectic activity on Franklin Wharf and to the right the similar bustle at Salamanca, a few hundred metres away.
The pub was a sensation of the day. In 1858 The Hobart Town Daily Mercury, in a report on the public houses of Hobart Town, published an admiring piece.
“There are, however, some prominent improvements which merit especial notice, not only as examples of appropriate and ornamental architecture, but as evincing a spirit of praiseworthy enterprise on the part of the respective proprietors. The first we have to notice is the fine building erected in Morrison Street, Franklin Wharf, by Mr. de Roock, the Electric Telegraph Hotel. Seven large plate glass windows ornament the lower story of the house, while the interior is fitted up in a style of elegance, we believe unrivalled in the colony: the bar is capacious, and, also, fitted up in a very superior manner.”
On 8 June 1858 the Hobart Town Daily Mercury newspaper published an article noting the quality of the public houses in Hobart Town.
“To the ‘old hands’ the improvement in the construction and magnitude of our public houses must be a matter of decided admiration. ‘Time was’ when a weatherboarded building with four or even three rooms was considered a capacious cabaret; a brick building was rare to be seen, even in Hobart Town; yet there some who could lay claim to that distinction. But they were ’few and far between’.
“To enumerate all the improved alterations which have of late years been made in public houses would occupy too large a portion of our space. Suffice it to say that the provisions in the Act of Council requiring a certain amount and character of accommodation, rendered necessary a great alteration of the existing inconveniences and the requirement of the law being enforced, a marked improvement was speedily visible and our city can now boast of licensed houses equal to any and superior to many that may be found elsewhere, both as to the extent of accommodation afforded and as to the character and respectability of the landlord.”
Despite the effort he had made, a little more than a year after it opened De Roock was declared insolvent and was forced to sell the property. However his name was not immediately forgotten as it was chiselled into the stonework on the corner, just below the roof.
On 8 June 1858, in an article titled Business Buildings of Hobart Town, The Hobart Town Daily Mercury reported the sale of the pub, noting its high quality.
“Peremptory Sale of the Electric Telegraph Hotel, on the Franklin Wharf. We have to direct the attention of our town and country readers to the peremptory sale of that Valuable wharf property the Electric Telegraph Hotel which was built and fitted up by Mr. DeRecke (sic) at an expenditure of close upon £5000. The house is constructed in the most substantial manner, with a polished stone front to the first story, and the second of brick with polished stone dressings. The internal arrangements consist of a lofty bar, spacious commercial room, four parlours. Billiard Room and Refreshment Rooms. The bedrooms and every other department are in first rate order, and altogether it merits the designation (as given by the auctioneers, Messrs. W. A Guesdon and Co.) of the most complete, comfortable, and handsome building as an Hotel in the colonies. The sale takes place on Monday next and commences promptly at half past 10 for 11 o’clock. We have to add that the valuable and handsome selection of household furniture the gas fittings, and the residue of the stock-in-trade, will be offered for sale on the same day.”
The area around the waterfront thrived in the Telegraph’s early days. The boom in whaling transformed the waterfront with many whaling ships moored just a few metres from The Telegraph.
Flour was another big industry which drove the local economy. The City Flour Mill, behind The Telegraph in Brooke Street, once supplied more than 100 tonne of flour each week. Stephen Bourke, who owned the hotel with his brother Brendon for 30 years, was cleaning a basement when he found three priceless historic photographs which now sit on the pub’s walls. One, from the mid-late 1800s, shows a horse and cart loaded with sacks of flour, a man standing near the pub’s entrance.
In the 1850s Hobart was a tough, hard-drinking seafarer’s town and people from all over the world were there busy trading whale blubber and seal hides. The area was almost exclusively for ships and the people who worked on them.
But The Telegraph also had some fascinating connections outside of these industries. The pub was for a time something of a salon for discussion of ideas and politics. An early licensee was Louis Isidore Beaurepaire, a Frenchman and professional chef, who had been in the service of two governors, both in Australia and in New Zealand. Beaurepaire was granted the license for The Telegraph in 1875 and catered for Tasmanian society, hosting vice-regal functions, race day luncheons, industry dinners (including for the Poultry Association) and dinners for cricket and rowing teams. In 1875 “Beaurepaires” was known as the best establishment in the colony.
Under his ownership the pub hosted what were called “American dinners”. One, on 4 July 1876, occurred in the dining room, and was convened by 28-year-old Andrew Inglis Clark, an ardent republican. The meeting, Clark said, was “in the name of principles which were proclaimed by the founders of the Anglo-American Republic” and they met because, “we believe those principles to be permanently applicable to the politics of the world”.
The trigger for the small dinner of friends at The Telegraph – and the toasts that night led by Clark – was the centenary of the of the Declaration of Independence, the founding document of the United States. There were only a few of these “American dinners”, but The Telegraph has the highly unusual distinction of having hosted a salon for thinkers discussing high-minded political ideals emanating from across the Pacific, based around the philosophy that everyone is created equal.
Says long-time owner Stephen Bourke: “It was set up to be a pub with reasonable standards. If you look at the design it was smartly, ornately built. To attract such people as Inglis Clark and Beaurepaire it must have been a pub that had respect. It would have been frequented by – maybe not the top end of town but maybe the cool people of the day, thinking people and people with some means.”
But for all its success, Beaurepaire must have fallen on hard times because on 1 October 1877 a notice appeared in The Mercury for a public auction for all the good and chattels of the Telegraph Hotel.
The Telegraph was damaged by fire in the late 1930s and was rebuilt in 1940 in the style of Art Deco, an architectural movement that flourished in the 1920s and 1930s. The most obvious expression of this style is the curved façade and windows which remain today. “The owner wanted to build something special,” says Stephen Bourke, who with his brother Brendon bought the pub in 1993.
In 1993 The Telegraph was a “rough as guts” pub with nicotine-stained walls, “pokey” areas in the front bar and dark reflective glass where you couldn’t see in from the street. In buying the pub then, Stephen and Brendon knew the waterfront area was very quiet, with nightlife activity happening more in the city area. It had a vibrancy, but was not a place for young people. The area was far from the tourism hub it is today.
For a few years the pub was known as the Brooke Street Bar and Café, but later reverted to The Telegraph. Stephen and Brendon renovated it, revitalising the venue and attracting a younger crowd. The Telegraph’s new life began the modern-day era of the waterfront as a popular entertainment hub.
The Tele was a popular pub for those who’d raced in the Sydney to Hobart. Stephen Bourke remembers one year in the wilder days of the 1990s when a yacht’s crew booked out all the hotel accommodation and all walked into the bar. “They put $1000 on the bar and said ‘We’re not going to our rooms for a shower until that’s all gone!”
The Telegraph has undergone a major renovation and was re-launched by Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff on 13 September 2022 after Stephen Bourke had bumped into the Premier at a café next door and asked if he would do the honours. The Premier, whose office is just metres away, told Stephen he’d been watching the renovation and would be pleased to officiate.
The Telegraph’s long, storied history is remarkable. Says Stephen Bourke: “It was built as a very stylish-looking building and had a long list of interesting licensees over the years. The great thing about The Tele is that it’s been operating on the Hobart waterfront since the 1850s and has always operated as a pub. Its transformation over the years, having high and lows, is a bit like the great characters of Australian history who have risen up and come crashing down but never quite been snuffed out. The pub has had those ebbs and flows.”