The Grafton Hotel was built in 1910 by the McLeod family and opened its doors in October 1910.

The pub has been had a proud place in the life of Edmonton for 113 years.

The hotel, a Queenslander-style timber pub, is an early building in what was Hambledon Junction (now Edmonton) and one of the earliest surviving hotels in the area.

The Grafton Hotel has been part of the town of Edmonton town since the Bruce Highway was still a dirt road and the small community relied on cane-cutting for its livelihood.

Like all pubs in settlement areas, The Grafton Hotel provided a crucial service to locals and travellers, especially during the days when travel was still by horse and cart. Its local significance stems from its contribution to the development of the town as well as for accommodation for passing travellers on the road from the south.

The hotel was apparently referred to as the ‘bottom pub’, and it is possible that the nearby Hambledon Hotel across Stokes Street was the ‘top pub’. The Grafton Hotel was damaged by a cyclone in 1927, but later repaired.

A gentleman called John MacLeod was the original licensee and the original owner of the property. His application for a victualler’s license included the description that it comprised “five sitting rooms of moderate size and thirteen bedrooms of moderate size” exclusive of those required for his family (a wife and six children) and servants. Also “one bar and stabling for five horses”.

A Cairns Heritage Thematic History noted: “A double storey, timber-framed building with hipped corrugated iron roof and a double-storey verandah. The hotel still has early weatherboards and windows on the north (side elevation), but has been substantially altered elsewhere, including corrugated iron cladding to the front, ground floor façade, later metal balustrade to the first floor verandah and a new entrance feature on the south (side) elevation.”

Photographs of the building in mid-1995 show the building with more of its timber detailing including posts with decorative brackets and the upper verandah filled with a solid verandah and louvres where it was formerly an open verandah.

The pub was a crucial asset to the local workers in the town of Edmonton. The town was first called Hambledon Junction, because of its proximity to the Hambledon plantation and mill, but its name was changed to Edmonton in 1911.

The plantation had been established in 1881 by Thomas H. Swallow, a biscuit maker from Melbourne. It included a sugar mill named The Hambledon Mill, later taken over by the Colonial Sugar Refining Company (CSR).

It eventually expanded to a 6000-acre plantation mainly producing sugarcane, but also bananas, pineapples and citrus.

As other industries developed in the region – including a brick works – the Grafton Hotel’s significance grew.

In September 1910 The Cairns Post carried a feature article on a new brick works at Hambledon, owned by Messrs. Fearnley & Co, and run by the Cairns Brickworks Company. It was capable of producing 40,000 bricks per week. This commercial supply would be the foundation of masonry construction in Cairns in the 1910s period.

John MacLeod died in 1920, according to a newspaper, “from the effects of a recent fall”. He was 65 and “leaves a widow and grown-up family for whom much sympathy is felt”.

The pub itself was always a strong presence in the town but occasionally had its challenges. In February 1927 a cyclone demolished the verandah and unroofed the south side of the hotel.

After John’s death the property was owned by his wife Sarah Anne MacLeod who was the licensee for a short period.

Sarah died in 1947 and The Townsville Daily Bulletin ran an obituary. While eulogising Sarah’s important role in the growth of the Edmonton community, the obituary is a window to the life of migrant settlers in Far North Queensland who had arrived in the late 1880s.

“After a residence of nearly 62 years in North Queensland, Mrs Sarah Anne MacLeod passed away on Thursday afternoon at Edmonton, near Cairns, where she had resided since 1908, to join that glorious band of pioneers, who, by sheer grit and energy, made this part of Australia what it is today.

“Celebrating her 21st birthday on board the Earl of Derby, enroute to Australia from Plymouth, she arrived in Brisbane in January, 1885, and joined the nursing staff of the Ipswich Hospital. Here she met her husband, the late Mr. John MacLeod.

“At the end of that year, she re-signed and for some time lived with her brother in Rockhampton. After

her marriage in 1886, she and her husband decided to set up a home in North Queensland. They landed

at Cardwell early the same year on horseback over the then notorious Cardwell Range.

“They proceeded via the Valley of Lagoons station through Herberton and on to Cairns, finally returning to settle in Mont Albion, then a flourishing mining township, and to make their home there, where four of her children were born. When this town declined, with her husband and family, she moved to Herberton where they remained until 1896.

“After two years in Mareeba, then the terminus of the Cairns railway system, they moved into the Cairns district where she had remained until the last call came.”

The pub is well-known for a quirky story, as noted by

The Cairns Local News in February 2022. The report said that in 1914 the licensee of the Grafton Hotel caused quite a sensation when he appealed against a conviction for allowing “public singing” without a permit.

“The incident occurred on December 13, 1913, when a group of Italian canecutters broke into “melodious” song while having a drink in the hotel at Hambledon Junction,” it reported.

“When a local constable happened upon the scene, he asked whether MacLeod had permit for “public singing”. MacLeod said he didn’t and told the canecutters to stop,” the report said.

The canecutters left the hotel and “resumed singing out on the road but were lured back inside when other drinkers joined the chorus”.

For this infraction Macleod was fined, but won an appeal on the grounds there was no evidence of an offence. However, a further appeal by the Crown saw that judgement overturned when a full bench decided that “public singing” as defined by law had indeed occurred.

The Cairns Local News brought a contemporary note to the story. “In 2010 it was again the scene of much singing and revelry when descendants of John and Sarah celebrated the centenary of the MacLeod clan in Edmonton. A group of 50 came from all over Australia,” it said.

“With no irate constables in sight, the revelers were free to play the bagpipes, sing and dance well into the evening.”

The Grafton has been a survivor and a much-loved part of the Edmonton community for more than a century.