Written by Peter Wilmoth.
The Grafton Hotel has for 124 years had a proud place in the life of Edmonton with a deep connection to a famous family Edmonton family.
The hotel was built in 1910 by John and Sarah MacLeod who had arrived in Edmonton from Scotland and later eulogised for “sheer grit and energy” and making “this part of Australia what it is today”.
Theirs is a wonderful story of making good and raising a large family in a settlement town in Far North Queensland about as different from John’s home in Scotland’s chilly Outer Hebrides as you could get.
The Grafton Hotel opened its doors in October 1910 when the Bruce Highway was still a dirt road and the small community relied on cane-cutting for its livelihood.
The hotel, a Queenslander-style timber pub, is one of the earliest surviving hotels in the area once known as Hambledon Junction because of its proximity to the Hambledon plantation and mill. Its name was changed to Edmonton in 1911.
The pub was a crucial asset to the locals in the town, many of whom worked at the plantation which had been established in 1881 by Thomas H. Swallow, a biscuit maker from Melbourne. The plantation included a sugar mill named The Hambledon Mill, later taken over by the Colonial Sugar Refining Company (CSR).
It eventually expanded to 6000 acres 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.
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 hotel took the form of many “Queenslanders” of the time. A Cairns Heritage Thematic History noted the hotel was “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.”
So what do we know about the hotel’s original owners John and Sarah McLeod?
John MacLeod was born on 21 April 1856 on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. He left home in 1872 seeking work in Glasgow but, two years later, found himself in Far Northern Queensland.
Robert Spencer, the grandson of John and Sarah MacLeod, wrote a booklet about his grandparents – ‘The MacLeod’s of Edmonton’. In the 2010 booklet – timed to coincide with the hotel’s centenary – Robert writes that a friend had mentioned to John: “Mac, there are plenty of thirsty cane cutters, farmers and mill workers out at Hambledon Junction, why don’t you build a hotel there? I’ll help you”.
Robert writes: “On the rear of a circa 1923 photograph of the Grafton Hotel, is written ‘Built in three weeks by 13 carpenters’. The owner, John MacLeod, called it the Grafton Hotel as it was to serve customers in the Parish of Grafton.”
John and Sarah MacLeod ran a hotel which was welcoming to all, including those sometimes unable to pay for meals. John was, according to his daughter Rita, “a big and good-hearted Scotsman with dark brown eyes who always wore a beard. He never saw anyone hungry. In the hotel he never charged for Christmas dinner or drinks and there was an open invitation for anyone to come.”
There are some wonderful early photographs of the hotel’s exterior, and we have some insight into the hotel’s internals from John’s application for a victualler’s license. It 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”.
The five daughters of John and Sarah were all involved in social activities in Edmonton including debutante and fancy dress balls, and also helped with the war effort. Robert Spencer notes that Gertie, a gifted pianist, had “her piano transported on the back of a truck to Trinity Wharf [in Cairns] where she played for troops departing for the trenches of Europe.”
In November 1919 a photo was taken of all the MacLeod daughters in the fernery of the hotel, a small garden between the kitchen and the rear passageway of the hotel.
Sadly, just a few weeks later – on 1 January 1920 – John suffered a cerebral haemorrhage and died. He was 63.
The licence for the Grafton Hotel was assumed by Sarah but relinquished by her on 16 May 1923.
The hotel continued as a popular local meeting spot, surviving a cyclone in 1927 which demolished the verandah and tore the roof off the south side of the hotel.
Sarah MacLeod died on 9 October 1947, aged 82. 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 as pioneers in settlement towns.
“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 resigned 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 Grafton Hotel holds many stories in its 124-year history, but one quirky story is remembered with affection.
A report in The Cairns Local News in February 2022 noted that in 1914 the licensee of the Grafton Hotel [John MacLeod] 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,” the newspaper reported.
“When a local constable happened upon the scene, he asked whether MacLeod had a 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.
In reporting the quashing of the conviction by the Full Court, on 16 May 1914 the Cairns Post shared some further detail of the event.
It noted that “the singing was caused by a number of Italian workmen [canecutters] gathered together in the bar who sang together in concert. The signing, it is said, was very tuneful and musical and as a result a number of the public were attracted into the bar and they applauded the singer.”
It continued: “In consequence of this there was more drinking and appellant’s trade was improved for the time being.
“Dancing was absolutely prohibited without permission but not all sorts of singing, only public singing.”
The court then busied itself with working out a definition of public singing, concluding that “public singing might be properly defined as such signing by one or more persons as attracted the public into a place where the singing was taking place.”
The conviction was quashed and calm was restored.
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 revellers were free to play the bagpipes, sing and dance well into the evening.”
The Grafton Hotel has been a survivor and a much-loved part of the Edmonton community for 124 years and has many more stories to tell.
