In late 2021 I was in the midst of a very long and pleasant staycation. I visited a few pubs and wrote an entry in my blog which listed several of the better beer gardens of Melbourne.
Happily, I have been on a permanent staycation since mid 2023, and this means that I have visited quite a lot more pubs and beer gardens since that time.
Hence it is time to update my list of beer gardens.
Let me start by saying that I will disqualify those beer gardens which relate to bars which are not traditional pubs (eg Garden State). I am a traditionalist, and I cannot keep up with all the inner city bars which sprout up and then just as quickly disappear. Nor am I going to include rooftop bars, like what Young & Jacksons and The Imperial now have.
So, here is my list:
1. The Nottinghill Hotel
There was no bar on campus when I was an undergrad at Monash, which was probably a good thing, on sober reflection. Aside from not having the disposable income or the ability to hold copious quantities of beer or wine that I do now, I would occasionally wander north to the Nottinghill Hotel, affectionately known as The Nott to generations of Monash students.
A couple of years ago, visiting old haunts in a masochistic fit of nostalgia, I felt a bit the way F. Scott Fitzgerald did, when he wrote (perhaps with an ironic wink at his reader): ‘Once more the belt is tight and we summon up the proper expression of horror as we look back at our wasted youth.’
When, in my late teens and early twenties, I would visit the beer garden at the Nott, there used to be chickens roaming free range around the tables. I mentioned this to the barmaid as she poured me a pint of Little Creatures, but she had already heard this.
It was a very different time, almost worlds away really. 1987 is as far away in time from 2024 as 1950 is from 1987. Chickens in the beer garden was a charming quirk about the Nott, as was the publican, Kath, who had been there since the late 1930s as a newly wed not quite 20, and who remained the publican for about 70 years. [I did not know that then, as my visits to the Nott were an end of term thing, rather than an end of week thing, as they more than likely would be if I was to be transported back to that time now.]
Aside from the chickens and the record breaking publican being gone, the Nott is probably much the same as it was then, even if Nottinghill has changed much since the market gardens surrounding the pub when Kath first took up the license. The University Bar is currently referred to as the Steakhouse, and the food is probably better than when I did lunch there one rainy day in 1993. And the beer garden is still one of the best in Melbourne.
How can I not rank the Nott at the top of the list, given all I have already written about it? Aside from the character and history of the place, it has a beer garden which, even sans chooks, is spacious and shady and comfortable, running in a long oblong from the buildings of the pub down to the bottleshop out back.
2. The Standard Hotel
The Standard is located in a side street parallel to and immediately west of Brunswick Street Fitzroy. Surrounded by workers’ cottages, the beer garden occupies a spacious block L-shaped block immediately behind the pub, with many trees providing shade. I have spent many happy afternoons there, mostly at work related Christmas lunches.
3. The Retreat
There are two pubs with the name The Retreat in Melbourne. One is in Abbotsford just south of Johnson Street and is famous for where the pub scenes in The Sullivans were filmed. But it has no beer garden. There is another Retreat in Sydney Road Brunswick, and this is the one with the beer garden, which is well worth visiting.
I have had several very fun afternoons there on various December days over the years with some colleagues and friends.
What has made the Retreat particularly special in my mind is that its beer garden is dominated by an ancient almond tree which would have to be the largest specimen of the genus prunus I have ever seen.
Sadly since my original posting in late 2021, the almond tree has died. I popped in for a beer in November 2023 with a friend who lives in Brunswick and the dead trunk of the tree remained. They had consulted a tree surgeon last February and realised that the tree was no longer viable.
Hopefully in future, just like the Cussonia Tree in Cussonia Court at Melbourne Uni, they replace the old almond tree with a new one, which grows for many years to come.
4. The Anglers Tavern
The Anglers Tavern is located on the banks of the Maribyrnong River, just opposite where a sign in the 1990s used to welcome motorists to the City of Sunshine, with ‘Maribyrnong Township’ in slightly smaller lettering.
I used to live on the other side of the ‘township’ (I much prefer that to suburb), about 10 minutes’ walk through the side streets from my flat. As a result, I have visited the Anglers many times over the past 30 years and it has many fond memories.
For example, Sunday afternoons in the mid 1990s when Wendy Stapleton would sing covers of various other peoples’ songs with the aid of a backing tape and one guitarist (sadly, she never would play Reputation or any of the other songs from when she headed The Rockets in the early 80s).
As the beer garden is located on the banks of the river, it has a lot going for it. However, I think that putting up semi-permanent roofing over most of the beer garden has diminished it. I much prefer a beer garden which is mostly open to nature, with more trees, as it used to be.
The Anglers has frequently been victim to the floods which burst from the Maribyrnong River, and the record breaking flood in late 2022 was the most dramatic in the pub’s history (FYI, I believe it was the second biggest flood recorded in Maribyrnong). The pub and beer garden are still closed, some 15 months later, as repairs take place.
Hopefully it reopens in time for the next Spring Racing Carnival.
5. The Great Northern
The Great Northern is in Rathdowne Street in Carlton North, just before the street ends at the abandoned railway line. The pub itself seems to be a time capsule of early 1980s decor, and I find that charming.
I went to a close friend’s 40th in the beer garden there, some 15 years ago. Since then, the beer garden has upgraded with new wooden flooring and benches and tables and shading. As it is an inner city beer garden, just north of the Princess Hill precinct, it enjoys an almost pastoral setting.
6. The Keilor Hotel
I really am not sure about including the Keilor Hotel on a list of Melbourne pubs. Technically, Keilor village is a part of Melbourne, and suburbia these days extends well past it to the north and west, but Keilor has always felt to me like a small country town tucked away around a few bends in the river, with only the hum of the freeway and the roar of planes approaching or departing from the airport nearby to remind us of Greater Melbourne.
I also, being a non-driver (which is wise when you enjoy beer and wine on the scale I do), find it hard to get to the Keilor village as it is not exactly well served by public transport.
The pub itself has the charm of a giant old country pub. I think it dates to about 1850, and was a stop over during the gold rush for chancers heading out to Bendigo to try their luck. The current publican has been there since 1974, and is related to a local family which owned it since the 1860s.
The beer garden area is out the back of the pub, surrounded by ancient gum trees, and offers a very comfortable afternoon of beer drinking. I was there on Cup Day, and it was strangely deserted.
The Keilor Hotel is one of those hidden gems of Melbourne, and well worth a visit, if you can spare the time for such a remote trek.
7. The Flying Duck, Hawksburn
Aside from the location of railway stations, I tend to get a bit confused about where exactly the suburbs of South Yarra, Toorak, Prahran and Hawksburn are located vis-a-vis each other. In any event, it is on Bendigo Street on the Chapel Street end of Malvern Road, so you go figure which suburb precisely it sits within.
The quaintly named Flying Duck (it does have some flying ducks mounted on a wall, although I tend not to notice these things) is a charming tavern with open fireplaces. I used to visit it semi-regularly approximately 30 years ago.
Recently, I caught up with an old friend who is currently living in South Yarra for a few beers there. It was a rainy day, so beer garden was not an option, but I did notice for the first time (my visits in the 1990s were in the evening so I would not have noticed back then) that it does have quite a beautiful little beer garden out the back.
8. The Peacock Inn, Northcote
A few weeks ago, I did lunch with some friends who happen to live in the inner north eastern suburbs (I assume Thornbury is inner north eastern). Despite being Italian, I do not really know Thornbury or Preston particularly well (a rather grasping paesano of my father’s has always been the only member of my extended family who ever dwelled around there so no reason to ever head out that way).
As I have a blindspot in my knowledge of that wedge of greater Melbourne between Merri Creek and the Yarra River, I’ve only ever gone past the Peacock Inn rather than stopping in there for a drink.
Last month was the first time I went in there, for lunch. And whilst I was in the bistro rather than the beer garden, I was, for a better word, gobsmacked by the sheer beauty and size of the beer garden.
9. College Lawns Hotel, Prahran
Whilst I do frequently get confused about the demarcation of suburbs around South Yarra, I have no doubt that Greville Street is in Prahran, and so too is the College Lawns Hotel.
It is another of those pubs which I used to visit circa 1991, plus or minus a couple of years. I popped into there for the first time in ages recently, and did notice that it does have a beer garden which is spacious and comfortable.
10. Westwood, Footscray
The Westwood is the latest name for what was recently known as the Reverence, and before that under its traditional name The Exchange. The local bogans in Footscray used to nickname it The Gearbox, probably due to its proximity to the major truck route through inner Footscray towards the docks.
It recently reopened and it is making an effort to promote itself as a band venue. It is a bit of a rabbit warren, including a 1960s era extension on Napier Street and a much older out building on Whitehall Street which I suspect originally was a stable.
The beer garden itself is fairly large, and now well suited to many people sipping beer in good company on summer evenings.
11. The Station Hotel, Footscray
In the past two or three years, the Station has been one of my favourite pubs to visit. As I live in Avondale Heights, and two of my closest friends live, respectively, in Melton and Laverton, meeting in Footscray for a boozy lunch or dinner is a very easy option.
The Station Hotel, located just down the street from Footscray Station and just over the road from the Footscray Town Hall, is well known for its steakhouse bistro, which I greatly enjoy visiting.
It also has two beer gardens. One is the discreet smokers area near the toilets and the fumes of Napier Street. The other, set back further from the street, is much larger, and suited for a family dining environment, complete with the occasional petting zoo!
12. The Commercial Hotel, Yarraville
The Commercial Hotel, located in the deep south of Yarraville, was long a neglected pub, complete with the grungy mouldy armchairs found in some of the more bohemian inner suburban uni pubs.
Happily, it has undergone a respectable renovation recently, which has included opening up a large beer garden area and adopting as a nickname ‘The Mersh’.
13. The Victoria Hotel, Brunswick
There are many pubs around Melbourne named the Victoria. Off the top of my head, there is one near the Vic Market (which used to have an impressive red gum bar), the Victoria on Hyde in Yarraville and the Victoria (aka Hart’s) in Footscray where I celebrated the 2016 AFL Premiership with my brother.
The Victoria Hotel in Victoria Street Brunswick is a very friendly local pub, with a snug and well maintained beer garden out the back, hemmed in by a number of shrubs which make the vibe a little more relaxed than in some other places. There are many wooden tables and benches where you can sit with your friends and drink beer all afternoon long, as I happened to do a few days ago.
Honourable Mentions:
I will make a few honourable mentions here.
The Kingston Hotel – Richmond.
If I remember correctly (and I have only been there twice), about a decade ago this had an awesome beer garden. I finally revisited it recently post extensive renovations and was chagrined to find that most of the beer garden area has been turned into a covered bistro area, and the tall trees I remember in the beer garden are gone. This makes me sad
St Andrews’ Hotel (aka The Pumphouse).
Does an atrium area out the back count as a beer garden? Not sure.
There’s a few wooden tables on the street, and that does have a beer garden feel to it, even though it does not technically count as a beer garden
As an aside, a former owner of this pub some decades ago was rumoured to harbour a pet monkey upstairs.
Mitre Tavern
Heaps of tables are set up outside the Mitre Tavern in the dead end alley known as Mitre Lane. I am not really comfortable calling this a beer garden, even though we do need more of them in the city proper.
Bells Hotel
I have a distinct memory that this pub, somewhere just off Clarendon Street in South Melbourne, had a great beer garden when I first visited it in 1994.
I visited it again in recent months, and the entire pub had a vibe which was combination beer-barn / sports bar / pokies venue. There was a beer garden, but it did not really thrill me. I do think that it is salvageable, at least.
The Clyde
This place has been a haunt of Melbourne Uni students for a very long time, and is probably the only pub left in the area that still welcomes them (I feel that the vibe at Naughtons is no longer uni student focused).
It has a beer garden, but not in the same league as the ones listed above. But any beer garden which is not just the concrete space with a plastic table and an ashtray en route to the toilet (eg the Courthouse Hotel in Footscray) deserves some commendation.
The Plough
Located on a wedge between Victoria Street, Barkly Street and Geelong Road, the Plough was one of the first two gastro-pubs in Footscray, becoming such in the early 1990s when everything else in my home town was going down hill.
They closed off the drive through bottle shop area and created an outdoor drinking area. I think they need to get rid of some of the concrete and plant some trees and then it might make it as a decent beer garden.
Dishonourable Mentions:
As aluded to above, there are some pubs which occasional claim to have a beer garden, but this is actually just a dull concrete space doubling as the smoking area en route to the toilet. The worst of these are ones which have a plastic table and an ashtray.
The Courthouse
The worst such example is the blood house pokies and TAB venue The Courthouse Hotel in Footscray.
Other such venues, which might have a slightly better smoking area, but which do depress me include:
The Waterloo Cup
This place actually had a great beer garden in the early 1990s, but it got built over to put the pokies in. It does have a smoking area now, but most of the non-pokies areas of the pub have been closed since Covid, which is a shame as it used to be a fantastic pub.
The Derrimut Hotel
The Derrimut Hotel in Sunshine relies heavily on poker machines. When a friend lived in Sunshine, I used to drink there a lot. There is a large outdoor smoking area, and between the smokers and the problem gamblers, this place is rather depressing and disturbing.
The Footscray Hotel
Don’t get me wrong, I quite enjoy the Footscray Hotel. It has a certain rundown bogan cachet to it and I try to visit it whenever I have a spare half hour in Footscray, usually when en route to the Station Hotel.
It is rather rundown though, and the beer garden area out the back is more like a storage area for bits of outdoor furniture and other equipment. However, I would not want the Footscray to change too much, beyond getting seriously decluttered.
If anyone reads this post, please suggest some more beer gardens in the comments.
Lost For Words! 