Merle Thornton has cocktail bar named after her at Regatta Hotel after act of defiance in 1965
PIONEER of women’s drinking rights Merle Thornton has bar at Toowong’s Regatta Hotel named in her honour almost 50 years after protest.
QLD News
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IT WAS an act of defiance that shocked Queensland and changed Merle Thornton’s life forever.
On March 31, 1965, Ms Thornton (now 83) and Rosalie Bognor strode into the “public bar” at the Regatta Hotel at Toowong and chained themselves to the bar to protest the oppression of women that included a ban on drinking in public.
To honour her courageous act, a new women’s cocktail bar at the iconic hotel is being named in Ms Thornton’s honour this week.
“It got to the ridiculous point in Queensland where you could frequently find women waiting outside the bar for their men or outside in the street in the car with the children in their pyjamas waiting for the men,” Ms Thornton, mother of actor Sigrid, recalls.
“It was extremely irritating that it was called the public bar because clearly that was universally understood that it meant women weren’t members of public society, they were only members of domestic society and that was really the core of the complaint but also, just to top it off, it was actually illegal for women to be served with liquor in the bar.”
They were initially threatened with arrest if they didn’t leave the bar.
“A police officer astounded us by saying ‘good night girls, have a good night, don’t drink too much’. He left us there. So that seemed to establish that although there was a law, the police were not really going to pursue policing it.”
Their actions gained international attention and spurred on a movement in Queensland that led to change.
“It became clear we had enough support to clean up some of the more outrageous discriminations against women.”