From magic havens of beer, bands and bonding to ‘pokie purgatory’: Jock Serong salutes pub life

Melbourne’s 1990s pub scene was a potent blend of beer, bands and bonding. Jock Serong revisited his old haunts for his latest novel – and created a time-travelling hotel in the process.

‘I’d be so wired I’d drive toward the coast until dawn’ … Jock Serong. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

There was an equation you could apply to being a student in Melbourne in the early ’90s.

It went something like this: three pub shifts a week was enough to cover a third of the rent on a three-bedroom terrace in the inner north, and it left enough time in the week for the study and for some sort of social life. At the time, it was probably as true of the Valley or the Cross or Adelaide’s East End.

In Fitzroy at least, that equation is now in tatters: the terraces are worth four million bucks. But pubs were how I got myself through most of my degree, first at some dreadful joint on St Kilda Road, then at the Tankerville Arms and The Napier in Fitzroy, and later at the Queen Victoria in North Melbourne.

‘A jukebox filled with improbable music’ … Nick Cave performs with the Birthday Party in 1995.

Each pub had its own personality, its own raison d’etre. The Tankerville revolved around a jukebox filled with improbable music – Nick Cave, Suede, Dwight Yoakam, Weddings Parties Anything. Added to that, it had a passable drive-through bottle-o and a grungy front bar that served the old men from the Housing Commission towers opposite. The front bar was the day shifts – the customers quite literally dying month by month – and the back bar had a 3am licence, a gathering place for goths and rockabillies and students and outsiders. Sometimes after eight hours in there I’d be so wired I’d drive toward the coast until dawn and then go fishing wherever I’d ended up.

The Queen Vic had a weird licence: it opened at six am to cater for the market workers, so the clientele was a discordant mix of revellers from the night before, trying for just one … more … beer (they invariably fell asleep); and wharfies and market workers who’d loaded in before dawn, and now wanted to get loaded.

‘I couldn’t help myself’ … Jock Serong revisited his old stomping grounds for his new book Cherrywood. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

But it was the Napier that was wreathed in magic. I got the job as a walk-in, the luckiest find of my bartending career. It was a tiny pub on a side street corner, lacking any architectural style. Old but not an ornament, inside it was a tangle of narrow passageways and staircases that went nowhere, rooms that had no purpose. The bar, which for residents of the tiny houses nearby functioned as a defacto living room, was festooned with stuff: trophies, paintings, scarfs, photos, a boar’s head, mirrors, footballs.

Of the many places that inspired my latest novel, Cherrywood, it was the Napier that lit the path. For a story about a pub that defies time and space, I needed a place that offered warmth and refuge, but also riddles. Readers of Cherrywood will recognise it again and again: I would not have been the least bit surprised if the Napier had got up and wandered off.

It was packed every night. The food was good. There were bands, including the legendary ska outfit Loin Groin, who incited a pogo-mosh-danse macabre-delirium so intense that the building bounced on its bearers. The deep corners, away from the racket, were always softly lit and beguiling. It was funny, and fun, and shifts raced past because the pace of the work was frenetic. Within its walls, I learned deep things about people, and drinking, and coriander.

‘Within its walls, I learned deep things’ … the Napier Hotel, Fitzroy.

The Queen Vic days ended in a refurb. The Tankerville stint ended when a change of ownership ushered in the bikies, a bunch of grunting thugs in the same clothes, ordering the same drinks while they blathered on about their individuality. Nights of harmless fun devolved into brawls and knives and bent cops, and I fled. If there was any doubt about the wisdom of that decision, a later reno turned the Tankerville into a soulless pokie purgatory. It’s unrecognisable now as the haven it once was.

The Napier days never soured. For me, they ended when uni did, and I took my carefully saved money and went travelling, before I had to surrender myself to a career in the glass towers of Melbourne.

I found myself in Fitzroy with an hour to kill one rainy night last year, while I was writing Cherrywood. What an opportunity, I thought, to revisit the best workplace I ever had. I came in though the corner door with its worn threshold and as my eyes adjusted to the light I caught my breath … not a single thing had changed. It had been thirty years since I’d walked out that door, and there was the same nonsense miscellany, decorating the same gorgeous bar.

I stood at that bar as a young woman poured me a beer. I knew, even as I said it, that it was a dumb and sentimental thing to say, but I couldn’t help myself.

If Trent Dalton likes it … Cherrywood, by Jock Serong, is a captivating read.

‘You know, I stood exactly where you’re standing, thirty years ago, doing the same job. And this bar hasn’t changed a bit.’

She snapped the tap shut and placed the spilling schooner on the mat.

‘Wow,’ she said. ‘Amazing. That’ll be eight bucks.’

Cherrywood, by Jock Serong, is out now, published by 4th Estate AU.

Tell us what you think – and share your fave pub and music memories – at the Sunday Book Club group on Facebook.

Originally published as From magic havens of beer, bands and bonding to ‘pokie purgatory’: Jock Serong salutes pub life