As Justin Hemmes buys in, the colourful Balmain-Rozelle pub scene keeps evolving

Tommy Richardson was licensee of Balmain’s West End Hotel – previously owned by notorious crime figure Abe Saffron – when it was a hardcore drinking venue for members of the Painters and Dockers’ Union in the early 1980s.

It was towards the end of an era when the Balmain-Rozelle peninsula had one of the highest concentrations of pubs in Sydney – arguably only behind The Rocks – and drinkers included ship builders, boilermakers and factory workers from local industry.

“The people have changed,” Richardson, 88, says. Adds his wife Marilyn: “So many dogs and so many prams.”

The West End, on Mullens Street, has also changed. After refurbishment, the old Painters and Dockers’ watering hole reopened in 2013 as the much more family-friendly Balmain Hotel.

On a warm lunchtime, Richardson is the living intersection of the old and the new of the area’s pub scene. He and Marilyn are having a meal and a few drinks at Rozelle’s Sackville Hotel, well known for being the “Sacky-roos” during the soccer World Cup , which has just sold to billionaire hotelier Justin Hemmes for a cool $50 million .

Given Hemmes also owns Totti’s Rozelle, in the Three Weeds hotel on the other side of Victoria Road, the sale depends on merger clearance from competition watchdog the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

Once the peninsula’s pub landscape was dominated by blue-collar watering holes, with colourful publicans, Tooheys and Resch’s on tap, poker machines, the trots on TV and hardened drinkers. There were plenty of knockabout places to play the brickie’s laptop – a pokie – in thongs and to order a burger and chips.

When Balmain was the location for the hit black and white sitcom My Name’s McGooley, What’s Yours? in the 1960s, it was widely thought to be barely more than a slum. That was before generations of home-buyers discovered the area’s heritage charm and waterfront properties, its sense of community and the short ferry ride to the city.

If the Sackville deal is approved, Hemmes’ Merivale group will add to a pub gentrification that has brought upmarket dining – with The Dry Dock on Cameron Street won a chef’s hat this year – craft beers, expensive wine and cocktail lists, working fireplaces, dog-friendly bars and comfy lounges for watching sport on TV.

The Inner West Council’s heritage pub trail, launched to revitalise the area and attract more visitors, extends from the Merton (on Victoria Road) to the East Village (on Darling Street in Balmain East) and back to Sydney Brewery Rozelle, which opened (on Mansfield Street) late last year.

According to the Balmain Rozelle Chamber of Commerce, there were once 55 pubs in the area. Now there are just 19.

When Geoff Roddy headed a group that took over the Unity Hall Hotel on Darling Street in 2019, he lamented that “outsiders” had been buying and redeveloping historic local pubs. The hotel dates to 1875 and is considered by many as the birthplace of the Australian Labor Party, in 1891.

“I got sick of people from outside of Balmain buying our iconic pubs and turning them into bloody gymnasiums and cheese shops,” Roddy said at the time.