Bordertown Hotel

An alternative shot here this morning when it was so cold and misty...dawn from outside the entrance to the railway station platform.

Bordertown Hotel on the corner of East Terrace and Farquhar Street is the first landmark sight a traveller sees alighting the train at Bordertown. The view here is from Hay Avenue that leads to the railway station from East Terrace.

The Hotel replaced a previous Hotel of the name Bordertown in a different location that ceased trading on July 25 1891 - it operated as a boarding house under by sounds some business stress caused through competition with the Woolshed Inn for a full licence, the Woolshed Inn proprietor testifying difficulty filling 27 beds as it was at that address (an average of 4 or 5 guests a night and half were empty on race night). The license was finally granted in 1893 and transferred by Mr G.S Scott to Mr William Simpson, July 27 1898, to Maud Simpson on December 1899 and James Douglas Simpson in June 1901.

Late in 1902, a Mr Simpson began building a new 2-storey (L-shaped) structure "in easy walking distance of the railway station" ...the present location of Bordertown Hotel and the building was completed in 1903 when the licence was formally transferred for trading. More rooms were added in 1910, both at ground floor and first floor levels on the Farquhar Street side. Later after World War II a single-storey dining room was added on East Terrace (ie facing the reserve and the railway station). A drive-in bottle department and other rooms have been built in single-storey inside the L-shaped original building, 'making the complex almost rectangular'.

The above information is from the official history by Alan Jones commissioned by the Tatiara District Council of which Bordertown is one precinct...Tatiara-The First 140 Years 18456-1985.

I can see from a 1929 view of the hotel reproduced in Alan Jones' history it has changed little in outward appearance regards the magnificent verandahs, elegant verandah post supports and iron lace. Here is a side and diagonal view of the hotel I took a few years ago showing the style of the structure...