There’s a bootmaker in the story of Collector’s best-known pub.
Thomas Kimberly opened a boot shop in town around 1851. When he built his Commercial Hotel in 1860–61, he incorporated the shop into the building. Collector then had five hotels, serving travellers heading towards the Kiandra goldfields and the Monaro.
The name most of us know today, the Bushranger Hotel, points to a much darker episode. On 26 January 1865, Ben Hall’s gang raided the hotel. John Dunn shot and killed Constable Samuel Nelson nearby as Nelson tried to intervene. The memorial beside the pub remembers him.
But the building’s story also includes all those ordinary visits between the famous events: travellers, meals, publicans and local families.
Who remembers stopping at the pub years ago? Do you have a photograph showing how the frontage looked, or a family connection to someone who worked there?
Know a little more? Share a memory or correction, or join the conversation on Facebook.