5 pubs checked · updated 18 September 2026
The short answer
In Hobart the oldest claim and the earliest record are the same house: the Hope and Anchor on Macquarie Street, whose case rests on the Reverend Robert Knopwood's diary entry of 25 July 1807 recording that Hopkins had opened a public house at the Sign of the Whale Fishery. ABC reporting notes doubt over whether that house stood on this site, and the pub was closed to the public from 2008 to 2014 while its licence was kept alive. The cleaner licence record belongs to the Central Hotel on Collins Street, granted to Thomas L. Richardson on 3 October 1818 as the New Inn.
Hobart was founded in 1804, which makes it one of the few cities in the world where you can plausibly name every early public house. The Central Hotel was among the town's first fifteen licensed houses, and the Hope and Anchor's claim reaches back to the settlement's fourth year. What the town then did with those licences is the interesting part. Buildings were demolished, businesses moved next door, and licences were transferred and kept alive through closures, so the Hobart pattern is one of very old paperwork attached to much later rooms: the Central's original corner building went in 1882 and the trade shifted into its own billiard room, which was itself rebuilt in 1923. The city's sandstone waterfront survives better than its pub interiors, and the best of the old fabric is in Battery Point and along Macquarie and Collins streets, where colonial cottages and warehouses still frame the walk between these four.
The Central Hotel is the clearest case in the collection of a business outliving its premises. Licensed as the New Inn in 1818, renamed the Ship by 1821, it lost its original Verandah House on the Elizabeth and Collins corner to a bank in 1882 and simply moved next door into its own billiard room, which was rebuilt in 1923; an 1877 newspaper turned up in a wall cavity after a fire in 1953. The Hope and Anchor is the opposite kind of survival: an early nineteenth century tavern enlarged around 1820 and again around 1840, crammed with antiques and maritime relics, on the Tasmanian Heritage Register since 1998.
The Customs House Hotel says it was built for the early settler Charles Gaylor and licensed in 1846, first trading as the Chop House; its Derwent Bar still has live music at weekends. The Shipwrights Arms served the maritime quarter where the shipwrights actually worked, and its telephone number ends in 1846, which is the sort of commitment to a founding date that we enjoy without being able to verify. The state list is at the oldest pubs in Tasmania, and the national argument — in which Hobart is one of the two principal parties — is at Australia’s oldest pub.
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Hobart, Tasmania
Robert Knopwood's diary for 25 July 1807 records Hopkins opening a public house at the Sign of the Whale Fishery, and the ABC has reported doubt about whether that house stood on this site. The premises went on the Tasmanian Heritage Register in 1998, on the strength of their archaeological importance. The trade has not been unbroken: the pub was closed to the public from 2008 to 2014, and earlier in the 1980s, with
Hobart, Tasmania
A licence was granted to Thomas L. Richardson on 3 October 1818 for the New Inn, known as the Ship Inn by 1821. That date rests on one pub historian's reading of the Hobart records; we have not seen the licence itself. The Tasmanian Heritage Register lists 73 Collins Street as the Ship Hotel and reads the standing building as an Old Colonial Georgian public house behind a Federation front of about 1900. The two
Hobart, Tasmania
The hotel's own history says the house was built for Charles Gaylor and licensed in 1846, trading first as the Chop House. The Tasmanian Heritage Register lists 1 Murray Street as the Customs House Hotel and describes a corner sandstone building with three bays to each street, a recessed corner entry, a parapet and hipped roof and twelve-paned sash windows, significant as an Old Colonial Georgian hotel. That fits
Hobart, Tasmania
The 1846 founding date comes from the pub's own website (its phone number even ends 1846). No independent licensing or heritage documentation confirms it.
Hobart, Tasmania
The date the hotel gives for itself and the date the travel trade gives for it are twenty-eight years apart. Hadley's own history page says the house was founded and run as Webb's Family Hotel in 1862, that the Hadley family bought it in 1890 and gave it their name, and that a consortium took it over in 1935 and kept the name; its timeline of guests starts with the comedian Sir William Don in 1862. The widely
The photographs above are other people's work, used under open licences. Every photographer, licence and source page is named in the image credits. A pub with no licensed photograph shows an illustrated façade instead.
