7 pubs checked · updated 18 September 2026
The short answer
Oldest proof
On record from 1815; the building is dated to about 1815.
Grade A · DocumentedBy claim, the oldest pub in New South Wales is the Woolpack Hotel in Parramatta, said to hold one of the first ten publican's licences granted in the colony, in 1796; sources disagree even on which governor issued it, and the business was rebuilt across George Street in the 1890s. By evidence it is the Macquarie Arms Hotel on Thompson Square in Windsor, built by Richard Fitzgerald at Governor Macquarie's direction and opened on 31 July 1815 — the earliest opening date on the Australian mainland that a record supports, in a building that still stands.
New South Wales holds more of Australia's strongest oldest-pub cases than any other state, because its early licences were printed and its heritage register is detailed. Six of the seven pubs here reach our top grade, which means the licence date can be checked against a document. What cannot always be checked is whether anyone kept drinking in the meantime. The Macquarie Arms spent the late 1830s as an officers' mess for the 50th Regiment and then years as a private residence, and was not relicensed until 1874. The Surveyor General at Berrima lost its licence from 30 June to 17 October 1895 over a family dispute and substandard ceiling heights, which technically breaks its claim to be Australia's oldest continuously licensed inn. The Woolpack moved across the road. What survives beautifully, though, is the built landscape of the early colony — Macquarie's planned town at Windsor, the preserved village of Berrima, the sandstone streets of The Rocks — and these seven pubs are the best way to walk through it.
The Macquarie Arms is the state’s showpiece: a convict-era brick hotel on a Georgian square above the Hawkesbury, built because the governor wanted the town to have a decent inn. The Surveyor General Inn is the best-preserved setting, a convict-built sandstone and brick inn in a village that time and the railway both bypassed, named after Major Thomas Mitchell and standing where his southern road crossed the Wingecarribee. The Bushranger Hotel at Collector has the most precisely documented moment of hotel use in Australian pub history, which is not a distinction anyone would have wished for.
The Fortune of War, the Lord Nelson and the Hero of Waterloo are all within walking distance of each other in The Rocks and Millers Point; there is a route through them at the oldest pubs of The Rocks. The Woolpack at Parramatta is the state’s oldest claim and its least verifiable one, now a busy renovated hotel opposite the courthouse. The national comparison is at the oldest pubs in Australia, and the argument about the title itself at Australia’s oldest pub.
Coastlines: Natural Earth · Pub locations ©OpenStreetMap contributorsNatural Earth · ©OpenStreetMap contributors
OpenFreeMap · © OpenMapTiles · Data © OpenStreetMap contributors
Map tiles unavailable — showing the outline map.
Parramatta, New South Wales
The hotel says on its own front page that it was founded and licensed in 1796, and it is often counted among the first ten houses licensed in the colony. The sources do not agree on who granted it, crediting Hunter or Phillip, who had left the colony in 1792, and the trade press reports that the provenance cannot be confirmed. The business was rebuilt across George Street in the 1890s under a different name, so
Windsor, New South Wales
The State Heritage Register quotes the notice that opened the house: a large and commodious building lately completed at considerable expense in the town of Windsor for an inn, called the Macquarie Arms and kept by Thomas Ranson, 'who formerly was an Innkeeper in England', to open for the public on Monday 31 July 1815. Hawkesbury People & Places, a local history site for the district, cites the same notice from the
Sydney, New South Wales
The State Heritage Register has the emancipist Samuel Terry building a terrace of three on this site, completed in the mid to late 1820s and constructed as a public house known as the Fortune of War; its footprint appears in Robert Russell's survey of 1834, and the register places that terrace at today's 139-143 George Street. The first recorded licensee was John Boreham in 1830, for the sale of wines, malt and
Berrima, New South Wales
The inn says it was built in 1834 for James Harper and licensed a year later, of local sandstone and rendered sand stock brick under a shingle roof, raised with convict labour in the new village of Berrima where Thomas Mitchell's new southern road crossed the Wingecarribee. The licence went to Harper on 29 June 1835. Its claim to be Australia's oldest continuously licensed inn is technically broken: the trade press
Sydney, New South Wales
The land came from a Crown grant to the plasterer William Wells dated 14 May 1836 and part of a grant in trust to Richard Driver of 30 November 1840; Wells is believed to have lived here until 1842, when the liquor licence was granted. The State Heritage Register calls the Lord Nelson the oldest working licensed hotel in the city and dates it from that licence of June 1842, while the pub dates its own licence to 1
Sydney, New South Wales
The State Heritage Register has the land sold by a man named Clarke to the builder George Payten in 1840; Payten built the Garrison Church in 1842 and this hotel in 1843-44, and took out a licence in the name Hero of Waterloo in 1845. The stone for both church and hotel probably came from the Kent Street quarries, the earliest in Sydney. The register also explains the room a drinker stands in: the present main bar
Collector, New South Wales
The construction years are the New South Wales State Heritage Register's: 1860-1861, for Kimberley's Commercial Hotel, built by a bootmaker who folded his shop into the hotel. Its hotel use is firmly documented by Ben Hall's gang raid on 26 January 1865, when Constable Samuel Nelson was shot dead outside. The register and Wikipedia say it has operated as a hotel ever since. That sentence describes the record up to
The photographs above are other people's work, used under open licences, or in the public domain. Every photographer, licence and source page is named in the image credits.
