6 pubs checked · updated 18 September 2026
The short answer
In Tasmania the oldest claim and the earliest record are the same house: the Hope and Anchor in Hobart, whose case rests on the Reverend Robert Knopwood's diary entry of 25 July 1807 recording a public house opened at the Sign of the Whale Fishery. ABC reporting notes doubt over whether that house stood on the present site. Its long-standing rival, the Bush Inn at New Norfolk, was begun about 1815, completed in April 1825 and first licensed to Ann Bridger later that year — but Time Gents found newspaper evidence that it was a private residence around 1874–77.
Tasmania holds the two most persistent claimants in Australian drinking history, and the rivalry between them is the friendliest thing in this whole subject. Both are in the Derwent valley, twenty-odd miles apart, and both have been picked over by researchers with newspaper archives. What that scrutiny has produced is not a winner but a lesson in what "continuous" means. The Hope and Anchor kept its licence alive while closed to the public from 2008 to 2014. The Bush Inn's celebrated claim to have been continuously licensed since 1825 is contradicted by newspaper evidence that it spent three years as a house in the 1870s. Around them sit three more colonial survivors, all in Hobart, and all illustrating the same Tasmanian pattern: Georgian sandstone, an early licence, and a building that has been enlarged, demolished or rebuilt at least once. The island's convict-era architecture survives unusually well, which makes these pubs easier to place in their streets than in their paperwork.
The Hope and Anchor and the Bush Inn have been arguing about this for generations, and both have good grounds. The Hope and Anchor has the earlier date and the weaker link to its site; the Bush Inn has the building, the heritage listing and a documented gap in the middle. We have set the two of them beside the Woolpack at Parramatta in Australia’s oldest pub: Hope and Anchor, Bush Inn or Woolpack.
The Central Hotel has the best-documented licence and the least original fabric. The Customs House Hotel is a sandstone waterfront hotel facing what is now Parliament House, with its founder’s name carved into the coping stone. The Shipwrights Arms is the Battery Point local, a short walk from Salamanca among the colonial cottages. All four Hobart pubs are gathered at the oldest pubs in Hobart, and the national list is at the oldest pubs in Australia.
Coastlines: Natural Earth · Pub locations ©OpenStreetMap contributorsNatural Earth · ©OpenStreetMap contributors
OpenFreeMap · © OpenMapTiles · Data © OpenStreetMap contributors
Map tiles unavailable — showing the outline map.
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
New Norfolk, Tasmania
Building began about 1815 and the house was finished in 1825, with the first licence granted to Ann Bridger, a widow who had arrived in Hobart two years earlier. The Derwent Valley Gazette, marking the inn's two hundredth year in October 2025, dates that licence precisely to 29 September 1825 and names Belinda Smith as the licensee now, after the lease changed hands in April 2023 when the twins Peter and Don Smith
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.
