The Hero of Waterloo

The Hero is old, built in 1843 by George Paton The Hero is old. It was built in 1843 by George Paton, using convict labour to dig up the sandstones that make up the pub. If you look at the walls you can still see the gouges in the rock from when they were heaved out of the ground so long ago. If you look really hard, you can see that the gouges are a consistent pattern on particular stones, but vary from stone to stone. That's because each convict had to meet a certain quota of stones, and the particular cut on the stone allowed the convict to identify his stones at the end of the day. Hard yakka, to be sure. The best bit about the Hero, probably because of the stone, is that it is still the same basic condition it was in 155 years ago. Most so-called old pubs only have a skerrick of the old pub left in them. The Hero is the real thing: you are drinking in a place people have been drinking in for almost as long as there has been drinking in Australia.