Pubs of Albany: More than 130 years of fame and infamy at Premier Hotel

Pubs are community hubs where friendships are made, romances sparked and business deals brokered. Bad things can happen in places where people gather and drinks flow, but for the most part, these establishments are the keepers of fond memories. The watering holes of Albany are among the oldest in the State. The Advertiser has explored their colourful history in an eight-part series. In the final part of the series, we look at the pub that has risen from the ashes — the Premier Hotel. Perched high on Albany’s main street with a name closely tied to political power, the Premier Hotel has a rich history linked with prominent people. It was advertised as the most popular hotel in Albany and was a favourite haunt of well-heeled farmers, not so well-heeled journos and other business figures in its hey-day. But while the hotel always remained a prominent part of Albany, its popularity seemed to come at a cost with criminal activity rearing its head along the way. Most infamously, it nearly brought about the hotel’s undoing just five years ago. But the story of “The Prem” is much richer than that one fateful evening in 2016. Its history stretches across three centuries, featuring surprising renovations, war commemorations and a visit from a murderer. It began life as a modest building. Thought to have been built in 1891, when renovations came to the Premier Hotel in 1913 it “doubled in size”, the Albany Advertiser reported at the time. “Doors and passages have been widened, windows enlarged and replaced by casements, windows and doors have been closed and new ones substituted for them,” the Advertiser reported. “This be has done to the complete extinction of the original structure.” But even in these early days, the hotel had the makings of a great and lasting structure. The first meeting of the Albany Road Board took place in the dining room, according to the WA Heritage Council. And so fondly was it remembered that the venue even merited a mention in a letter from one wounded Anzac stuck in Cairo, writing to his father after he had been shot at Gallipoli. “The wound in my leg is closing up well now and the doctor says it is time they got it in plaster, and it may be put in plaster today,” Alfred Chapman, 11th Battalion, wrote in 1915. “The sisters’ place is about the size of the Premier Hotel ... I wish I could get a bit of news. Albany may be blown off the earth for all I know.” The next major global crisis was the Great Depression, but not even the worst economic collapse of the past 100 years could stop improvements at The Prem. Significant renovations in the 1930s extended the hotel’s balcony to Grey Street, giving patrons panoramic views of Albany. But where there is prosperity often there is crime, and in 1937, thieves struck. “Entrance was effected through the fan light over the front door,” the Advertiser reported in 1937. “This was a comparatively simple feat because the fan-light had been left slightly open.” Two years later, the hotel was hit again. “Two men ... were charged with having stolen the amount of £11,471 of the property of Lilian Miller, of the Premier Hotel,” the Advertiser reported. “The amount was left by Lilian Miller in her room. Included in this amount was a £1 note initialled by the licensee’s wife.” However the hotel’s patrons were not always the victims. In 1938, police raided the pub because it was suspected of offering booze on Sunday. Decades later, in 1981, the hotel was bought by the family of ex-publican, Mike Ryan. It had been struggling for a few years under the management of the Swan Brewery, but Mr Ryan returned the watering hole to its former popularity. Mr Ryan said it was a favourite hangout for the journos around Albany during his time there. “The family bought the hotel in 1981, we bought it in an auction after leaving the Denmark Hotel,” he said. “All the journalists from the Advertiser and the ABC met there. They were all regulars down at the bottom bar. “Some of them started off and years down the track you’d see them reporting at The West Australian or some of the bigger places.” In 1987, a criminal element visited the hotel once again. After stabbing English backpacker Susan Frost 22 times in the Albany Plaza carpark in broad daylight, murderer Darren Osborne paid a visit to The Prem. “When Susan Frost was murdered, the guy who did it, Osborne, he was out the back the night of the murder. We spoke to him out the back,” Mr Ryan said. And more recently, there was the bizarre story of licensee Graeme Cooper, who in 2016 cried for the cameras as he claimed he had been assaulted and robbed before thieves set fire to the historic hotel. “I was...grabbed by two guys out the back who half carried, half dragged me down the corridor to the office and made me turn off the cameras, open the safe,” Cooper told the Advertiser in 2016. “I was punched both in the face and in the ribs, and they took a fair amount of money from us. “Then I was grabbed and basically forced to watch them while they set the place on fire in front of me. “They taunted me the whole time about it, verbally taunted me.” Of course, the story was a furphy, part of an elaborate insurance fraud planned by Cooper to avoid a financial black hole. In 2018, he was sentenced in the WA Supreme Court to 10 years behind bars for the arson attack that gutted the building, with his four accomplices also receiving jail terms. But The Prem — and the nine members of its ownership syndicate — have refused to call last drinks. Earlier this year, the owners completed an extensive $4m refurbishment, featuring an upstairs bar that flows out onto a wraparound balcony more than 30m in length overlooking York Street. Now, they are looking for a new licensee to run it. Julie De Jong, the architect behind the restoration, said the heritage-listed hotel was still full of surprises. During the refurbishment, a business card was found in a chimney, with the card dating back more than a century. “Like most of the pubs in town, it’s had a colourful history,” she said. “I really hope someone sees the opportunity and starts running a pub there, I know all of Albany will turn out for it.”