The Bodalla Arms Hotel

The Bodalla Arms Hotel, 73 – 77 Princes Highway, Bodalla

The original Bodalla Arms Hotel (then called Widget Inn) was built in the mid-1870's down on Widget Plain near the Tuross River. Nothing of that building has survived. It was demolished to make way for the new hotel designed by Cyril Blacket (the son of the famous architect Edmund Blacket who designed St Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney and also Bodalla’s All Saints Anglican Church, across the road from the Bodalla Arms) and was built by John Noble and Son of Sydney. John Noble was related to Mr Leonard, the Widget Inn publican at the time.

An accommodation building, adjacent to the hotel, was built between 1886 and 1891. It was demolished c1970 because its maintenance was becoming too demanding. A concrete block store room replaced it.

The Bodalla Arms was licensed in 1878 and was rebuilt in 1910.

From 1952 to 2016 the hotel, then known as McConkey’s Bodalla Hotel, was run by Bill McConkey and his wife Jean. During that period a regular visitor to the hotel was the well-known Australian author, John O’Grady (perhaps better known as Nino Culotta) who mentioned the pub extensively in his popular book ‘Gone Fishin’.

The Bodalla Arms was (and still is!) a centre for the community, so Bodalla’s War Memorial was erected beside it after the 1914 – 1918 War. This was later relocated across the road, beside the Bodalla Hall, without the ‘trophy’ gun that originally was positioned beside it. Similarly, a sundial given to the people of Bodalla by George Fairfowl McArthur (the first Rector of St Marks, Darling Point in Sydney, the Headmaster for many years of The King’s School in Parramatta, a great friend of T S Mort, and for several years the Rector of All Saints Anglican Church, Bodalla) also once stood beside the Bodalla Arms, but was removed in the 1970s and was placed in the Anglican church grounds.

An impressive collection of historic photographs of the Bodalla area is now on display in the hotel.

Image: The Bodalla Arms Hotel in 1970.