General News
23 January, 2023
Fond family memories of Wimmera pub years
Tales of many a laugh had during his time in Warracknabeal and Minyip were shared during the funeral of former publican Doug Archer in Geelong last week. With his wife Shirley, Doug owned and operated the Royal Mail Hotel in Warracknabeal in the...
Tales of many a laugh had during his time in Warracknabeal and Minyip were shared during the funeral of former publican Doug Archer in Geelong last week.
With his wife Shirley, Doug owned and operated the Royal Mail Hotel in Warracknabeal in the late 1970s and then the Commercial Hotel in Minyip until 1985.
Goldfields childhood
Born on March 29, 1934, in Castlemaine, Douglas Graham Archer was the third of James and Gert Archer’s four sons.
With brothers Kevin, Brian and Malcolm, he thrived on exploring the neighbouring bush and going hunting, sometimes riding home with up to 50 pairs of rabbits strung proudly on their bicycle handlebars.
Doug attended Castlemaine North State School and Castlemaine Tech.
As a paperboy he started work at 5am to distribute newspapers throughout the town and he delivered parcels in the afternoon for a local dress shop.
In his free time Doug enjoyed football and tennis, played the baritone in the Castlemaine band and went to Sunday school.
His real passion was yabbying, however, and he cleverly timed his raids on the neighbours’ dam to coincide with their Sunday morning attendance at church.
In Castlemaine he also learned ballroom dancing – something that would be at the forefront of his time in western Victoria.
At the age of 14 he took up an apprenticeship as a boilermaker at the Castlemaine Foundry.
He later completed his National Service army training.
The big move south
As a 19-year-old Doug moved to Geelong, where he lived in a boarding house and found employment at the cement works.
His passion for ballroom dancing introduced Doug to his future bride, Shirley.
With an age difference of eight years between them, the couple had to court for the first four years until Shirley was old enough to marry, at 20, on March 24, 1962.
As relative newlyweds the Archers bought a house behind a mixed business and milk bar.
Their daughters Lois and Faye were born during this time.
As the girls were growing up, the couple progressed to owning the business, and for four years they balanced working incredibly long hours, seven days a week, with maintaining a close family life.
Turning west
In 1975, Doug realised his long-held dream of owning a pub when with Shirley he bought the Royal Mail Hotel in Warracknabeal.
Unlike in the “big smoke” of Geelong, in Warracknabeal in the mid 1970s shops closed for a siesta break in the middle of the day, and Lois and Faye noted how the town’s fire siren would sound the call for volunteers to rally to fight a blaze.
During their time at the helm, the Archers carried out renovations at the Royal Mail, supported by their friendly, devoted staff of Jack Brown, Margaret Sleep and Robbie Taylor.
Doug liked to dress for the occasion, donning a white cotton shirt and bow-tie to pour beers.
Meanwhile, Shirley was in charge of turning out as many as 100 meals at a time, despite having no commercial training and only minimal kitchen equipment.
The family’s stay in Warracknabeal was significant in their lives.
Doug and Shirley became involved in the community through their role as publicans and Doug joined Sheep Hills Golf Club and followed local horse racing.
“Mum and Dad’s move from Geelong to the Wimmera saw them meeting some very interesting characters,” Lois recalls. “They made great friends.
“Dad just loved Sheep Hills and the people there. He was never a great golfer but he enjoyed it.”
Lois and Faye attended Warracknabeal High School, frequented the swimming pool during summer and played basketball at the new stadium.
From Warracknabeal they moved to Minyip in 1979, when Doug and Shirley took over the Commercial Hotel.
This enabled the girls to complete their education in Warracknabeal as their parents continued to work incredibly hard for a further six years.
During this time the Commercial became the home of frequent sing-alongs around a Boomerang songbook in the bar as Doug juggled the need to socialise with his customers with a desire to spend time with his family.
The sisters remember their father’s knack for always keeping exactly the right volume of stock on hand, whether in the milk bar or in one of the pubs.
During a brewery strike, an entire semi-trailer-load of West Australian beer was stacked in their lounge room – Doug had judged his purchase perfectly and sold the last of it just as the Victorian supply returned.
The also fondly remember his love of foraging.
“Dad’s sense of right and wrong applied to everything until it came to yabbies – they were fair game,” Lois says.
“He loved rabbiting, fishing, catching yabbies and mud crabs. He didn’t mind stepping over a farm fence to catch a yabby, or a bucket of yabbies.
“He’d go out and set the yabby pots after the pub shut on a Saturday night and pick them up while the farmers were at church.
“More than once I’d be on the end of the dragnet when the object was to get a feed of yabbies and get out fast.”
In Minyip, Doug even experimented with drying out and mounting on boards the huge yabbies that his customers loved to brag about.
He was able to give drinkers “the eye” if they were being rowdy in the bar or to change the subject if someone seemed to be losing their temper.
When not serving food or drink, the Archers revelled in ballroom dancing.
Attending as a family, they followed the Wimmera dance circuit, and Doug and Shirley collected sashes at many of the district balls.
As their daughters left home, the couple began to plan a future beyond the pub, and in 1986, having sold their second hotel, Doug and Shirley bought a caravan and set off to spend two years touring Australia.
After working for “six and a bit days a week” in each of their two establishments (most hotels didn’t receive Sunday-trading licences until the 1990s), they revelled in their temporary retirement.
Return to Geelong
After two years of adventuring, the Archers returned to Geelong and bought a hot chicken shop.
Once again they were working 16 hours a day seven days a week – a routine they maintained for another 13 years.
By the time they finally retired for good in 1998, Doug and Shirley had worked side by side for half a century.
They quickly redirected their time into dancing, fishing, enjoying the company of friends and spending time with their growing family.
They bought another caravan and resumed road-tripping around Australia, including heading to the Northern Territory for six months every year to fish for barramundi and mud crabs, take leisurely walks, and just sit talking and relaxing with people they met along the way.
Throughout his life fishing was one of Doug’s great pleasures: in farm dams, crocodile-infested rivers, Port Phillip Bay and the sea.
Cod opening on the Murray River was always a highlight, as was camping on the Darling and Edwards rivers.
Doug was a man who “pretty well faced life as it came” and with a strong work ethic, drive and determination could turn his hand to most things.
He was clever and inventive, practical and handy.
One of his grandchildren remembers him “always whistling while he worked”.
Able to connect with people from many walks of life, he had a quiet, respectful kindness and a wicked but discreet sense of humour.
He was positive, polite and patient, kind-hearted and cheeky, and he encouraged an understanding of and appreciation for nature.
Doug died in Geelong on December 20, aged 88, with Shirley by his side.
Faye credits Shirley’s dedication and loyalty as his “backstop” with having enabled Doug to realise his business dreams and then move through his retirement with dignity.
His funeral service took place at Tuckers’ Chapel, Grovedale, on Monday last week, January 9.
Doug is survived by his wife Shirley, daughters Lois and Faye, sons-in-law Lyle and Mike, grandchildren Candice, Ian, Alanna and Kristy and great-grandchildren Natalie, Daniel, Callum and Garrett.