In the early 1980s, the Flamingo Bar at Mareeba's  
The Graham Hotel used to be a home-away-from-home for the local constabulary.

It had that sort of quiet, secluded atmosphere.

"It was actually a coppers’ haven," said 69-year-old Don Murray, a 30-year regular at the pub.

He said they used to gather there after a hard day’s work.

Another patron, Julio Aranacio, who curiously doesn’t drink but does punt at the pub’s TAB, said the Flamingo bar was once a "seedy" place with black padded vinyl with buttons on the walls.

These days, the decor has changed considerably after a renovation in 2000.

Now it boasts a public bar with TAB, lounge bar with dining facilities, a sectioned-off area for gaming machines and a bottle shop.

"We enjoy a very good reputation for our food," manager Brian Callow, 48, said.The Graham, which has 10 rooms, was built on the site of the old two-storey, wooden Railway Hotel which was demolished in 1960.

No one is exactly sure why it is called The Graham.

A picture caption for the old Railway Hotel around 1950 says it had a high fenced beer garden "which was thought to be pretty classy in those days".

It also says Walter Lawrence, the owner of Wrotham Park Station, used to keep a permanent suite of rooms there for himself and his daughters. On the entrance wall, The Graham still proudly displays the original opening day menu offering oyster cocktails for four shillings and six pence, whole grilled spring chicken for 25 shillings and fillet steak for 20 shillings. "Prices have gone up a bit since then," Mr Callow said.

Barmaid Tricia Vohland, 44, at one time the pub’s pool captain, remembers how some of the local Italian community would come "banging on the door" at 10am wanting to play pool.

John Ryan, 71, was drinking at the old Railway Hotel when he was just 17, though the legal drinking age was 21.

"I used to look a lot older," he said.

He even fooled the local police officer.

"He really went off when he discovered he had been drinking with me and I was only 17."

Mr Ryan remembered the fights in the old days.

"The old fellas, the miners and the ringers, used to say that if you get full of rum and don’t have a fight, then you are gutless," he said.

But at least it was only fist fights.

His grandfather, who had a cattle station at Kidstone, near Georgetown, used to tell him about gunfights in the streets at Cooktown in the early part of the last century.

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