An historic New England pub is under offer after the current owners first looked to sell the hotel 18 months ago.
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Garry Fairley and Suesann Long have owned the Walcha Road Hotel, located seven kilometres east of Woolbrook and 19 kilometres west of Walcha, for more than two decades.
"We're both in our 70s now and we've been here 21 years, so now we're looking at spending a bit more time with our families," Mr Fairley said.
The pub owners have family on the coast and also around Hay and they'll now spend much more time with them.
Mr Fairley admits it won't be easy to leave the hotel which was established in 1860.
In their 21 years owning the pub, they've gone through plenty with their customers - bushfires, drought, mouse plagues and a pandemic.
"We were doing deliveries out of here during COVID because they couldn't leave their home - we bake bread and we were doing takeaway meals for people locally," Mr Fairley said.
"We've been involved pretty heavily with the local school [Woolbrook Public School] - they used to have their P and C meetings in our bar at one time.
"You end up being not a hotel, as much as you're part of the community."
Along with baking bread and pies for the community, they also used to do a massive amount of lamingtons for Australia Day at Walcha.
"It got up to 120 to 130 dozen at one time, but we haven't been able to do it the last year or so because our business commitments here, and our age, slowed us down where we couldn't cover both," Mr Fairley said.
Leaving all the people they've become close with through the years will be tough, Mr Fairley said.
"It's going to be quite difficult. I think a lot of your customers in a country hotel end up being your friends - fairly close friends as well," he said.
Situated just off the Oxley Highway, about an hour from Tamworth, the pub's location is one thing that made it special, said LAWD selling agent Kristy Reid.
"The position is amazing it's on the road to go to Port Macquarie," Ms Reid said.
"The position is really nice, you get snow in winter which is amazing - it's just a beautiful spot.
"The climate's beautiful, summers are nice and cool - not 45 [degrees Celsius] - they might be 30.
"It's a real meeting spot for the locals."
The hotel had a major refurbishment following a fire in 2004 and consists of three self-contained units available onsite for overnight stays along with a two-bedroom residence.
The double brick hotel's floor area is 520 square metres, on a 1.36-hectare rural block with Surveyors Creek running through it and paddocks suitable for livestock.
There is a stunning timber bar and a separate room for meetings, a dining room and a function room.
Thirteen-foot ceilings, original timber doors and windows, liquor and brewer's licences and water tanks are other features of the hotel and property.
The commercial kitchen includes a dumb waiter to bring the food to the top-level dining room while there are also timber decks with an incredible view.
Ben Jaffrey
Ben is a content curator and journalist for The Land. He has been with ACM since 2015 and first worked at The Area News and then at the Northern Daily Leader. Ben first joined ACM Agri as a digital journalist for all seven agricultural mastheads in 2022 before shifting to The Land full-time in 2023.
Ben is a content curator and journalist for The Land. He has been with ACM since 2015 and first worked at The Area News and then at the Northern Daily Leader. Ben first joined ACM Agri as a digital journalist for all seven agricultural mastheads in 2022 before shifting to The Land full-time in 2023.
