The Autumn Creek Hotel

It is a small investment; this property out in the scrub. A building that is shabby in it’s ‘hey day’ was a pub. Blackberries scramble over it, with the sheds in disrepair; yes the Autumn Creek Hotel needs a lot of loving care. Starlings filled the rafters with a hundred years of straw. There’s two hundred generations of rabbits underneath the floor. Cobwebs cover every shutter; there’s dirty glasses in a rack. The cellar is a gaping hole with broken bottles clear or black. The hitching rails and stables have been eaten by termites, where the ghosts of Cobb and Co. still linger in the nights. Thankfully the walls of stone are still holding up quite well, so we have a good foundation to restore this old hotel. Joy and I have rolled our sleeves and both picked up a broom. We’re clearing all the rubbish and we’re cleaning every room. And now the pub is empty, from nineteenth century situations. We’re about to take the major step to endowing renovations. Cautiously a slab of timber etched with eighteen sixty-three, was lifted from the door reminding us the Woodall family, established this old hotel and we’ve heard from local folklore, three people died here in this pub, and some say it was four. It’s marvellous what’s found that still adorned the bar room wall. There were plaques; commemoratives that remembered one and all of the patrons who once spent their time in competitions here, and had their names etched up in gold, by each year after year. And so the names of Wilson, Harper, McDougall, Ferris, Moore, stood as champions in Hookey; Billiards. Darts until ‘twenty-four’. There were other competitions but the words have faded now upon the plaques of twisted wood that time has razed somehow. Now it’s time to kill the past with restoration of this place, and bring it up to modern trends by building a new face. But just behind the kitchen chimney, I discovered with aghast, a sport I played in childhood days and why suspicion here was cast. For in behind the kitchen chimney was a hidden cavity, and a skeleton was crouching that was very hard to see. I shone my torch across the bones and something caught my eye. It sparkled in the torches beam - so what did I espy? A golden chain lay on the scapula and hung across the clavicle, but sitting loosely on the ribcage with inscription was a medal, proving way back in those days, competition’s taken seriously … Autumn Creek Hotel - Champ in Hide and Seek - Eighteen Ninety-Three.