Memories of a gold rush icon

In its 154-year lifespan, the building, which has now come on the market, has served the local residents as a hotel, a barber's shop, a baker's, a milk bar and a home.

It is well-known to the locals and every nook and cranny of the building has a memory to go with it, down to the old stove in the kitchen which was most recently used as a safe for all the title deeds.

The Bendigo Advertiser first wrote about the hotel in 1859 when Alfred Thorpe opened a “first-class hotel in the support of the Gold-Miners of Bendigo”.

Three years later the Advertiser covered the story of Mr Thorpe appearing in court “to answer for having allowed an unlicensed person to become virtually the keeper of his licensed public-house”.

On Christmas Day in 1899 the hotel again made the headlines when it was “completely destroyed by fire” due to a spark off a passing steam tram.

“Several persons who were in the vicinity at the time ran down to the Eaglehawk brigade's out-station in the Gully and brought out the hand hose reel, while others assisted in removing the piano and other articles of furniture from the building,” said the article.

A number of men from the Johnson's Reef mine also helped but within half an hour “only three chimneys were left standing to indicate where the hotel once stood”.

“A horse, belonging to J. Bianchi, who resides in Bendigo, and was working on the day shift in the Princess Dagmar mine, was in the stable, and the unfortunate beast was roasted to death,” the article added.

But like a phoenix from the flames the hotel was rebuilt the following year and served as a hotel until 1915.

Mike Rohde, whose family has owned the former hotel since 1960, said he will be sad to see it go.

“It has 50 years of family memories, so it is emotional to see it go,” he said.

“I would like someone bring it back to life.

“The building was designed by Vahland and Sons and it traded as a hotel until 1915.

“There were so many pubs on the Bendigo goldfields, but Johnson’s Reef was one of the richest and the deepest on the goldfields.

 “The Truscott family bought the hotel in 1915 and ran it as a mixed business and hairdressing shop until 1960 when my family bought it.

“My father was a baker. He had an oven installed in what had been the barber shop.  He cooked pies and ran a pie shop for years, as well as the mixed business and subsequently a newsagency,” added Mr Rohde, who later opened Bendigo Cash Registers on the site.

“The mixed business stopped making money when they opened the supermarket.”

“My parents closed the business as they had become elderly and they retired, but they didn’t want to move as they liked the house too much.

“I opened up Bendigo Cash Registers and then when we moved the same room was used for the Cal Gully Brew Shop.”

More than the site for a variety of businesses the former Johnson’s Reef Hotel also served the Rohde family as a home for generations.

Mike Rohde and his three siblings all grew up there.

“There was a period in the late 1960s and 1970s when the old cellar was the meeting place of all the youth of Cal Gully,” said Mr Rohde.

“It was used by my brother, Barry, for his band practice. He was a drummer and the house would rock when there was band practice. The customers couldn’t hear themselves think.

 “The cellar door had a mural of Jimi Hendrix on it, with a sign on the entrance, Ye Olde Cellar of Sounds.

“In those days you also had all the sand heaps from the mines just behind the house. They were bulldozed in the late '70s.

“But for us it was a huge play area. 

“We would disappear at day break and only come home when we were hungry.”

His brother, Peter Rohde remembers learning to drive on the sand heaps.

“We would go over and drive old cars over there and terrorise the neighbours,” he said.

 “We would pull up in a cloud of dust. I was only about 12 or 13 when my brother Barry taught me to drive over there.

“I also loved living in the shop. I have still got a serious chocolate addiction.”

His sister Barbara Zysvelt worked in the shop with her mum from 1960 until 1981.

“We had a lot of regulars; people would come every morning for the paper. In all those years I never knew their real names but Mum and I knew who we were talking about by what they bought.

 “It was a very close sort of community in Cal Gully. So many families lived there and everybody knew each other. It had a real country town feel.

“Mum was a very popular person, she always had time to listen; people would tell her their troubles in the shop.

“We had some happy times.

“I can remember the trams, when I went out at night they always stopped at the door they never bothered only stopping at the stops. They would just drop me off.

“After the trams stopped in 1972 it took Mum a week to sleep as it was so quiet.

“She was so accustomed to them being there that if people came in and asked if the tram had been past yet she would say 'I don’t know I never hear them',” Peter added.

Barbara’s daughter Melissa Zysvelt also grew up in the shop.

“It was good. You could go out and get yourself a can a drink, we worked as well, and we were paid in kind.

“We used to help bring the papers in and we knew all the regular customers.

“Stuff was so cheap back then. You used to be able to get three lollies for 1cent.”

The shop was also the site where Barbara met her husband Rudy Zysvelt.

“Barbara and I met when I worked in the garage next door and she was working in the shop,” he said.

“I would come and buy pies and a milkshake every day.

“We were the boy and girl next door.”

Barbara said the house was the heart of the family.

“It was a great place to grow up and there have been lots of generations here,” she said.

 “It has a lot of memories. But we all have our own homes. I suppose life moves on, but it is not easy.

“After Mum went I had to keep telling myself it is no longer a home it is just a house.

 “We had a garage sale when we were clearing it out and so many people remembered it and came up to me and said 'I bought my lollies here when I was a kid' or 'I remember your mum'.

 “I just hope whoever buys it has the same feeling as we had.

“It was a real home.”