Colonial Inn History

The Commercial Hotel now known as the Gundaroo Wine Bar was established in 1872 and owned by Mat and Beat Crowe. It operated as a wine bar selling only wine and spirits until 1994. A syndicate of local people bought the wine bar in 1999. The premises and business are now owned by George and Carole Nicola.

Renovations began in Feb 2003 and have continued until Feb 2004, with the finishing touches and outside beer garden completed in 2007 and accommodation provided in August 2008

Our vision is to preserve the historic building whist making it a more aesthetically pleasing place for the locals and the broader community, to visit and to develop it into a friendly, inviting place, for a community meeting place, where groups could gather for meetings, parties, and social gatherings in general. It would also provide more local employment and focus, and be a village tourist attraction.

The building itself remains basically in a similar structure as previously, but commercial use has now been made of all the existing space. Originally only one room was used as the Star Saloon Bar, other areas were used by the Crow family as living and sleeping areas, and the back slab hut as it existed was their kitchen.

We have used both existing timberwork and locally sourced new timber to renovate the floors using a combination of Iron Bark, Red Gum, Black But and Yellow Box. Many walls and existing fireplaces have been preserved and given new Red Gum mantelpieces, the walls and surrounds were rough rendered to suit the era. New toilet facilities, which feature locally hand crafted pottery sinks with the Wine Bar logo, have made an enormous difference!! A large cool room has been externally claded with original old slab hut palings – a really eye catching feature. The old kitchen area has now been converted into a commercial kitchen for our new restaurant, and the off licence bottle shop enables people to browse and choose their wines. We are a big supporter of Canberra’s local wines.

As no beer was sold previously, the bar was very basic with no running water, major renovations had to be made to the bar area in order to bring it up to today’s standard. We now serve draught beer, a wide selection of wines spirits, and mixed drinks, so there were plumbing and electrical issues, which needed to be taken into consideration. Other major infrastructure was required due to termite infestation, and a complete upgrade of the water tanks, septic, grease trap and wastewater treatment, electrical requirements were required. Some very special and individual features have been included such as the star insert in the new Star Saloon bar floor made from Red Gum, and beer railings around the bar walls, made from the raw tree edge of Iron Bark. The bar has become a major talking point, as it is a huge slab of beautiful Iron Bark, polished with a raw timber edge; it literally draws people to it.

We also wanted to be able to divide areas of the wine bar off into individual areas for functions, private meetings or gatherings and have been able to achieve this with bi folding and glass doors. One of the rooms has been made as a quiet private function room, and in here, we have the original Stringy Bark floorboards, which have been beautifully preserved.

The owners worked with a talented team of builders and individual workers on the restoration planning and design. The renovation has involved a great deal of specialised carpentry and sourcing of special native timber materials, design integration and communication to ensure that we blended the new with the old in a way that complemented the old building and the community which it serves.