Crack a Coldie

Words & Photography: Jessica Howard

A Local Worth Fighting For.

From farmers to accidental pub owners: when the Trangie pub looked set to close, three local families swooped in.

Amanda Ferrari was minding her own business when her husband Ross rang to say he thought they might have bought a pub. “That was an interesting conversation,” she says.

The pub in question was the Imperial Hotel in Trangie, or the Impy, as locals know it. It was the last trading pub in the Central West New South Wales town, and its owners, who’d been there for close to 40 years, had been trying to sell for some time. They were ready to walk away.

"We didn’t want to see that happen,” Amanda says. “Our little town’s shops are closing all the time. If you lose your pub, you’re going to lose the very heart and soul of your community.”

For the Ferraris and two other local farming families, that was enough to turn an old country pub into an unexpected side business.

Originally the Railway Hotel, the pub burnt down before being rebuilt as the grand two-storey Imperial. Some form of hotel has stood on the corner of the Mitchell Highway and Dandaloo Street since 1910. Today she has wide verandahs, working fireplaces and a display cabinet full of Trangie Tigers footy memorabilia. For more than a century, the pub has watched traffic roll through a farming town of just 768 people, surrounded by cotton, grain, sheep and cattle country.

The Impy's handover happened during harvest in 2022. “We knew nothing about running a pub,” Amanda admits. And it was hardly the most obvious diversification strategy for three families already accustomed to businesses dictated by commodity prices and seasons. A pub brings its own uncertainties: staff, kitchens, accommodation, maintenance and the fairly important business of making the numbers stack up.

But then, the numbers weren’t the only consideration. Country towns have always relied on a collection of businesses worth more than the goods they sell. The butcher, the newsagent and the pub are also places people run into each other. Lose enough of them and a town can still exist on a map while becoming a considerably harder place to live.

Ross Ferrari’s family has been in the Trangie district for five generations, and while Amanda was originally from Sydney, she threw herself into community life almost immediately. They raised three children here, all of whom are now involved in agriculture in some way.

Buying the pub was a somewhat less conventional way of investing in the place they call home.

On a Friday night, the Impy makes the case for itself. The bar is packed and people are jostling for space with beers in hand. Others crowd around the working fireplaces beneath artworks by a local artist. Farming families mix with people from town and visitors passing through, conversationscarrying from one room to the next.

Amanda calls it “an extension of people’s lounge rooms”.

"You walk in there and see families, whether they’re farming families, whether they’re families from town or out of town, just all hanging together having a drink and a good meal,” she says.

"We love the pub and everyone loves her.”

For a business nobody particularly planned on owning, that might be the most important measure of all.

Read more great regional stories in our paper. Issue 01 available now in RB Sellars stores and with every purchase online.