A UFO on the roof and the words “No Pokies, No TAB” proudly splashed on the sandwich board set the Grace Emily hotel apart from the student accommodation high-rises and Christian bookstores in this quiet patch of Adelaide’s western flank.
The building itself is one of Adelaide’s oldest pubs; the former Launceston hotel poured its first beers in 1839, not long after the colony was established, and for years it served the city’s poorer residents who lived in nearby workers’ cottages and slums. In those days the pub was your front parlour, dance hall and, tragically, a coroner’s court (a string of 19th century inquests into the deaths of infants born to young, unwed mothers says much about the time and the place).
