Where exactly is the pub with no beer Slim Dusty sings about?
A new meaning to the State of Origin.
Ellie Chamberlain
November 11, 2025
Slim Dusty’s song “Pub With No Beer” gives a new meaning to the State of Origin, with both NSW and QLD claiming to be the inspiration behind the award-winning hit.
But is there any evidence to tell us who’s right?
A local icon: The late country music legend Slim Dusty, known around the world for his prolific song-writing, is a Mid North Coast icon – having grown up at Nulla Nulla Creek in Kempsey Shire.
During his lifetime, Dusty recorded more than100 albums, won 32 Tamworth Country Music Festival Golden Guitar awards, and collected more Gold and Platinum records than any other Australian artists, among many other accolades.
How it started: His song “The Pub With No Beer,” released in 1957, was Dusty’s international breakthrough hit and was awarded Australia’s first gold record. The song remains popular today with Spotify listens reaching the multi-millions.
What pub is Slim Dusty signing about? The Mid North Coaster reached out to the Slim Dusty Centre in Kempsey to find out exactly where the pub might’ve been.
🗣️ Venue Support Officer, Trudy Crabtree, told the Mid North Coaster the version Dusty recorded in 1957 was adapted by Gordon Parsons, inspired by his local pub the Cosmopolitan Hotel at Taylors Arm, NSW, after floods cut off beer deliveries in the 1950s.
“Here at the Slim Dusty Centre, we refer to the Pub With No Beer Hotel, at Taylors Arm, which is not far from where Slim grew up at Nulla Nulla Creek in the Macleay,” Crabtree said.
The hotel has since been renamed The Pub With No Beer.
Battle of the states: But Queensland also claims to have the Pub With No Beer.
A poem by Dan Sheahan about the Day Dawn Hotel in Ingham, now named Lees Hotel, is said to have been written after the pub ran out of beer when U.S. troops drank it dry during WWII.
The hotel now claims to be the original Pub With No Beer.
The whole truth: Really, it all becomes a matter of who you want to believe: the managers of Slim Dusty’s museum, or the local watering hole in Ingham. Chances are, they’re not the only one claiming the title, either.