This Gippsland riverside town - population 389 - needs someone to run the historical pub
The building includes two dining rooms, a spacious beer garden and seven bedrooms.
Jacob Wallace
March 30, 2026
“Running a hotel is a very romantic concept,” Cowwarr Cricket Club Hotel owner Tim Brudenell tells the Monitor on Monday afternoon. “You sit back, have a few beers with the locals and make money.”
The dream.
“But it's not quite as easy as that,” he adds.
What happened: The Cricket Club Hotel stopped trading last December and now mother and son owners, Carmel and Tim Brudenell, are looking to lease out the historical two-storey pub to new managers.
Brudenell says his mother admired the hotel and noted in 2017 it was up for sale, when the previous owners were looking to retire.
The pair bought the pub as a retirement investment for Carmel and they’ve been leasing it out since.
Established in 1880, then rebuilt in an Art Deco style in the 1930s, it’s the only pub in Cowwarr - population 389.
Inside one of the hotel’s rooms.
From the time of the goldfields
Cowwarr was established in 1860 as a supply station for Victoria’s bustling goldfields around Walhalla.
At supply stations goods were transferred from bullock wagons to pack horses for the more treacherous journey into the Alpine Ranges.
The town was originally known as the Forty Second, named after Section 42 of the 1865 Amending Land Act, which allowed the use of land on or adjacent to the goldfields for residential and food cultivation purposes.
In 1869, a post office was opened in the town and in 1870 it became known as Cowwarr.
The name Cowwarr means mountain in the local Gunai/Kurnai languages, according to the Visit Heyfield website.
Over the next decade a church and a state school were opened and a railway line was built in 1883 on the then Traralgon to Heyfield line, which closed in 1987.
Looking for publicans
The hotel ceased operating in December last year and now Tim is looking for new management to run the business.
“I think somebody with experience is always preferred,” he says.
“I’ve found that the first time publicans find it challenging. It doesn't mean it's impossible, but they do find it a bit challenging.”
Ideally, a couple would live on the premises while running the business.
“I think they can do very well out of it,” he says. “It's so important for the community to have something there and for the building to be used and kept up to date.”
Tim is asking for an annual leasehold of $49,000 plus GST.
One of the hotel’s dining rooms.
The hotel includes two dining rooms, a beer garden and seven bedrooms upstairs that could be done up for accommodation.
The town is 27km northeast of Traralgon, on the way to popular tourist destination Lake Glenmaggie.