Tarax Bar, Sydney Road, Coburg

Hickey’s Milk Bar, east side of Sydney Road, near the 5 mile post. No date, but probably the early 1940s. Coburg Historical Society collection.

Sisters-in-law Lilian and Jeanie Hickey at Tarax Bar (Hickey’s), Sydney Road, opposite Victoria Street. The Hickeys ran the Bar in the early 1940s but by 1943 Edgar Thompson had taken it over. Coburg Historical Society collection.

I was first told about the Tarax Bar a few years ago by Kevin Griffin (no relation), a lifelong resident of Coburg. 

One of his favourite haunts in the late 1930s, early 1940s was the Tarax Bar (now the Hoi Gee Café), located at 442 Sydney Road, although it was identified as being at the ‘5 mile post’ by everyone I asked who remembered it. You can see the five mile post quite clearly in the image of the Tarax Bar. It has long been moved from that location, and is now in the front garden of Coburg Historical Society's  Bluestone Cottage Museum at 82 Bell Street (next to the Municipal Offices).

I took this photo of the 5 mile post in February 2017.

Kevin used to hang out at the Tarax Bar with his mates and says the place was really popular: ‘Everyone used to hang out there. You could see cars and motorbikes lined up outside. It was always crowded. That was the meeting place.’

The Tarax Bar was set up along the lines of the sort of place you might remember if you ever watched the TV show ‘Happy Days’. One person remembers that ‘there were folding timber framed glass doors which opened right back to expose the whole shop to the street’, as you can see in the photograph. As well as Tarax, you could buy milkshakes and sundaes. Kevin’s eyes lit up as he remembered those beautiful sundaes with fruit and topping on them and another customer of the time remembers the many flavours available at the cost of sixpence a glass.

Not everyone got to enjoy the delights of the Tarax Bar, though. Money was tight in those days and one man recalled that his  pocket money 'did not stretch to my patronising such an establishment.’

It has not been easy trying to pinpoint exactly when the Tarax Bar operated. The Sands and McDougall Street Directories show that until 1935, Gardner Brothers fruiterers had a shop there. It was then a radio shop run by Dunbar Carey, but from 1938 to 1949 it is listed as the Tarax Bar, so it existed for at least a decade. From 1950 to 1957 it is described as either a milk bar or a cafe and in 1958 it became the Hoi Gee Café, which it still is today.

Tarax, an Australian brand of soft drink, was developed in the Goulburn Valley as a temperance drink. Because there was no yeast used and no fermentation took place in its production, its consumers could be absolutely certain that there was no alcohol content in the drink. By 1935, there were twenty-six Tarax bars across the state and we know that by 1938 there was one in Sydney Road, Coburg.

It is likely, then, that the appearance of Tarax bars across the state is tied to the prohibition of alcohol campaign that was being played out at the time. In mid-1938, the year the Tarax Bar opened in Coburg, the Coburg Courier ran article after article about the prohibition campaign that was a major issue at that year’s Council elections. Not that the young people who gathered at the 5 mile post to enjoy a refreshing (non-alcoholic) beverage would have been interested in this campaign. They were too busy enjoying themselves!

Sources: Sands and McDougall Street Directories, electoral rolls, Wikipedia, newspapers online via TROVE, Kevin Griffin, Tom Anderson, Don Trewella, Pauline Atkins and Bruce Henshall, Coburg Historical Society photographs.

This entry is based on an article I wrote for 'Search' (Coburg Historical Society's newsletter) in June 2016.