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ABOVE: The historic Breakfast Creek Hotel. ALL PHOTOS: Brisbane.com.au

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Breakfast Creek Hotel

THE Breakfast Creek Hotel is an icon in Brisbane and famous throughout Queensland.
    The grand hotel is a landmark at Breakfast Creek and features five unique bars, a historical tropical beer garden and a Spanish garden steakhouse.
   It attracts locals as well as interstate and overseas visitors, plus a string of celebrities. Past guests have included Mikhail Gorbachov, Russell Crowe, Greg Norman and Powderfinger band members.
    During Queensland's 150th birthday celebrations, the hotel was recognised as a Q150 icon.
    The Breakfast Creek Hotel was built in French Renaissance style in 1890 by William MacNaughton Galloway, a former Lord Mayor of Brisbane.
   The hotel opened for business a year later, in 1891.
Galloway didn't get to see much of his stylish hotel – in 1895 he fell from a second storey window while drunk and died. Folklore has it that Galloway's ghost frequents the hotel, and some staff have claimed to have seen it.
    The hotel has a fascinating history. In the 1920s Castlemaine Perkins became the registered owner of the hotel and leased it to the Cavill family, which went on to hold the licence until 1998.
   From the 1920s to the 1940s, two brothels were situated where the car park now is. During the Second World War, American soldiers queued up in the street to visit the brothels.
   The problem was that the houses of ill repute were directly opposite a school and this caused outrage in the community, resulting in the brothels being removed.
   Folklore has it that working girls coming to drink at the public bar were greeted by a resident parrot who screeched out 'Here come the whores! Here come the whores!'

Public bar in the Breakfast Creek Hotel
The public bar remains much the same as it was when it was the haunt of politicians and journos in the 1960s.

ABOVE AND BELOW: The modern lounge and dining facilities at the hotel.

The hotel during the 1893 Brisbane floods. PHOTO: State Library of Queensland.