The Victoria Hotel, Carrier Street, Benalla
The historic Victoria Hotel in Benalla, side view, unrestored, bottle shop at the back with broken windows. PHOTO: Campbell Mattinson.
They built the Victoria Hotel first. In 1873, as Benalla's railway station was going up across the road, the Victoria Hotel was built and, at first, it stood with tents all around it – because the town and even the streets hadn’t yet been formed. The railway arrived that August, the tents became houses and stores, land prices went vertical, and by 1875 Benalla's population had jumped by 400 in a single year, the town suddenly served by fourteen hotels, six of them clustered near the station. The Victoria Hotel, on the corner of Carrier and Mackellar streets, directly opposite the station and railway line (below), was the first of them – a railway pub in the purest sense, built on the bet that the trains would come. The bet paid off, for about 140 years.
The Victoria Hotel in Benalla isn’t just any old pub. It's a two-storey corner pub with a striking arched balcony, sitting on a generous 2,210 square metre site. It’s heritage listed and it’s more: it was first. It started this end of the Benalla town. Its significance cannot be over-stated.
The Victoria closed as a pub in 2014. It was revived for a time as a restaurant and pub with accommodation, partially renovated. In March 2023 the whole site was sold (for $680,000). These pictures are from that same year. I’m not sure what has happened since but at the time, the hotel – as grand and as striking and as magnificent as it is – had seen better days.
The full length of the Victoria Hotel at Benalla, from the railway side, on a hot sunny day. PHOTO: Campbell Mattinson.
