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Bringing an Australian regional beer brand back to life – a journey 120 years long

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One of Australia’s most successful beer brands of the 19th century is about to be brought back to life with the launch of the Walkers Brewing Co. brand with their inaugural launch of their Special Pale Ale, which will be flowing through the taps of pubs and venues in the Central West of NSW.

Known as ‘the nectar of the west’ during its heyday from the late 1890s to mid-1920s, Walkers pale ales, bitters, stouts and lagers were famed throughout the central western region of New South Wales and beyond. Bathurst was the site of the original Walkers Brewery, established on Howick Street in 1895 by the entrepreneurial James Walker – a bridge-builder, gold fossicker and former Mayor of Bathurst. Another brewery was opened in nearby Orange in 1897.

“Walkers eventually owned every brewery in western New South Wales by Federation,” says Toney Fitzgerald, CEO and Founder of the twenty-first century Walkers Brewing Co. “The famous original strapline was ‘you hear about it everywhere’, the beers regularly won awards at local shows and it was one of the top three beer brands in New South Wales at the time.”

However, in the late 1920s the original Walker and Co. Ltd company was closed, brewery operations in Bathurst and Orange eventually closed down, and production of Walkers beer came to an abrupt halt.

A second chance at life

The Walkers brand lay dormant and forgotten for the best part of a century, until a chance encounter with a photo of the Orange Brewery – complete with horse drawn delivery carts and men in bowler hats – in a central western library inspired Fitzgerald to resurrect the brand. “I had no idea they were brewing beer here in the Central West over a hundred years ago,” recalls Fitzgerald, “I was fascinated to find out more.”

After discovering the original brewery plans were still preserved intact at the local Council, Fitzgerald and his team arranged to conduct a sonar test of the backyard of the original Walkers Brewery site at 80 Moulder Street.

“We’d heard through a local historian that her grandfather and great-grandfather had worked at Walkers Brewery in Orange, and legend was they’d buried a crate of beer in the yard when it closed down.”

Although the outlines of the original cellar were revealed, only a handful of bottletops and broken pieces of glass were unearthed. However, the old Manager’s cottage on the site has been fully restored by private owners.

Finding Walker

Fitzgerald’s next steps were to place an advertisement in national papers to find James Walker’s heirs, however the search proved fruitless. Determined not to give up, Fitzgerald decided to pay James Walker a personal visit at his gravesite in South Head Cemetery in the Eastern suburbs in Sydney, “I sat on the edge of his grave and promised to bring the beers back to life if he’d give me his blessing.”

The next day an email arrived from the great-granddaughter of James Walker, and a dusty box containing some of the original Walker’s recipes and bottle labels was entrusted to Fitzgerald in his quest to resurrect the brand.

“It was like James Walker handed them to me himself,” recalls Fitzgerald, “I took it as a sign that it was definitely time for this iconic Australian heritage beer brand to be brought back to life. We’re now inviting everyone to walk with us on this journey, as we take Walkers to the world.”