Lyons Doug and Dorothy
| Type of person | Individual |
|---|---|
| Principal occupation | Publican of the Kingsford Hotel |
| Date of death | 1974 |
Doug & Dorothy were both Gawler locals and Doug’s father Joe served for many years as a Gawler Counsellor. These two characters ran the hotel for 28 years from 1946 until Doug’s death in 1974. Doug & Dorothy’s daughter Adele with husband Larry Andrews ran the hotel for a further 4 years.
Doug had a tough time before his time at the Kingsford.
During the war, Doug was part of the 2/3rd Machine Gun Battalion and saw action in the middle east in 1941 / 42. With the Japanese threat they were recalled to Australia. But on their way home they were redirected to Indonesia to reinforce Dutch defences. After a two day battle they were forced to surrender to overwhelming Japanese forces and Doug spent the next three and a half years as a POW on the Burma Thai Railway and later in coal mines in Japan.
Doug was a trained chef before he joined the army but he decided not to tell the authorities, he didn’t want to spend his time in the army in the cook house.
Doug arrived home in October 1945. Six months later he used his army “back pay” to buy the lease of the Globe Hotel in partnership with his brother in law Aloysius O’Halloran, a partnership that lasted for 13 years.
Doug married Dorothy Gebler in 1947 and proceeded to teach her to cook. The hotel provided accommodation until the 1970’s and this was a fundamental skill for a publican’s wife. Over the next ten years, Doug & Dorothy had three children, Adele, Elizabeth & John. Dorothy, especially, would have had her hands full catering for in house guests as well as three small children.
Doug was determined to build the business with a focus on quality. To help sell the image that things were changing for the better at the Globe Hotel, in 1958 Doug decided to rename the hotel. He contacted the Fotheringham family who at the time owned the Kingsford homestead north of Gawler on the North Para River. This was a property established by Stephen King one of the original land owners in the Gawler area. The Fotheringham’s agreed to allow Doug to use the name “Kingsford”.
With the new name Doug focused on building the business.
With the end of 6 o’clock closing in 1968, the Kingsford Hotel was the second hotel in town to offer “counter” meals as they were called at the time, following the initiative of the Gawler Arms Hotel. Meals at the hotel earned a solid reputation and in 1969 Doug and Dorothy extended the dining room on the southern side of the hotel.
In 1973 they converted the old stables at the rear of the hotel on Julian Terrace to a Bottleshop, the first such outlet in Gawler.
Many Gawler residents still talk with great mirth about the way Doug sometimes enforced standards of behavior at the hotel. A pitch fork was kept close to hand and would be used occasionally to reinforce his position.
Sadly, Doug died in 1974 after a short battle with cancer, aged just 60.
Nevertheless, Doug & Dorothy established standards for the hotel which even today underpins its reputation.
By Anthony Harnett. Extracted from “History from the Globe Inn, 1851 to the Kingsford Hotel, 2017” Acknowledgment to Dorothy Lyons and her daughter Adele Andrews.
- We thank Dorothy for her permission to use this -
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Memories of Lyons Doug and Dorothy
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