1920s - 1955

The Beach Court club at the northern end of Bondi flourished as a night club venue during the 1920s selling ‘sly grog’ during the prohibition years which created the infamous ‘6 o’clock swill’ at pubs.

Unlike America’s total prohibition, in Australia Protestant-inspired temperance clashed with Irish Catholic and libertarian attitudes, and with publicans.

In the 1916 referendum, with patriotic Australia at war, a majority of NSW voters (62% of the 50% who cast a ballot) joined other states in agreeing to curtail drinking and mandate a 6 o’clock closing time for hotel bars and pubs. Alcohol sales out of hours became illicit. The revised Liquor Act also gave greater powers to local magistrates to control liquor licences and policing of suspect hotels.

At Bondi, raids on venues created sensationalised headlines. The Beach Court, build in 1920, became the Lido Club in 1932 when it was taken over by 'an enterprising crew, whose aim was to awake Australians from their lethargy’. It catered mostly for 'bright young things’ and featured novelties including telephones connected to each of its 26 tables.

A police raid that year drew media attention when 37 people, including a well-known former parliamentarian and his wife were charged with frequenting an unlicensed premise. Bondi local Bill Jenkings remembered a police raid at the venue in the late ’30s, where some patrons who slipped out undetected lingered long enough to let air out of police car tyres.

During World War II, the Beach Court briefly housed a nightclub called Mirrors (1939-1942), owned by James Reginald Hayward. He targeted troops stationed nearby and bought a shop in Curlewis Street for its legal wholesale liquor licence that provided a steady flow of sly grog to the club.

In mid-1940, Mirrors was in the tabloids again when a successful undercover sting 'shattered the serenity of Ramsgate Ave’. Hayward was fined £100 for selling liquor without a license. In 1943, along with 13 other nightclubs, Mirrors was pronounced a ‘disorderly premise’ and ordered to close. In 1947, the venue became a club for ex-servicemen called Tobruk House.

Courtesy Waverley Library Local Studies Collection and Trove (National Library of Australia).