The Hero of Waterloo

We can think of few pubs in Sydney we'd want to hole up in more. Somehow, you just lose track of time here. There's something about the low ceilings, Sydney cut-sandstone walls, the range of James Squire beers (work your way from an Amber ale through to the One Fifty Lashes) or maybe it's just that they do one of the crispest and freshest Tooheys Olds in town. This, friends, is a rare thing. A pub that doesn't keep their lines clean will pour an Old and it'll be sour and acrid. A pub like the Hero will pour a beer that's light, fresh and bittersweet. There's a different band during the pointier end of the week (a Saturday night sees a guitar and fiddle duo playing a mix of Irish session classics). And there's something really joyful about the people drinking, dancing, whirling and twirling here. Someone's even gotten hold of a blow-up boxing kangaroo that's doing the rounds on the dance floor as people do their own flavour of the polka. The bartenders, a couple of wry-looking Irish guys, look more and more harassed as the night goes on, but the rest of the room is having quite the time. And - fun fact - the bar also features a trapdoor with a tunnel that leads down to the harbour. Drunk sailors used to get pushed down at the end of a night after they'd passed out, only to find themselves out at sea the next day as part of the British navy. Now that's a hangover.