Robert K Cole Victorian hotels index

The Robert K Cole collection of hotel records is an important resource to help you find information about Victorian pubs and publicans. The ten-volume manuscript collection has been made more accessible through two indexing projects by State Library Victoria volunteers.

The Cole-Tetlow index to the Robert K Cole collection was compiled by the State Library's Genealogy Team volunteer Eric Tetlow, and contains over 21,000 names of Melbourne and metropolitan hotel licensees. The index to over 16,000 names of hotels and/or licensees from country Victoria was compiled by Australian Manuscripts Collection volunteers Dulcie Burns and Sally Hall. The information in both indexes was taken from the original volumes of the Robert K Cole collection, held in the Library's Australian Manuscripts Collection.

The online index entries contain information such as the name of a licensee or owner, the location of the hotel, dates when the licence was held, and volume and page numbers, which can be used to locate a detailed entry in the Robert K Cole collection of hotel records. Covering the years c. 1841 to 1949, the information was gathered by Robert Cole from various sources such as post office directories, and newspaper and trade journal notices. Transcripts of the original volumes are located in the Library’s Newspapers and Family History Reading Rooms.

Accessing the indexes

You can access the indexes to the Robert K Cole collection by searching the Australiana index.

About Robert K Cole

Robert K Cole was a well-known identity in the brewing world of Victoria, joining Carlton & United Breweries (CUB) in 1906 and spending all of his working life at a Victorian plant. He was a member of the Historical Society of Victoria, taking particular interest in the history of the brewing industry and hotels in Victoria.