Nestled at the end of Arundel Street, the Forest Lodge Hotel, warmly known as the Flodge, is a staple communal space for members of the USyd community. The Flodge was first built and licensed in 1866, but the current building we frequent today was constructed in 1965, replacing the former establishment right before its hundred years.
Pubs have historically and continue to hold a significant relationship with politics in Australia. Whether it be pubs on campus or across Footbridge, student activists organise in a space that situates their issues and protests relating to tertiary education within the built environment of the university. Locating collective action within the university environment that is embedded with ideologies allows for questioning, creates room for further institutional revelations, and policies to be challenged.
Mihir Sardana, a student at the University commented “I sometimes forget that Flodge ISN’T a part of the campus. In some part, the fact that it’s so close to the Western Ave gate, SSB and Courtyard, it almost feels like a natural extension of the University. It also is such an indelible part of the social fabric of USyd”. From FilmSoc afters, Queer Beers, campaign launches, and encampment dinners, the Flodge holds a special place for students, especially campus activists.
Student activist Luke Mesterovic elaborated that “student politics in particular has a lot of overlap with friendships and relationships. It’s a hyper-personal form of politics. And the pub is, in many ways, just a place you can go with people who you like and care about. It’s a social place.”
Campus activist Remy Lebreton adds that, “while we may have more formal meeting places, like the SRC or somewhere more formal, it is nice, especially afterwards, to meet more informally and be able to talk with less of a structured conversation.” Prominent student activist and unionist Ishbel Dunsmore followed; “I think the way that conversations come about and people end up in organising spaces, like formal organising spaces, it usually starts with a casual chat at the pub.”
The 60s
Rowan Cahill, a radical historian and journalist, was a prominent student activist at Sydney University in the 1960s. Cahill explained that the Flodge was “the place to go for a drink”, especially given the fact that “alcohol was not on campus in those days, except in the staff club.”
The Flodge was a central drinking space as “you could get back to campus quick,” even without the footbridge, which wasn’t constructed until 1972, “so we would have to cross Parramatta Road to get to the pub.” Flodge was centrally placed in university life as the “campus had not spilled across to City Road or Redfern” or Darlington, making Parramatta Road “the centre of campus.” The area was always bustling with students due to the abundance of cheap student rentals, increasing the volume of young university students frequenting the pub.
Until 1972, the University of Sydney Union (USU) was segregated into the Sydney University Union (SUU) and Sydney University Women’s Union (SUWU). Rowan remarked that the Flodge was where you could “mix with women just coming in” as a result of the “mass intake of women at the university in the 1960s”. The men’s union was significantly better funded than the women’s, “The men’s union had good tucker, you didn’t need to go for a meal at Flodge, only used for drinking in a safe space…the beer garden was always crowded and alive”. Cahill added that the “Flodge was one of the safest places to organise” complimented by the “close relationships as students with post grads, and staff members.” The venue was a “safe place to gather and meet away from eyes”.
Cahill remembered that, during his time at USyd, a communist printery sat directly across from the University. The Newsletter Printery on 21 Ross Street, previously printing sports guides, was bought by the Communist Party of Australia in 1943. Sitting directly next to the Flodge, this influenced the radical demography of the area. The CPA printed their leftist newspaper The Tribune here for nearly 40 years until 1981, whilst facing multiple raids by state authorities. The publication played a crucial role in drawing together various leftist groups to the “industrial working-class area” such as activists, student organisers, and unionists. Given the proximity, these characters often frequented the Flodge and socialised with each other, forming a natural environment of shared activism, community, and left-wing politics. Especially in the 60s, anti-war movements were growing both on- and off-campus, and the Flodge proved to be a ground for cultivating these ideas. The University’s Faculty of Engineering now uses the old Newsletter Printery building to house the John Grill Institute for Project Leadership.
Running under a logo featuring a barrel of alcohol, “in the late 60’s I was part of an outfit called R.U.M., Reform the Union Movement and our platform included bringing alcohol on campus and ending the division of men and women’s unions, but we were ahead of the times.” In 1968, Cahill and three other members of the ticket were able to win four seats on the SRC, running on a platform promising to end union segregation, increase union transparency and to open a pub on-campus. After Cahill departed from the University as a student, the first licensed venue, Manning Bar, opened in 1974 where students could officially consume alcohol on campus.
The 70s and 80s
Once the first licensed venue on campus had opened, it seemed as though much of the off-campus drinking transitioned to on-campus. Peter Carantinos, a student at the University during the time, was actively involved in the Political Economy Society that occupied the Vice-Chancellor and Registrar’s office for two months in 1975.
Carantinos explained that most of the action happened on campus, “We were more likely to meet on campus. We controlled a lot of the campus. We would have beers everywhere”. Although other pubs were frequented, much of the organising work “was on campus” or at “people’s gigs… parties and houses”. Despite this, Carantinos added that the Flodge is “still worth it.”
“It’s not like being in your lounge room, no it’s not, it’s your place. The reason why the Flodge manages to maintain that is that all of its competition has gone under.
“The White Horse closed, and that took all the economists and all of what is now Merivale. The Lansdowne had become a very sleazy and poker-ish show. We were just losing them all over the place. Also, we were losing the old union, that was getting closed. So the Flodge, in a sense, wins by default, because everything else has disappeared.”
Today
More recently, the Flodge proved to be a crucial space for members of the USyd Gaza solidarity encampment. Student activist Ethan Floyd remarked that “some of the best parts of the encampment were the late nights and the social experiences of Flodge.”
In terms of organising, Floyd explained that the Flodge “was a good place to strategise, to have rigorous political discussions about what was going on during the encampment, and sometimes to vent our frustrations about the political inefficacy of the encampment with your closest comrades. There were a few times we’d be up in the Flodge until midnight, or until closing, strategising for a negotiations meeting, which was going to happen at like 9 o’clock the next morning.”
The frequency of encampment members at the Flodge built stronger relationships with the patrons and the staff, Dunsmore adding that “because we went there quite frequently, they get to know us and we get to know them”. Floyd explains that the camaraderie is built through the fact that “the staff there are either students or they’re friends of students, or they’ve recently graduated, so it’s a sort of nebulous crowd that understands the struggles and the experiences of being a student in politics.”
The popularity of on-campus and off-campus bars seems to undulate between periods of time. Campus bars are yet to recover from the impacts of COVID-19 lockdowns. Currently, Manning Bar is only open three days a week for 4 hours each day, and Hermanns is open four days a week for 7 hours each day. Floyd remarks that “there’s something to be said about the correlation between students becoming less engaged with campus politics and campus becoming a less social place,” unlike when “political clubs, the SRC, and the collectives, used Manning, particularly during the 2000s.” In contrast Mesterovic notes that today “post-VSU…Manning Cantina is not exactly a bustling place.”
The cost of living crisis has also impacted the pub culture in organising spaces. Dunsmore adds in terms of campus pubs, “It’s a little bit of a bygone era. I feel like the cost of living has substantially gone up, and the capacity for people to drink on campus has somewhat reduced, it’s not the cheapest pub certainly, but I think it does come down to cost in some ways, and even just getting off campus for a second can be quite nice”.
Along the same lines, students have been moving further out from campus or avoiding moving out of home at all. Forest Lodge especially lost all its main student housing over time as a result of the University bulldozing and selling off properties, the last of which was sold off in 2021. Dunsmore finds that “having to move further and further and further away from campus I think certainly has an impact. It creates a culture where it’s a pub for the few, not the many. If people are having to travel an hour, or two hours back home, then it will certainly reduce the amount of time that, contact time that people have with each other at the pub. Therefore maybe some impact on organising if you’re not doing it in the day, you’re doing it around work hours.”
Despite the slow gradual return of campus politics and socials, student activists find promise in the return of venues like Manning and Hermanns. Student activist, Grace Street remarked on the greater promise of Hermanns “because it’s visible, people can hang out on the grass, and it has live gigs, which all makes it more accessible.”
The Flodge has evolved alongside the campus and its community, becoming a character throughout generations of campus activism. The Flodge has been witness to numerous political issues on and off campus through the years and has remained a constant third space for campus activists to organise and build relations. Although challenges in the cost of living and housing have altered campus interaction, the Forest Lodge Hotel remains to be a place of intersecting history, activism, and student life.
