A former police officer, and now host of the Cabbage Tree Hotel at Fairy Meadow, he was quite surprised, while going about his business as a licensing cop in 1990, to find his family name on the façade of the Centennial Hotel at Helensburgh.

A little research and he discovered his great great great granduncle William Hanley established the pub on the opposite side of the road in 1888. He was even more surprised to learn that his great great great grandfather John Hanley built the original pub. The family later rebuilt the popular watering hole in its present location in 1915.

Now at the helm of the Cabbage Tree, where his son also works part time, he said legend of his Irish forebears fabricating a gold rush in Sydney’s Royal National Park in the 1880s to boost business at their struggling inn at Waterfall was common knowledge in their family.

The Hanley brothers, William, Thomas, John and their three sisters arrived in Hobart from Tipperary with their father William, the ship’s convict guard, and mother Johanna in 1851.

As an 11-years-old William arrived in Tasmania and spent just over 10 years with his family in Port Cynet before they were lured by gold to the Cooma district of NSW during the early 1860s. Deciding on a future as a farmer, William was 23 when he purchased a 40 acre property near Lake Eucumbene in 1863.

In 1866, the same year William married Yorkshire born Annie O’Malley, he and his brother Thomas, were arrested and sentenced to five years “on the roads” for cattle stealing, no doubt trying to stock their newly acquired property.

After the two were released they returned to farming, but later were introduced to the hotel industry when their sister Anora married Cooma publican Edmund Gaulway in 1871.

The Hanleys made their way to the Como district, south of Sydney, in the early 1880s where the Georges River wilderness was being opened up with the construction of the South Coast railway. The region was a hive of activity and development – a sure place to make a fortune. 

William and Annie Hanley licensed a pub, known as the Woronora Hotel, at Como on February 3 1883 to cater for the hundreds of navies working on the Government railway. As works proceeded further south of Como, business slackened at Hanley's pub and he followed the action, opening another inn at Waterfall in 1885.

The inn, located near the Waterfall navies’ camp, was a favourite haunt of railway labourers and William was often criticised for taking advantage of the workers by providing a place for them to 'liquor up'.

Hanley's real notoriety came in 1886 with the 'salting' of a nearby creek with fine alluvial gold. He had spent a number of years in the gold fields around Cooma and knew how the slightest sniff of the mineral could spark a rush.

Reports of gold at Garie soon spread to Sydney and hundreds of prospectors arrived in the Waterfall district seeking their fortune. However, the find was proved to be a hoax and Hanley was said to be “the controlling factor in opening up the Garie rush". It was reported his “very dull hotel became a hive of business while the excitement lasted”.

During construction work, John was charged with selling grog without a license when police said he was supplying liquor to the workmen building his pub; However, the case was dismissed.

William Hanley’s long battle to license his Helensburgh inn began soon after the sly-grog case. He was refused a license for the premises a number of times - magistrates believing another pub in the region would add to the problem of drunkenness in the area. A conditional license was eventually given under the sign of the Centennial Hotel on February 7 1888.

William relocated from Waterfall, placing his brother-in-law Edmund Gaulway, the former Cooma publican, in charge of his Heathcote Hotel and settled into community life in Helensburgh. He eventually became a respected and influential resident and died aged 64 in 1904 from Influenza. He was buried in the Helensburgh cemetery. 

Hanley's widow, Annie, who continued on as host after her husband's death, entered into a lease agreement with Reschs Brewery in 1914 that would lead to the construction of the present Centennial Hotel. The brewery secured a 26-year lease of the pub on the condition they replace the old inn with a new two-storey brick Hotel for the Hanley family. 

The new 18-room Centennial was built at a cost of £5,233, opening in May 1915, to coincide with the completion of the duplication of the South Coast railway.