Toora business owners and residents are rallying to reopen the Royal Standard Hotel. The pub, which traded continuously from 1889, has sat behind steel barricades since February 2025, when the council ruled it unsafe following storm damage to its roof and balcony the previous September. It was the first Christmas and New Year in nearly 140 years without a beer at "the Standard."
Frustrated by two years of rumour with no clear timeline, owner of the Panton Store, Shelley Panton, who has fielded visitors' questions about the pub's fate for the best part of two years, invited a small group of concerned locals to sit down with pub owner Adrian Darby and hear the situation for themselves.
What emerged was less a story of inaction than of a protracted insurance stand-off. Darby told the group he would have reopened without a liquor licence rather than lose momentum and staff. "I know what a pub means to a town, and being the only one in the town, I would have opened it without the liquor licence again if we had to. It wouldn't have worried me," he said. He described spending his first month after the storm on the phone from overseas, trying to convince staff to stay on, only to be told the building couldn't reopen at all.
Rather than simply wait on the insurer, the group turned to what could be done in the meantime. Ideas floated included opening the pub's courtyard and old stables for market-day food vans and live music, keeping media attention on the building, and lobbying state member Danny O'Brien and federal member Darren Chester directly. David Barrett
