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An artist's impression* of Perry's temperance lecture at
WELL over six feet tall and solidly built, Andrew Lysaght was an imposing and colorful northern Illawarra pioneer. A magistrate, who resigned after a parliamentary inquiry found he called the Wollongong Police Sergeant an "old woman", he was granted 60 acres where he built the north's first pub - The Fairy Meadow Hotel in 1856. Lysaght hosted the inn, on the present corner of Senior Sergeant Sheriden brought charges against Lysaght for influencing the outcome of a court case and slandering his name in August 1876. The local police had a confrontation with a group of coal miners resulting in allegations they had used undue force and cruelty. Lysaght was said to have sided with the miners, criticising the police and some of his fellow Magistrates, although the police were eventually cleared of all the accusations. A Government inquiry into Sheriden's charges sat at He resigned as magistrate and became host of the Queens Hotel overlooking Born in Wollongong to Patrick and Johanna Lysaght in about 1832, he was probably introduced to the hotel industry by his pioneering maternal uncles - publicans Edward and Alexander Elliott, who had opened several inns in the region during the 1830s and 40s. Lysaght became the first president of the South Coast Licensed Victuallers Association in 1882 and soon turned his hand to politics. 
During a temperance lecture by reformed drunkard, come teetotaler, George Perry in 1884, Lysaght, a candidate for the seat of Illawarra in the colonial government elections, came under some heavy criticism. He had recently sold the license of the Queens Hotel at Several hundred people gathered around a park bench in The teetotalers were pushing for local option polls, that would allow voters a say on permitting hotel licenses within their neighbourhood. Publicans, including Lysaght, attended Perry’s lecture at Perry's standing was proven when he remarked that Lysaght's application for a hotel license at Fairy Meadow should be refused. "He would rather see Mr Lysaght on the Bench [of magistrates] than in a public house," it was reported. He had heard and read a great deal of Lysaght before he came to the district, and, on his last visit, made his acquaintance. He believed Lysaght was a good fellow, and he entertained the highest regard for him personally - it was the trade of public house keeping that he detested. The reformed drunkard warned Lysaght that if he wished to become the Member for Illawarra he should not re-enter the business of hotel keeper: "If he got a license again, and put up as a candidate for Parliament, the electors would say 'Oh, it's only Andy, that keeps the pub,' and he would get very little support." Lysaght, looking on, quickly responded: "Never mind; I can say to the electors what you are not able to say - that I never was under the influence of drink in my life." "I know that," Perry replied, "I am given to understand that it is a fact Mr Lysaght never was intoxicated in his life. Unfortunately, I was; but thank God; I am a total abstainer now." Good gestured exchanges continued between the hopeful polly and the lecturer with Lysaght remarking that he would have liked to have had Perry as a customer during his 19 years as a drunkard. Another publican, John Brennan of the Hibernian Hotel in Tongue in cheek, Perry revealed that Christ was the world’s first manufacturer of non-alcoholic wine. The gathering and exchanges were lively, though good natured, and would have been an entertaining afternoon for the folk of Perry's temperance man did not materialise as a candidate, nor did the sitting member, Stuart, and, to the disappointment of the temperance movement, the race for the seat of Illawarra was contested by two high profile business men involved in the liquor industry. Andrew Lysaght did not open his Fairy Meadow inn and won the 1885 election from opponent, William Wiley, an alderman on the Wollongong Borough Council, who happened to have an application pending to construct a 40 room tourist hotel in upper Lysaght died in 1906 and was buried in the old Roman Catholic cemetery where controversy recently erupted over the development of the Five Islands Brewery. Somehow I think Lysaght would be happy with his last resting place. *Sketch of temperance lecture by Neville Roberts. *I have been trying to find an image of Andrew Lysaght for a few years now without success. I would appreciate any assistance in this regard.
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