The Builders Arms in the hipster suburb of Fitzroy is one of the city’s oldest and boasts one of the city’s most storied histories. The pub was originally a safe place for the city’s marginalised Indigenous and migrant communities to congregate and socialise, and was the first Melbourne venue to allow Aboriginal Australians to drink at the bar with ‘whites’.

Sydney old-timers still remember the 150-year-old Old Fitz for its gorgeously spice-spiked laksas (“The best in Woolloomooloo”, it was widely agreed). The laksas disappeared a decade ago but its restaurant’s current incarnation as a French bistro is equally charming. However the venue’s most important claim to fame is that it’s Sydney’s only theatre pub still in operation.

The palm trees out front of this stately green-and-gold painted pub in the Northern Rivers hinterland are the clue that the Eltham is more tropical than the average Aussie pub. Hospitality heavyweight Alanna Sapwell-Stone is in charge of the kitchen here, and the result is that gastronomy tourists seek it out in the same way they would a fine dining restaurant. Dishes often have an Australian native flavour, such as a roast chicken accompanied by warrigal greens - a native Australian vegetable.

A proper village pub needs three things to make the grade: cosy, history-heavy interiors, roaring fires in wintertime and a fairylight-strewn beer garden out back for warm summer nights. The pretty Burrawang Village Hotel in one of the lesser-known towns of NSW’s Southern Highlands, around 140km south of Sydney, ticks every box. Previously an old post office and converted to a pub in the 1920s, it’s now run by a local family who make sure there’s plenty on offer for everyone in the area.

The “Impy”, as it’s affectionately known, has been a friendly and glitter-spangled haven for Sydney’s LGBTIQ+ community since the 1980s. Its legends are many, but its most prominent turn in the spotlight was when it starred as the backdrop for Hugo Weaving’s famous lip-synching crescendo in 1994’s Priscilla Queen of the Desert. Today, guests can admire the extravagant costumes and exuberant performances of a cast of top drag artists every Saturday night as part of ‘The Priscilla Experience.

It’s no secret that Australians are known to dine on their own coat of arms (kangaroo and to a lesser extent emu can be found on menus all around the country) but few present the country’s native fauna on plates with quite the dedication of the Prairie Hotel. The marquee dish at the Gallery Restaurant is the ‘feral mixed grill’ which includes chargrilled kangaroo filet, camel sausage and an emu rissole. If the idea of eating wildlife is too confronting there’s also plenty of regular pub grub.

Most people visit the Adelaide Hills for the wineries or the Germanic-leaning producers but the Scenic Hotel - which dates back to 1869 - is an equally enticing drawcard. The venue is flanked by solid masonry walls and wraparound wooden balconies which help it retain its heritage soul, while a seat on the second second floor grants guests uninterrupted views all the way to Adelaide city. When in South Australia there’s very little reason to drink wine produced anywhere else.

At first glance, the two-storey high portrait that decorates the Norfolk Hotel in the seaside Perth suburb of Fremantle looks like it’s been painted or stencilled. Closer inspection reveals that the image of Dorthy Tangney, Australia’s first female senator, has been carved into the building’s surface with a jackhammer. Inside, the pub is separated into three sections: the fern-filled courtyard, the chandelier-strung Oddfellow Bar and the moody basement bar.

A corrugated iron roof, a few wry signs and a canopy of bright magenta bougainvillea are the first things you notice about the iconic Daly Waters Pub which sits in the middle of the stark Territorian outback around 600km south of Darwin. But that’s barely a taster of what’s inside. The entire main bar is plastered with decades worth of memorabilia - coins, postcards, street signs and even a collection of bras, and the outside is strewn with jangling figures strung together from empty tinnies.

Holding the title of Australia’s longest continually licenced pub, Hobart’s colonial-era Hope & Anchor may not have enjoyed the glamorous updates of many of its contemporaries, but what it lacks in sparkle it makes up for in character. The interiors make no apology for their old-time fustiness: there are ancient rifles and wooden sailing ships mounted on the walls and the floors are covered in the mythical ‘sticky carpet’ that defined most pubs before so many of them were ‘reimagined’.