Sheila’s Coasters

This was the 80’s. There were no thoughts of discrimination. People seemed to get on pretty well. If they didn’t they said so. Probably a good thing. We had the most interesting coasters in town, thanks to the combined brains and imagination of some of the guys at the Union Hotel at North Sydney.

One afternoon, while Sheila's was still in the planing stages, Kevin, Stan and Brian the Publican were in the Corner bar discussing the exciting new prospect that was to be Sheila’s.

“What are you doing about coasters, Brian?” asked Kevin.

“Oh, I suppose I’ll get them from the brewery for free.” answered Brian.

“No mate’’ said Kevin, “I think we should design some”.

I was walking by at this point and they said to me,

“What's the colour, Lyn?’

“Shocking pink”, I answered.

With that we decided that the front logo should feature a lady’s hand holding a champagne glass, a rose and a big picture hat. We thought that that would say it all. Stan and Kevin got to work. Pretty soon they had enlisted two other mates, Bruce and Allan from J&K printing. At that time, coasters only had printing on the outside. I clearly remember Kevin picking up a coaster that was on the bar and saying,

“There should be something on the back. You always turn a coaster over.”

So were born “The ladies of Sheila’s”

The result is some of those you see here. There were 20 in total. They were very popular and became collector’s items. Within the first 6 months, 400,000 had been printed. It cost a fortune in postage to send them to collectors in Australia and overseas, but they epitomised the spirit of Sheila’s.

This content for this blog are excerpts from the forthcoming Tales Of A Publican's Wife, by Lyn McGettigan.
Editor Jan Cornall and Lyn are preparing the book for publication in 2014.

Please leave a comment or get in touch HERE if you have a Sheila's story to tell.

(c) Lyn McGettigan 2013