Castle Hotel,Bothwell

Licensed continuously since 1829, this Georgian hotel on the corner of Patrick and William Streets is the last of Bothwell's original four hotels still open, in a Tasmanian Central Highlands town settled by Scottish farmers in the 1820s. The kitchen runs a straightforward pub menu of counter meals, bar snacks, steak sandwiches and lamb shank alongside a workable wine list, with Wednesday given over to pizza night — enough of a drawcard that regulars plan around it. Upstairs, colonial-style guest rooms take travellers staying over. Bothwell itself holds more than fifty classified heritage buildings and is home to Ratho Farm, reputed to be one of the oldest golf courses in the Southern Hemisphere, so the pub does a steady trade in golfers and heritage-town visitors alike. It's a working local more than a museum piece, but the age of the licence is hard to overstate. An hour north of Hobart, and a sensible lunch or pizza-night stop on the way into the highlands.