The Cambrian has been pouring beers on Arnold Street since the gold-rush days. Our earliest record is an 1880 notice for a meeting at Daniel's Cambrian Hotel, Arnold-street, when North Bendigo was a patchwork of miners' cottages and mullock heaps. Cambria is the old name for Wales, most likely a nod to the Welsh diggers who helped make Sandhurst one of the richest goldfields in the world.
Over more than 140 years the pub has changed hands many times: the Daniels family in the 1880s, Thomas McGrath from 1887, and the Grace family after the Second World War. Through all of it, it has stayed a true local: a place for election meetings, after-shift pints and neighbourhood yarns.
In 2013 brothers Andrew and Adam Carswell took over. They peeled back decades of renovations to bring back the old country pub, filled the walls with vintage art and went 100 per cent independent on the taps. Since then the Cambrian has been named one of Australia's top regional beer venues and won a Golden Plate Award for its drinks list. In 2022 we became home to Bendigo's first cook-at-your-table Korean barbecue. On the menu you'll find Australian seafood and wild venison and goat alongside pub classics like our chicken parma. Come in, grab a pint and pull up a stool, the dog included.