Bombay Bicycle Club: In the Adelaide City region of South Australia
The old Ovingham pub on Torrens Road has now been stripped back to her red brick and bluestone glory… in an interesting mix of the local and the exotic.
This is now the Bombay Bicycle Club…. the brain child of hotel developer, Tom Hannah… a bloke with a passion for Rudyard Kipling and his tales of the British Raj. In the Riki Tiki Tavi Bar…. You’ll remember he was the mongoose in Kipling’s famous story... Jungle Book… Tom’s taken his obsession to amazing lengths…. With the help of Sri Lankan family.
“Built up a great rapport and friendship with a family in the north of sri lanka that specialise in this sort of thing. so it was a natural progression to go back to them and getting cobras and tiger faces and elephants and that sort of thing.”
“And i notice in the bar alone there’s one hundred and twenty three hand carved elephants… and i don’t know how many cobras and how many lions… but it’s just a staggering amount of work.”
“Yer they’ve literally got an army of people who just sit there and carve away all day and they’re very good at it.”
And so too were the craftsmen who built what was once called The Bowden on the Hill. In recent years her glory had certainly faded.
“It was affectionately known as the dump on the hump… and we like the idea of grabbing something that’s distressed and turning it into a princess and that’s what we’ve done.”
So off came the plaster and paint… revealing stunning bluestone… and out come the first floor… creating the perfect space for what’s now the most popular part of Gungadin’s Restaurant.
“This had seven layers of the most awful coloured paint adelaide’s ever seen on it. it cost us a lot of money i think fifty thousand dollars getting all the outside cut back to blue stone…”
“Just getting it back to bluestone yer”
“But the hotel’s a lot better for it. and inside here we expected this room to be the most difficult to seat people in but it’s become the first room that get’s booked months in advance… and the fireplace up there has become the biggest talking point.”
The pub was once the meeting place for a bunch of separatists from the wrong side of the tracks in the Bowden Ward of Hindmarsh who felt they’d be better represented by the toffs in the Fitzroy ward of Prospect. So from a hot bed of rice… the Ovingham continues its cycle of change. And when in the bar, keep an eye out for this 1942 wartime special used by the Air Raid Warden at Angaston.
“We couldn’t have the bombay bicycle club and when you come here all you see is elephants and tigers and cobras and curries uhm so we had to get some bikes and once you put tables and chairs in the only place left is the roof… so they’re on the ceiling yer so that’s good. and of course after everyone had a couple of beers everyone wants to ride them and they’re nice and safe up there.”
The Bombay Bicycle Club is located at 29 Torrens Road and is open daily. Click link above for more information.
