Mr Chas Cole, a well-known wine and spirit merchant, of Moorabool-street, was accidentally shot in the left side this afternoon by the discharge of a saloon rifle.
“He was engaged at the time of the affair in stirring up some syrup for cordial manufacturing purposes, when the storeman (Mr Gustave Newhouse) employed by Messrs Dennys, Lascelles, Austin and Co, wool warehousemen, tried the strength of a new saloon rifle.
“The ball from the little weapon passed through a wooden doorway, 3/4 inch in thickness, and a corrugated iron side of a store from a distance of 60 feet, crossed a right-of-way and entered the cordial factory of Mr Cole, who, when 65 feet from the doorway mentioned, was struck by the bullet.
“The missile entered his left side and buried itself in the sinews of Mr Cole’s back. The wound is not considered to be dangerous, although it is of a painful character. The unfortunate affair was of course purely accidental.”
…….
Geelong’s illustrious pioneering mine and liquor merchant, the famed Charles Cole’s son Chas, brought down by bullet while making cordial syrup?
Really? Cordial? Almost makes you wonder if Gustave wasn’t really taking aim out of some species of indignation about a professional booze institution flirting with the temperance movement.
You have to love an old gutrot, gunshot story. Geelong hosts a few, truth be known. This 1890 account is one of the less sinister but rest assured the town’s love affair with the bottle goes back a good way.
Which is nothing unique for most towns, really, but It’s perhaps telling that one of Geelong’s earliest wine and spirits merchants remains one of its best-known today, the best part of 170 years later – Chas Cole Cellars of South Geelong superstore renown.
Sadly, the notoriety’s gone. Apart from one or two other ancient instances; things like bottles of imported Danish brandy with the contents replaced with saltwater by some shonky sailors, or customers dropping dead on the floor. Pffft.
Charles Cole and Company, Wine and Spirit Merchants dates back to 1857. It traded as such for more than a century, moving operations around Geelong several times. From 1901 until the early 1970s, it operated from a bluestone building in Gheringhap Street, opposite City Hall on the site of the present-day Civic Car Park.
Presbyterian minister Stephen Sasdy bought the bluestones, to reconstruct the heritage building. Five truckloads of the masonry, all numbered, were transferred to a paddock in Batesford.
He also clambered across the roof of the former Colac Courthouse, collecting its slate tiles, which he took to Batesford as well, along with a raft of joinery, windows, benches and pews.
Lacking the financial necessaries, and unable to raise such, however, his plans lapsed.
“I numbered every stone … my idea was to re-build it,” he told me, back in 2000, the better part of 25 years after the event.
“I tried my best organising many different things but I don’t know what really happened. It cost me a lot in time and money.”
The National Trust’s Chris Gordon, at the time described the Chas Cole Cellar demise as a “sad tale of a substantial building sacrificed to make way for the motorcar, and at the time kill off a streetscape”.
He suggested the stone be used for an architectural façade on the car park, an idea that fell on deaf ears, as the building’s National Trust listing did when it was destroyed.
Rev Sasdy eventually sold the bluestone to the late stonemason Andrej Betz, whose family retains them on a property at Bannockburn – along with a collection of bluestone from a one-time Geelong Advertiser home, between 1858 and 1865, on Malop St beside the former Union Club HotelotelHotel, later the Carlton Hotel, and now headquarters of the work-from-home NDIS crew.
Betz repurposed the Advertiser stone to build two structures, a family home and a striking circular secondary building with numerous artistic masonry features and flourishes, including a central chimney inspired by the historic Barwon Park Mansion at Winchelsea.
What the future holds for the two collections is uncertain but the Betz family is keen to entertain ideas on how they might be repurposed in a new incarnation.
Who knows what that might be – perhaps a saloon gun shooting gallery?
This article appeared in the Geelong Advertiser 29 December 2025.
