In 1990, filmmaker and comedian-wrangler John “Strop” Cornell, the man who managed Paul Hogan and helped invent World Series Cricket, bought a run-down pub across from Byron Bay’s Main Beach for about $9 million. Locals call it “the Beachy,” and over three decades it grew from a low-key surfer’s watering hole into the most valuable pub in Australian history, selling for a reported $140 million. None of that fortune changed the formula: a sprawling beer garden under Poinciana trees, live bands most nights of the year on a stage that’s launched Australian acts nationally, and a Sunset Sessions happy hour that empties the beach every weekday at 4pm. Order a schooner, grab a spot on the grass, and watch the Pacific do its thing. Byron Bay built an entire industry around this feeling. The Beachy had it first.
