Uranquinty can look forward to the return of its local pub, and with it, the small Riverina village's most important community hub.
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When the Uranquinty Hotel temporarily closed its doors in early February, signs on the pub's windows informed residents it would be shut a few weeks for renovations.
Those renovations have now amounted over $100,000, with the final step before re-opening being the search for a new licensee.
Local Susan Colley, who worked at the hotel when she first moved to Uranquinty seven years ago to be with her family, said the local watering hole acts as a meeting place between the village's ageing and younger populations.
"It's a really nice community connection," she said.
"The fellow that lives two doors down from me, who I saw every Wednesday night for seven years, I haven't seen for four months.
"It's a little village that's grown so tremendously - and everybody looks out for everybody."
Mrs Colley hopes to see the pub's new management do what it can to welcome back locals and entice those beyond Uranquinty when doors are open again.
"If we can get publicans that run it and make it exciting and make people want to come out, then people will make the drive to be here," she said.
With just a pub, an award-winning bakery and a service station that also operates as the general store and post office on offer, a closed Uranquinty Hotel has left a tight-knit town anxiously awaiting its return.
More than just a social hub, the Uranquinty Hotel provides the local Men's Shed's main source of income through its popularly attended Wednesday night raffles.
President and founding member Lyle Salmon said the Uranquinty Men's Shed needs to raise funds for its operations again as soon as possible or risk running out of money for bills, rates and projects.
"We go for dinner there every Wednesday night with our wives and we've got a really good, close knit, little community," he said.
"We actually have a good night with not just ourselves, but everyone else that attends the pub.
"That's probably the only opportunity you get to meet some of the people in the village."
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Secretary Brian Mahony said the pub played a key role in the local Men's Shed's establishment back in 2012.
"For the first year and a half that we started, the pub was the place for our monthly meeting," he said.
"And they provided us with funds to start, to get ourselves established."
Golden Crown Hotels general manager Hannah Middleton described the pub as an "integral part of the community".
"That's why we're making sure ... that we are finding the right candidate who will be there for the community in a long term position."
The hotel group, which also owns pubs in areas like Leeton, Yenda and Yass, has been approached by an experienced hotelier to take over the licence, but is also actively seeking expressions of interest.
"And from that, we will then make a decision in the next few weeks of who we think the best person is to take on that role at the hotel," Ms Middleton said.
Major renovations to the hotel have included painting, re-carpeting, removing a wall, and renewing plant equipment.
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