Abandoned Australia: The abandoned Sydney pub haunting TikTok

It was once a heaving party spot where locals downed schooners, enjoyed a meal or two with family and friends, then enjoyed a blockbuster movie at the cinema next door.

Now, the abandoned shell of a once-loved Sydney tavern has become the latest viral obsession – with TikTokers breaking in to explore the creepy remains of a pub lost to history.

Urban explorer @urbexsydney recently took viewers inside the old Ettamogah Pub – later the Macarthur Tavern – at Campbelltown, and what the camera captured has left thousands stunned.

The video pans across dusty bars, broken floorboards and dangling electrical cables.

A once-busy dining area still has TVs bolted to the wall, overlooking empty tables and a sign pointing patrons toward toilets that have seen better days.

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A pub with no beer. Source: @urbexsydney

Old signage still adorned the pub’s glass windows and walls. Source: @urbexsydney

Old Christmas presents and yes, even a Christmas tree, are hiding in a corner. Source: @urbexsydney

“No smoking” signs cling stubbornly to faded orange walls, while random Christmas presents – still wrapped – sit forgotten in a corner next to a boxed-up tree, like some bizarre ghost of holidays past.

In one room, a glowing red light flickers down a dark corridor.

In another, the old keg room lies hollow, steel benches in the kitchen sit coated in grime, and a once-spacious bar is now a barren relic – not a single glass in sight.

But perhaps the most haunting discovery was a corkboard of “red shirt day” photos, showing smiling patrons frozen in time, their laughter now only echoes in the abandoned pub’s shadowy halls.

“Look at the size of this place! I thought this place was small. It’s huge,” one explorer can be heard saying.

The entrance to the old pub on the side of the old Greater Union complex back in the day.

Locals flooded the comments with memories

The clip – which has racked up more than 13,000 likes and 600 comments – quickly turned nostalgic, with locals remembering its heyday.

“This place used to go off on a Thursday night,” one wrote.

“I used to play video games here while my dad hung out with his mates,” another recalled.

“Etta’s was the best place to party!” added a third.

A reminder that the pub as seen better – and happier – days. Source: @urbexsydney

We can’t help but wonder, are any of these people still in business? Source: @urbexsydney

The dust-covered kitchen. Source: @urbexsydney

Others questioned why such a massive site has been left to rot, especially amid Australia’s housing crisis.

“So many people are homeless and this is just sitting empty,” one commenter said.

“They need to use that space for something new,” another chimed in.

From booming hotspot to forgotten relic

The tavern first opened in 1999 as Ettamogah Pub – according to one of the video’s followers –before being snapped up by De Angelis Hotels and reopening as The Macarthur Tavern.

It eventually shut its doors around 2005, when the adjoining nine-theatre Greater Union cinema moved across the road as part of a $160 million expansion of Macarthur Square.

The old keg room now sits empty. Source: @urbexsydney

The building’s main entrance. Source: @urbexsydney

What appears to be an old bathroom. Source: @urbexsydney

The redevelopment tripled the centre’s floor space from 29,000sq m to 90,000sq m and was a timely move for the cinema because it came at the same time as many Greater Union sites rebranded to Event Cinemas.

The Macarthur Tavern site closed around the same time, not because the popular watering hole was also moving into the centre’s newly-completed extension, but because De Angelis Hotels already had plans to build the pub as a standalone property across the road in Bolger Street.

Once the new tavern opened its doors after a lengthy development the original Ettamogah site fell silent and was left to gather dust.

Despite continuing to grow through a second $240 million expansion in 2017, Macarthur Square has never found a retailer to take over the old Greater Union site or the Macarthur Tavern location.

Today, the boarded-up entrancea stand as monuments to a different era, while TikTok explorers keep sneaking in to give new life to the ghostly shell of a pub and a cinema that once “went off” every weekend.