the cafe runs through from 7:30am right through to 12 as well. Despite the [remoteness] it keeps everyone busy, she has just taken over from what her mother did and her grandmother before her.” The Aitken’s involvement with the Interstate began in 1943, when Vere Aitken and his younger brother Reg, who were originally from Burnie, visited Flinders and bought the hotel. Ever since the family name has been synonymous with the island for locals and passerby’s alike.
“Vere was one of 12 in that family and his younger brother Reg… they’d come over to Flinders Island I think on a fishing or shooting trip during the war years and ended up buying the hotel,” Claus says. “Reg was only a single man, and he couldn’t be a licensee, so he had to get his married brother to buy in and it started from there. “Vere’s son Desmond, he was only a schoolkid when he came to Flinders when his father bought the pub and he took it on in the late 50s. Now Peter [Colleen’s brother] is the publican, he went off to Drysdale, he
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