'YOU'LL find us behind The Australian pub," said the directions for my talk on Tuesday night to the Howden-le-Wear History Society.

Quite why there should be a hotel called The Australian in Howden-le-Wear in deepest Durham is one of life's many intriguing questions - nearly as intriguing, in fact, as why Northallerton should have a pub called the Tickle Toby.

The History Society, though, had the answer and it is a fine story involving a man who drank roughly £1.28m worth of beer, which is some achievement.

That man was William Walton, a coalminer from Howden. Howden's population had exploded following the opening of the railway from Bishop Auckland to Crook in 1842.

But William dreamed of a better life and so, in late 1861, set sail with his family - including his three children - to seek his fortune in the New World.

Gold had been discovered in Victoria in 1851. Gold-diggers rushed madly from all over the globe and within a decade the population of the Australian state had exploded from 76,000 to 540,000.

The Waltons arrived in July 1862 after an eight-month voyage. William laid claim to a patch of virgin soil and stream and started to pan and dig for his fortune.

As with most gold-diggers, his family lived rough around him, probably under canvas. Two years came and went without William finding a trace of gold. Family life became hard - so hard that William broke his fundamental religious principle and searched on a Sunday.

And it was on a Sunday that he struck lucky. He found gold, great nuggets of untold riches.

He bundled it up, as much as he could carry, and the family returned home to Howden-le-Wear. There he counted his fortune and found that he had made about £32,000. As a pound in the late 1860s is worth, roughly, £40 today, this made him a millionaire, the proud possessor of about £1.28m.

At first he tried to invest it. He opened a coalmine and, in about 1874, he built a hotel which he called The Australian.

His problem was that "he thought there was no end to the money". A kindly fellow, he gave his nuggets away or loaned them out, never to see them return.

Plus, he was always the hotel's best customer.

And so his fortune dribbled away, and when he died, he left just £100 - and a hotel with a curious name.

LAST week, Lord Hailsham's flat cap, which he wore during his 1963 stint as Minister for the North-East, occupied this space. It became a notorious cap because, previously bowler hatted, he was condemned for patronising North-Easterners.

David Dargon writes to say that shortly afterwards, Oxfam asked Hailsham if he would send the offending cap to be raffled at an exhibition in Newcastle. To great bemusement, given his enthusiasm for the cap when out of London, he said he couldn't because he had mislaid it.

David's father Tom, who was organising the exhibition, took pity on Hailsham and sent him "a splendid black and white check" cap.

Hailsham wrote back saying how much pleasure it would give him in cold weather, and added: "I am proud to be carrying the Newcastle United colours."