Built in 1878 by Samuel Miller and called the Miller Hotel from 1879 -1887. The hotel has had several other names including the Continental.

(Samuel Miller is reputed to have been the first European man to find a route through the Pt Germein gorge with his wife the first European woman to pass through).

As one of two original pubs in Port Germein the Pier provided an important meeting place for wharfies, sailors, local farmers, residents and committees. Closing as a hotel in 1933. The following years saw it run as flats, a beach house then several cafés.

Reputedly haunted, it is claimed that a seaman was murdered there during a pub brawl and that the cellar was used as a morgue.

There is also a story of a woman who regularly came and watched from the balcony waiting for her sailor son to return from voyages, until the time he didn’t return, being lost at sea. Broken-hearted she is said to still walk the upstairs corridor and sits on the balcony waiting for his return. Keep an eye on the balcony as you pass by, you might just catch a glimpse of her.

At its peak it became the largest grain-loading port in Australia, servicing large windjammers and sailing ships from Britain and Europe.

Many of the streets of Port Germein are named after these windjammers and sailing ships.

A master of an active trading steamer Ceres that ran between Port Adelaide and Stansbury, he is reputed to have discovered the inlet whilst exploring the coast in 1840.

Though there is some dispute as to whether it was John or his brother Samuel Germein who made the discovery. Samuel is said to have discovered the inlet whilst transporting supplies to the explorer Edward Eyre in 1840.

Whether it was John or Samuel it was the discovery of one member of the Germein family which resulted in the name of Port Germein.