It all started with John Rice, a local entrepreneur, who owned a large wagon pulled by a team of draught horses, a grocery store, ice works, a butcher shop and two sheep stations. John Rice bought…
It all started with John Rice, a local entrepreneur, who owned a large wagon pulled by a team of draught horses, a grocery store, ice works, a butcher shop and two sheep stations. John Rice bought the Commercial Hotel with a lemonade factory set up in the horse stables out the back from a Mrs Peters in 1907.
The original factory was a converted stables and was powered by a steam engine. A new factory was built in the 1950s which coped with demand until a bigger factory with an upgraded bottling plant was built by the third generation owner, Ted Rice, a grandson of John Rice. The same high quality flavours have been adhered to over the years and this is one of the main reasons the business remains one of the few small soft drink businesses still in operation today.
Through all the years of hardship and progress, through crippling droughts and flooding rains, Rice's 'Back O' Bourke' soft drinks have survived. Rice's intends to see out another century.
