How a former teacher bought a pub during the thick of COVID and turned it into an adored community hub
Off the tourist trail, this Koroit hotel focuses firmly on keeping the locals amused.
David Allegretti
March 28, 2025
Teachers don't typically buy pubs. When they do, they probably shouldn't during a pandemic. But to Duke, that didn't matter.
Jason "Duke" McMahon had never worked a day in hospitality before he and his wife Lee-Ann bought Koroit's old commercial Hotel in 2021. Now he's running regular community events, trivia and poker nights, pub choir, live music and even embedding local plants and potatoes in handcrafted wooden tables with epoxy. Talk about a career change.
Let’s buy a pub …
Duke's Commercial, on the quieter part of Commercial Road in Koroit, is a pub where the steak sandwich comes highly recommended and the vibe is, in owner Jason McMahon's words, "heaps of fun and heaps of bullshit”.
McMahon was a teacher who'd grown tired of the classroom. He and Lee-Ann used to walk past the Commercial when it was for sale, cracking jokes about buying it. As work irritations mounted, the jokes got serious. By August 2021, they owned the place.
"Got it on a Wednesday, got shut down on a Friday with COVID," McMahon says.
With the pub tucked away from tourist traffic, the McMahons zeroed in on the locals. They packed the calendar: Tuesday trivia, Wednesday pub choir, Thursday poker, and operating what Duke describes as "one of the biggest venues in the South West for live music of all sorts".
A banger sanga
The details and warm vibes make this place stick. Duke, drawing on his days teaching woodwork, has handcrafted wooden tables with stories. One features plants from Tower Hill preserved in epoxy, dedicated to Mick Geary, an adored regular who walked there daily before he passed. Another contains potatoes frozen in resin — a nod to Koroit's Irish farming roots.
The menu runs deep with a truly giant parma selection, stir frys, pasta, steaks, fish and chips, and pretty much anything else that might tickle your fancy after a pint or two. And yes, we can confirm, the steak sanga goes hard.
The McMahons have refreshed the place since 2021, painting and rebranding to match Koroit's Irish heritage, all while navigating the pandemic's restrictions.
Despite those early challenges, Duke and Lee-Ann endured, and thanks to that tenacity, they've created a genuine community hub where the bullshit comes free but the fun is carefully crafted.
Keen to meet Duke? Watch our interview with the man himself below.
