Stop me if you've heard this one before: two men walk into an office – their boss's – and say "We're off to start a beer company with Bob Hawke." If you know even a little bit of the lore behind Marrickville-based brewery Hawke's and the beloved watering hole attached to it, The Bob Hawke Beer and Leisure Centre, you most likely will have heard it.

But the idea for perhaps Sydney's best recent example of hospo nostalgia-core began as early as childhood for Co-Founders Nathan Lennon and David Gibson. And it's a story of Australiana, the eighties, childhood heroes, of ponies of beer and Arnott's tins.

Seven years into the brewery, three years into operations at the Leisure Centre, and four years since Hawke's passing, it's now, also, a story of how two friends and a former Prime Minister turned a suburban nut factory into a touchstone of storytelling through design.