In 1887 Charles Wyatt Took over the hotel. He first became well-known in the town as the mail contractor, running mails to the Ravenswood goldfield in the late 1860s. From 1870 he lived in Townsville, first as a carrier to Georgetown, then as a store-man for Aplin, Brown & Co. where he was renowned as a ‘strong man’; few could equal his strength in lifting heavy weights. He was a member of the Masonic Lodge, of the Turf Club and of the Show Society, where he was a respected judge of livestock. Wyatt was licensee at the hotel for 17 years until his death in 1904, one of the longest serving publicans remaining at the hotel in Townsville history. 
His genial character greatly enhanced the hotels reputation; for the last four years of his life was was an invalid, suffering from chronic rheumatism, leaving his wife to run the hotel. After his death it passed, first to his widow Eliza, who was the proprietor between September 1904 till July 1907. The Wyatt’s son in-law John Fitzpatrick then took over. He changed the name from The Court House to the Herbert in June 1920.