KITCHEN PLANS CAUGHT IN RED TAPE
YOU have to wonder if there are people working inside the Townsville City Council whose job it is to make things as hard as possible for people operating businesses. Or, can I rephrase that and say, people trying to run businesses. The city’s beautiful old Victoria Park Hotel burnt down in June and ever since owners Frank and Robyn Sexton have been operating from the pub’s beer garden. It’s a handy bar and very popular with patrons. Except it lacks one thing. A kitchen. The kitchen burnt in the fire. The Vic Park was famous for its grub. Frank and Robyn got hold of a fully equipped large, demountable, mine site kitchen and were ready to swing back into action. But, they hit a brick wall. They have the kitchen. They know they have the customers because people are phoning asking if they can get a meal. The brick wall they hit was bureaucracy.
“We’ve got former staff wanting to come back to work, but we can’t open the kitchen,” Robyn told me.
“If we can’t open the kitchen we will be bankrupt.”
All the food for the pub’s Gourmet Cellar delicatessen was hand- made by chefs in the old kitchen.
You can imagine Robyn and Frank’s frustration. What they have been through is probably the worst thing in their lives. No one builds pubs like the old Vic Park anymore. Frank and Robyn’s world is standing still while they wait for bureaucracy to delist the pub that no longer exists from the state’s heritage register and for the council to be proactive and to help get this business up and running. It’s not asking the world. It’s asking for consideration for people whose world has been turned upside down. And as Robyn said, they have staff wanting to get back to work.