The challenges of keeping a small-town pub going

Updated

Five rural pub owners in Victoria share the ups and downs of running a pub in a small town as population numbers dwindle, football leagues fold and communities call upon their services for more than just pouring a beer.

Bringing the community together

When the Melbourne south-eastern suburbs started to encroach on Pakenham, ex-jockey Geoff Turner moved to Logan (population: 15) in central Victoria and bought the local pub.

He was no stranger to working behind the bar, having previously run a pub in Cloncurry in Queensland.

He still trains and races horses, but combines it with running the pub alongside his son Keith.

Mr Turner said the pub not only brought the local community together, but kept him up to date with the local gossip and rumours.

"We've got one bloke who comes in here, and he's had a girlfriend on the side for the last 20 years," Mr Turner said.

"He came in here crying, tears running down his face.

"He said 'Twenty years I've given her, the best years of my life, and now she's given me the big A', and he sat here crying 'I'll have to go home to my wife now'."

Mr Turner said without the pub, people would not have a place to go and talk.

After the pub in Bealiba, 30 kilometres away, closed six months ago, more people started coming to Logan.

Mr Turner has no plans to leave the business.

"We've been here 16 years and we're not going anywhere. I have a grandson ready to take over — nine-year-old Logan Turner," he said.

'Mother Elmhurst' brings coffee machine to pub

After 18 months of thorough searching, Julie Harrigan and her husband Paul, from Melbourne, found a hotel in Elmhurst (population: 419) in western Victoria.

"When you come in from either end [of the town] it has a feeling of serenity about it," Ms Harrigan said.

In the past two and a half years since taking over the business, the couple has spent "quite a bit of money" repainting and filling the previously bare pub with all their collectables.

"It was a very dark, dingy pub, typical of that old-fashioned era — dark grey ceilings, red walls — so we lightened it up," Ms Harrigan said.

No longer just a pub, the one-stop shop has three identities, with a bar and pool room with an espresso machine, a dining room and a general store.

"This town has probably got 80 per cent women in it, and the women would not come into the pub," Ms Harrigan said.

"Now 90 per cent of the women are quite comfortable in walking into this building."

She said she had only had one comment from a couple of the regular "older boys" when they came in to find six women sitting on the couches drinking coffee, but it was quickly sorted out.

"The pub belongs to the community; the community must be able to come in here, use it, enjoy it, meet people here," Ms Harrigan said.

She said the publican held a very important place in the town.

"You care for people, you listen to what people are saying and how they're saying it, and if there's something not right, your role is to very quietly and surreptitiously just try and find out what's not right," she said.

"The local cop calls me Mother Elmhurst."

Staying afloat by adapting to change

Michelle McDougall and Greg "Wally" Wallace run two pubs in the Mallee region of northern Victoria.

They have had the Minapre Hotel in Lascelles (population: 114) for the past 11 years, and the Patchewollock (population: 322) Hotel for the past five years, after being asked to take it on by the community.

Originally from Geelong, neither had experience running a pub, but they were tired of working for other people.

A conversation with a sheep agent about the "grand pub in the middle of nowhere" led them north.

They love their work but said it had not been without its challenges, citing the drought and the folding of the Mallee Football League as the biggest contributing factors.

"The social implications of not having the Mallee league has affected the whole of the area up here," Mr Wallace said.

"It's changed the whole dynamics of the Mallee area completely."

But the couple has adapted to the change and now caters to the growing tourist market courtesy of Chinese tourists who visit nearby Sea Lake.

That has been helped by Ms McDougall's daughter Sarah, who has a firm grip on social media, including Chinese microblogging site Weibo.

"In doing that we have not actually lost business, we have created a new business that has kept our income at a steady flow again," Mr Wallace said.

Supermarkets hard to compete with

Nineteen years ago four friends thought it would be a good idea to buy a pub in the small town of Wychitella (population: 117), more than 100km north-west of Bendigo in central Victoria.

David McHatten is the only one who remains in the business, but even he is ready to call it quits.

"I'm pig-headed, I like to see something through. [But] at the moment I'd like to do something different and get out of here," he said.

During his time in town he has watched the town's population steadily go down, a combination of people leaving and dying.

That has turned keeping the pub open into a struggle, and it has been on the market for the past 18 months.

Mr McHatten is not confident of attracting a buyer.

He said it was not just the dwindling population, but costs associated with running the business that had "gone through the roof" that made it an unattractive option for a buyer.

Mr McHatten pays $761 per month in insurance, a far cry from the $30 a week 19 years ago.

"You've got to find nearly $200 a week before you open the door," Mr McHatten said.

The other contributing factors are power bills, compliance processes in an "over-regulated" sector, and competition with larger supermarkets and their 24-hour bottle shops.

"[Young people] go to the supermarket, they'll buy their drinks, they'll go home to the shed," he said.

"They don't have to have a liquor licence and their insurance doesn't go through the roof. We seem to be in the middle, we're getting crushed."

Running the town's communication hub

Ten years ago, Barry Kennedy wanted to reduce his working hours from seven days a week.

He saw an ad in the paper advertising the pub at Nandaly (population: 230) in the Mallee, and thought that would be an improvement over running a motel.

He describes the pub as a family hotel in a tight-knit farming community that uses it as a "communication centre".

Mr Kennedy said it had taken the community about a year to warm up to him, but now the kids called him Uncle Barry.

"They had to trust me and the only way to do that is over a period of time," Mr Kennedy said.

Apart from watching the kids grow up, the other big change in the past decade has been the disbanding of the Mallee Football League, which he said had damaged his business.

Where once he did on average 80 meals on a Saturday night, he is now down to about 26.

Mr Kennedy estimated his profits were down $30,000 since the league folded a year ago. He said this also impacted his suppliers.

"It crucified a lot of little businesses around here in a lot of ways," Mr Kennedy said.

"But I'm still here, I battle on. You just gotta reconstruct yourself or reinvent yourself in some way."

Mr Kennedy is 69 and, after being in the workforce since the age of 15, he is ready to retire and has the pub on the market.

"I haven't had a holiday in 10 years … and I am getting physically tired. I am ready for a change," he said.

After not having been in a relationship for 25 years, Mr Kennedy met someone special a year ago, when she walked into the pub. Now, he plans on retiring with her — when he can sell the place.

Topics: social-capital, regional, logan-3475, elmhurst-3469, lascelles-3487, wychitella-3525, nandaly-3533

First posted