The Victoria Hotel:

23/03/2020 to 04/06/2020

“The current staff are still employed on jobkeeper. So they come and do about 15, 20 hours a week painting a few walls and doing maintenance. They feel a lot better coming to work and hanging out with their friends doing something. At the end of the week I'll cook dinner for all the staff and we'll have some beers. I'll put on staff meals as a thanks. We are a pretty close knit group here”.

Interview with: Reggie Cambell, Owner of The Victoria Hotel

Engagement within Moreland:

Business based in Brunswick

What's your history with the Vic Hotel? 

I bought it just a couple of days before Christmas in 2010. It was a different kind of pub back then. It was more of a dive bar. They didn't have a kitchen. It was pretty run down and it operated infrequently. In the last nine years I've built it up bit by bit. We started with live music for the first five years, but with the area changing, the focus moved more towards showing the footy and the kitchen. I've found a big increase in revenue and turnover since I made that change.

The room we're sitting in now, didn't have furniture for two years and now it can sit 80 people. I've had a hostel upstairs as well, which has about 30 beds. We mostly accommodate international backpackers. So we operate as a meeting point for internationals. A lot of them stay for a while. They sort of settled down in Melbourne, stayed here for a few months and then went somewhere else. Do their farm work...They called this place a home away from home. That was really good. Though it's disappointing now that no one can come to australia. That's going to affect the business a lot next summer.

Was there a lot of income coming through from the hostel?

It made up for the shortfalls I had for the downstairs business in my first sort of four or five years. The upstairs accommodation would pay the rent and help out with the bills. I don't think without that I could have made it.

What was the surrounding communities engagement with the hotel before the pandemic? 

It was great! We have a lot of regulars. We sponsor the Brunswick football club, The Brunswick junior football club. I got a lot to do with the Royal Park Reds Cricket club. A lot of the guys from there call this a home from the club. There's just weekly things that you notice, especially now that they're not happening. Like the indoor soccer place. Once a week the same group of blokes will play their soccer game, come down here for a jug, and head off home. It's a really good meeting place for people in Brunswick. 

We have our own pub footy team, The Galahs. And a pub cricket team. You know, there's a lot of people who play who hang out here. So it's a kind of place where if you have a couple hours to kill, you're probably likely to find someone you know to have a chat with in the pub. And that was my ambition at the start. And hopefully we can get back to those ways in a few months. 

First stage restrictions were implemented in Australia on the 23rd of March. When did the Vic Hotel shutdown and why? 

We shut down on the Saturday, I think it was the 21st...So I think the Sunday before, they said a  maximum of a hundred patrons at our venue, which is fine. We could operate under those conditions. But then on the Thursday..or I think the Friday, they changed the rules to one person to four square meters. And we tried that for one night. We would get groups of six, eight walking in at once. Want a beer. And we just couldn't do it. We couldn't keep eight people in one room, six in the other, you know... Out in the beer garden... that was different rules. But when they wanted to come into the bar to buy beer, then you're over the limit. 

We tried operating with those restrictions on one night...Though the staff were just stressed out of their heads. When someone would walk in the door... And then you know.. The piano would stop playing. Everyone working would stop, turn around, "Have we got enough? Oh, we can't let you in". And so we decided to call it that night. Which in hindsight was two days early. Which was fine. But we managed to have a good last day with the staff on Saturday. Divvied up all the food. We had thousands of dollars worth of fresh stock. Cause we were expecting Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, opening around the AFL, which would have been busy. At least I was able to give a big food package to all the staff to sort of help them out for a couple of weeks.

There were thoughts at the time, like, is this it? Is the pub going to go? Whats the landlord going to say? Do we have to pay full rent?... A couple of weeks after we close, it was all a bit hazy you could say. You're not too sure what's going to happen. But once the government introduced the job keeper, that made a hell of a difference because I was able to employ five staff back on that program. Few of the other staff have other jobs so they were fine. One is a school teacher, one’s just had a baby. So he was able to be a stay at home dad. 

The ones that I really felt for were a few of our Nepalese staff. One is on a student visa and one's married, but he hasn't got permanent residency yet. But he was able to get a job at his wife's work. So they've kind of sorted themselves out, but that was a real kind of hard one to deal with. Cause you got these guys who work with you for a year, two years.. And now I've got no money, no turnover, so I can't employ them. So what can we do? But they're doing all right now. So hopefully we can get them back when we reopened straight away. 

The current staff are still employed on Jobkeeper. So they come and do about 15, 20 hours a week painting a few walls and doing maintenance. They feel a lot better coming to work and hanging out with their friends doing something. At the end of the week I'll cook dinner for all the staff and we'll have some beers. I'll put on staff meals as a thanks. We are a pretty close knit group here. 

How was the hostel impacted? 

The hostel was at capacity which was 30 people. Within a week or less we were down to six people. Now we've got three left. One is working remotely, another one's working in a nursing home and another guy's just bombing around. There's no chance of getting anyone to come, unless they come from other hostels in Melbourne. There's no one coming to Australia. 

Do you have any future visions for the Vic Hotel? 

We want to be back to business as usual. I think at the end of the month it's going to be 50 people, but we're still four square meters per person. That still doesn't really change things to us, it takes our capacity up to about 40 or 45. Hopefully we'll have all the kitchen back up and running by then and we can start having a few nights. Maybe from Thursday to Saturday or Wednesday to Saturday. See how it goes. It will also give us a really good chance to try out our new menu. Also see how the bar operates now that we've changed it all around. Just cross our fingers that the restrictions are lifted sooner rather than later.

Interview and photos by Simon Aubor. Photographed prior to the 2020 Flourish: Arts Recovery Grant