Moonan business suffering from customer cut off

DIMITY Bartlett, owner of the Pickled Goose Cafe in Moonan Flat, was shattered to hear the Barrington Forest Road, a crucial connection between the Mid Coast and Upper Hunter, won’t be reopening until June next year.

The road was closed in March after flooding caused major structural damage and landslide risks to road users.

Ms Bartlett said the road closure has had such a severe impact on her business, she won’t be able to keep the cafe doors open for much longer.

“It was an instant cut off. The impact that it’s had on the traffic is just immense,” Ms Bartlett said.

“The drop off would have to be at least 80 percent. During the last school holidays, it was just completely dead, ” she said.

“I usually serve close to 100 people a day on weekends when it’s peak season. Just to put in into perspective, I’ve been open today since 6am this morning, it’s about 10:30am and I’ve had five customers, three of which were just coffees. Normally I wouldn’t stop until this time of the morning,” she said.

“I’ve had many sleepless nights, many tears. I don’t know how long I’ve got. I wanted to close a few months ago, but my partner keeps telling me to hang in there.

“My head says close the doors, but my heart says, no you don’t want to do that, you’ve put so much work into it,” said Ms Bartlett.

Although Ms Bartlett has enough worries when it comes to her own business’ survival, she’s still found time to sympathise with others affected by the road closure.

“The Victoria Hotel Pub next to me, I don’t know how they’re still going, they have far more overheads than I do. My heart bleeds for them, it must be so much worse financially for them than it is for me,” Ms Bartlett said.

“National Parks said they had an almost instant decline in people going through the park because they access it from both sides,” she said.

“One particular fella, who’s dad has cancer, he used to be able to duck across to Foster in an hour and a half and now it takes him almost five hours, so he’s not getting over to his dad as often because he can’t make that round trip in a day,” she said.

After surviving the drought, floods, pandemic lockdowns and the mice plague, the road closure appears to be the nail in the coffin for this Moonan business.

“Normally traffic comes through all year round, it’s not just school holidays, you have the grey nomads that are travelling all the time. We used to get a lot of retired people coming from the Gloucester side for a day out,” Ms Bartlett said.

“Things were starting to kick-off with Covid-19 restrictions easing and all the quarantines dropping off. People were allowed to travel again, but they just couldn’t get through from the other side,” she said.

“This snow season, with the last lot of snow we had, I understand why our Mayor and the police were saying don’t go to the Barrington due to the condition of the road, I fully understand that, but it didn’t help businesses. Our livelihood depends on that traffic,” she said.

“Even though we did get a bit of traffic from snow travellers, it was nowhere near the numbers we used to have, so a lot of people were listening to the advice about the road. A lot of people also didn’t stop and that was to do with Covid-19 warnings.

“In the last few years, we’ve copped the lot out here, we had the drought and then the floods, then Covid-19, then the damn mice, it’s been a nightmare with no let up in between.

“When the fires were going on and I had fire crews coming through, I was feeding anywhere up to 28 people for breakfast and lunch. I’d come in, pre-pack it all and send them off with their boxes for the day, but because of Covid-19 and because of this landslide, there’s nowhere near as many workers coming through in groups like that unless it’s an absolute emergency,” she said.

“With the drought, a lot of the older farmers have stopped, so all of the local farmers that do the usual managing, they’re not coming out because the stock isn’t here. There’s so many factors, it’s a massive domino effect,” said Ms Bartlett.

Despite all, Ms Bartlett remains hopeful and is still looking for ways to make the Pickled Goose Cafe survive another year.

“I was lucky enough to be offered a lifeline in the way of a business venture connected to the cafe, but at this stage we don’t know if it’s doable. We’re looking into logistics and if it works out, it can come into fruition around October and might be able to sustain me financially until June next year,” Ms Bartlett said.

“We’re also looking into Natural Disaster Funding, but it’s a grey area. Gloucester and the Mid Coast are on the criteria for that list, but we don’t fall under that area, even though we’ve been drastically affected by that flooding and this landslide,” she said.

“If it all comes together, it may help me keep my doors open,” she said.

“We’ll pick ourselves up, shake it off and it will be good,” said Ms Bartlett.