Old pub's heartache

[pies4ever]

Old pub's heartache
Terry Brown
25aug05

CRESSY publican Brian Armstrong's T-shirt reads, "Stop what you're doing. Your pub needs you".

Behind the bar there's a sign.
"I've been kicked, punched, promised, robbed, underpaid, under-appreciated, overworked, lied to and overlooked.

"The only reason I stay in this bloody place is to see what happens next."

They were both supposed to be funny, but at the Frenchman's Inn, not much is funny now.

After 164 years, time is running out for Victoria's first licensed pub.

"Yeah," Brian grimaces, "the great Australian dream gone sour."

Frenchman's Inn, 38km out of Colac, is Cressy's store, post office and gas cylinder distributor.

Mostly, though, it's the pub that's been the heart of the town since Victoria was called New South Wales.

Heartache Tonight is on the juke box and the heartache continued on Monday morning while Brian slept.

Thieves broke in and helped themselves to

$15,000, mainly in cigarettes and cash, including the footy tips and pool competition money.

A thriving business might have coped, but the Frenchman's Inn isn't one.

Brian and partner Tracy bought the pub in May, 1997. Why?

"Stupidity," Brian, 51, says. "We saw the pub, liked it, thought we'd have a go, and it's gone downhill ever since."

Within 18 months, the local Cressy Demons football club folded -- and worse.

"Our top three drinkers got sugar diabetes. That cost us 2 1/2 barrels a week."

One of them, Mick Humphrey, does his best despite limitations, managing a few light beers.

"Three of us went down together. He lost his best three," Mick says, sounding a bit guilty.

"We've lost the footy club, the cricket club looks like it could go. We wouldn't want to lose the pub. We hope they can battle it out, somehow.

"A town does need a pub."

Shrinking, ageing townships, though, don't need them like they once did.

"Regulars? A couple. The older-type regulars who come to the pub every night? We've got one," Brian says.

When the local shop closed in 2001, the pub's dining room became Cressy's new store -- another mistake.

"Fifty-five houses in town and we sell about three loaves of bread a week if we're lucky," he says. "I can't see how we can keep going. I really can't.

"It might be a week, it might be a month, it might be three months. It won't be long.

"I'll have to talk to the bank, see how deep in the s--- I am."

Yesterday, after getting the jemmied till to work again, it was business as usual and the usual lack of customers.

Liquor special signs to lure them in carried the Happy Host logo.

"Unhappy host," Brian said, not the only one unhappy.

Darron Carley lives opposite. He moved there in March, possibly for the location.

"I refuse to drive 39km into Colac just to have a drink," he says, sounding a little angry.

"Come out," he dares the unknown thief.

"Let him show his face. I'll take him on.

"Without the pub, the town will close as well."

http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,16373405%255E2862,00.html