After years of running at a loss, the Coledale RSL Club will close its doors for the final time this weekend, with last drinks served on Sunday, December 11.
“The club has been consistently losing an average of about $15,000 a month for the last four or five years,” the non-profit's secretary/director, Warrick Try, said.
“We've just finally run out of cash.”
Warrick said the club is closing ahead of the peak summer season in order to pay its creditors.
“That's why we're closing on Sunday, while we've still got enough money to pay everything that we owe.”
Warrick, 80, is an Austinmer local who has managed the club in challenging times that have included Black Summer, Covid lockdowns, La Niña and a changing community.
“I’ve been a volunteer here for five years, seven days a week,” Warrick said.
“I was trying to save the club. It was my favourite watering hole.
“When I joined the board five years ago, I had hopes of turning it around… But obviously, it hasn't worked.”
The club’s closure is the end of an era locally and part of a nationwide trend.
“There's over 100 clubs of our size, smaller clubs, that have closed since Covid began,” Warrick said. “And 60 of them are in New South Wales. Some of them are on our own Illawarra coast. … it's just ongoing. I mean, we've all seen the demise here of North Leagues Club and Austi Bowling Club, and Thirroul RSL …
“It’s just the case that it's not a business model that's popular with the changing demographic of our area. People that come to Coledale and buy a $2 million house are not the sort of people that spend their money in clubs.
“The clubs are traditionally the avenue of relaxation for the working man, you know, the coal miners and so on.”
The land where the club is today was once a soccer field. After World War II, 18 foundation members each put in 10 pounds to buy the three vacant blocks on the corner of Lawrence Hargrave Drive and Cater Street. Coledale Memorial Hall officially opened on 31 July 1948.
For continuity’s sake, the Coledale RSL Sub-branch was invited to become trustees on behalf of the local community, Warrick said.
“And the trustees in their wisdom then leased the building in perpetuity to the RSL Club Limited, to supply them with some rent which, in turn, was to be used for the welfare of returning soldiers and so on.”
Warrick said the Coledale club had hoped to amalgamate with a bigger club, and that Tradies, the Illawarra Catholic Club and the Fraternity Club had been interested.
“All those would've come in and spent lots of money and updated the venue and funded the losses and got on with the club under an amalgamated situation.”
However, the land is owned by the Coledale RSL Sub-branch, a separate entity, part of the national veterans’ charity, the Returned and Services League of Australia. The sub-branch, which has about 50 members, unanimously voted not to sell the property.
This made amalgamation unviable, Warrick said. “From the incoming amalgamating club’s point of view, they weren't going to spend millions of dollars on somebody else's property. That's the bottom line.”
James Gatley, secretary of the Coledale RSL Sub-branch, said that their relationship with the club was amicable.
“The sub-branch is continuing to explore all options, including a new tenancy and the existing club under its existing licence remaining open, and we’re in discussions with a number of parties for that outcome," James said.
“We actually have immense respect for what Warrick, Adam and the team through this difficult time are doing, and continue to do, particularly on a volunteer basis. We acknowledge that they’re doing a good job through a difficult time and we are working with them.”
Warrick said some of the problems stemmed from members who didn’t support the club on a day-to-day basis.
“Just to give you an example: we called an extraordinary general meeting of members in August to tell them that we're having financial difficulties, considering closing and looking for support and so on and so forth. We had 84 people at that meeting and I didn't recognise any more than a dozen as customers and I haven't seen any of them since.
“They came in and voted on this and voted on that and refused to allow us to sell the poker machine entitlements and all that sort of stuff.
“They've forced us more or less into a situation now where the local people, the genuine users of the club, are just in a minority … that’s really, really bad from the local community's point of view.”
In a public letter in November, Coledale RSL Sub-branch president Michael Connor explained what the sub-branch does (from organising Anzac Day services to fundraising for veterans). He also shared a history of Coledale Memorial Hall and the sub-branch’s plans for the site, including the possibility of taking on new tenants.
“The difficulty with this is,” Michael wrote, “while the property is zoned B1 Neighbourhood Business, the Land Use is ‘Registered Club’ and a Development Application needs to be submitted by the Sub-branch to enable other Commercial Business to operate.”
The sub-branch cannot answer questions about who new tenants might be as these discussions are “commercial in confidence”.
Rezoning the land via Wollongong City Council could be a long and complex process. “And in our area here, we've got neighbours on all four sides that complain if we ring a bell,” Warrick said.
“The other major thing is that a liquor licence would be even more difficult to obtain because the liquor licence goes with the club because, once again, it's the licence purely for a non-profit organisation.”
The club will shut its doors on Sunday evening, December 11, then plans to give members a month’s notice ahead of an extraordinary general meeting in mid-January 2023.
"At that stage, we'll start the liquidation process,” Warrick said.
“In the meantime, we are trying to negotiate now with our sub-branch about simple things like maintaining the yard and the memorials and memorabilia.”
The club held its last big Christmas ham raffle last night, Thursday, December 8. There were no big plans for the final weekend, Warrick said.
“It will depend on how our stock lasts. We've been running the stock down over the past few weeks … there’ll possibly be some cheap or free drinks for the patrons that linger on Sunday.”
The final irony? It could be the club’s best trading weekend in a long time, with Warrick expecting “a full house”.