Karen and Rowan Alcock (far right) with the team at the pub. Photo: Bemboka Hotel Facebook.
While the working day is busy for everyone, there are some days when Karen and Rowan Alcock hardly see each other.
They now must balance running their beef and cattle farm with being publicans for their town’s newly (re-)opened pub.
The Bemboka Hotel sat on the market for several months before the Alcocks made their offer.
For Mr Alcock, it was motivated by saving a part of the town’s character he felt should be preserved.
“Bemboka needed another venue. It needed somewhere people could go and more options for takeaway or sit-down meals,” he said.
“Nobody was interested in buying a hotel, so I guess the salesman thought about selling it as a house. We didn’t want to see that happen.”
The new publicans are longtime locals – Mr Alcock’s family has been farming in the area for almost 150 years, while Ms Alcock moved from Nimmitabel.
While Bemboka is about 30 minutes from Bega, the couple wanted to make sure there was something local on offer.
“The lack of sleep is worthwhile when you see the results. You see happy people when you go to the pub – everybody’s laughing, everybody’s having a good time.
“We’d thought about [opening] a takeaway previously in the main street … This one’s ticked all the boxes for us.”
After purchasing the hotel, they gave the layout a makeover and added a cafe counter.
Ms Alcock said the hard work was paying off.
“We knew it would be very busy the first weekend, but it just completely threw us out of the water with how much support we got from all our locals,” she said.
“That first weekend was pretty much solid locals – they all kept coming in, even if it was just to have a quick coffee. But they’re all still here.”
The town’s watering hole has a cafe, a bar and three accommodation rooms. Photo: Bemboka hotel Facebook.
She said running the hotel and their farm was a balancing act and their daughters had returned to town to lend a hand.
“We’re doing minimum 14-hour days now. Rowan’s doing basically all the farm work himself … I go to the hotel,” she said.
“It’s pretty tough, but it’ll get easier once we get into the swing of things a bit more!”
The pub’s reopening follows a bushfire that burned much of the Alcock’s property, and forced isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It all combined to hit Bemboka with what Mr Alcock called a “pretty interesting 12 months, or however long that went for”.
“For me, the past couple of years have been bloody tough … And now, wow – we had two really wet years, which was fantastic for the countryside,” he said.
“Then the pub closed. To get that reopened – holy smokes … Prior to that [the reopening], you just didn’t see that. There was no way to catch up.”
The pub will be closed on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, before reopening to celebrate the end of the year.
The Bemboka Hotel and Cafe is located at 104 Loftus Street in Bemboka. Find its opening hours and menus on its Facebook page.
