✨ CREAM TOWN NEEDS YOUR HELP ✨

We’ve recently been made aware of objections to our pending Planning Permit application with Leanganook/Mount Alexander Shire Council for a General Liquor Licence.

Without this licence, our capacity to grow is severely stunted and our business financially unviable. We’ve been blessed with taking over this amazing 160 year old space made from Dja Dja Wurrung stone with a rich history and beauty, but without a liquor licence and the opportunities that licence would give us - ie. evening food service, venue hire, events, live music - we’re honestly unsure if we’ll be able to survive, let alone thrive in the way our families energy truly desires.

We understand why residents would want to object for fear of their peace being disturbed so we want to be completely transparent about what our intentions would be if we are to receive this licence.

- Friday to Monday we would be open for breakfast, lunch & dinner service.
- Tuesday to Thursday we would be open for breakfast & lunch.
- We would like to sporadically host live music in our courtyard in the afternoon or early evenings on and have a dance music night monthly inside our front room, all only on weekends and always finishing up by 11pm in accordance with our local council law.

It is important to note that after receiving concerns regarding our first event that was outdoors, we moved the music inside after 8pm for our other two events and did decibel meter testing on the street with a reading of 40 - 47db, well below the legal residential limit of 55 - 65db.

We also would like to acknowledge that residents are basing their objections off a few events that occurred at CT over the 3 weekends of Castlemaine State Festival, seemingly neglecting to note that there have been numerous open air events throughout the last few weeks throughout the town with projected residential noise far beyond our contribution and with much greater frequency.

We were still able to hear projected music from our gate from CSF events after our events had finished. We were able to hear projected dance music from our home well after midnight and we accepted it as a part of the festivities that happen for a couple of weeks every two years.

Our town and its economy are enormously stimulated by events of this kind. The reality is the majority of venues in Castlemaine are in residential areas and this is a town that is famous for and thrives off its arts & music scene that is allowed by the existence of these venues.

We would love the opportunity to contribute to this in our own unique way and create more space to support our local music makers & artists. And we know we are able to do this without causing significant hindrance to our neighbours. We are immensely open to working with our neighbours to ensure that our having a liquor licence doesn’t unreasonably affect our neighbourhood.

We want to heavily stress we don’t intend to stimulate a ‘pub environment’ as people fear, we just want to be able to open for dinner service 4 nights a week and occasionally host some live music at reasonable hours in our courtyard. We have asked for the capacity to have the liquor licence be from 7am - midnight not because we intend to have parties 7 days a week from 7am - midnight, but because it was the standard we observed for venues like ours.

Our focus and offering is all about stimulating our local and wider community through education, inspiration and shared beautiful experience. Through the temporary liquor licence we were granted by the VCGLR for Castlemaine State Festival over the last two weeks, we were able to have a totally local offering of alcohol that saw thousands of dollars going straight to other local small businesses. Our 3 events all sold out and all of our door sales (over 2k) went directly to local musicians & DJs.

And this was just what we managed to do with a few days notice, after being notified our temporary liquor licence was going through 48 hours before the festival started, with the giant help of having the most amazing banquet of local booze makers & immensely talented music makers!

Our family has been working around the world for decades with a strong & dedicated purpose to regenerate the environment, communities & economy to change the way we eat, grow, consume & create forever - so that there is a forever. We’ve all come home now to Dja Dja Wurrung Country, where we’ve been for 7 generations, to work together as a family to intergrate our vast passions, experiences and skills to cultivate a safe & inclusive space for our beloved community that we believe can stimulate a new way of enterprise, showing what the future can look like when we’re all dedicated to not taking advantage of planet & people.

If you’ve eaten one of mum & dad’s nourishing meals, had a ripper boogie at one of our Cream Club events, enjoyed the gorgeous service of our team members or just believe in what we’re trying to do, we would be SO grateful if you could spare a few minutes out of your day to sign & share this petition for our Planning Permit application to Leanganook/Mount Alexander Shire Council.

The decision will be made by council in the next month or so, so we need our community to rally around us swiftly to ensure that the Cream dream stays alive and thriving for many years to come.

Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts for your love & support on our journey thus far, we couldn’t do this without you.

Please note we are drafting a letter regarding this and outlining our intentions to reassure and open further dialogue with our neighbours our neighbours to be sent out this week. We are publicly writing this now as we are concerned of the impetus needed to support our case and not because we have any intention to ignore their concerns.