COVID-19 turns Princetown into a ghost town

The few businesses that are left, along with Corangamite Shire mayor Ruth Gstrein, are calling for the state and federal governments to "show a little love" and help revive the area.

When the borders slammed shut two years ago, it cut off the area's main source of income - international tourists.

While this week Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the borders would reopen later this month, Kangaroobie camp's Matt Bowker said he expected it would be at least two years before they started to see numbers anywhere near like what they had in 2019.

The town's pub has not been open since just after COVID hit in March 2020, and apart from the toilets, there is no where to even get coffee with the general store long since closed.

There are plans for an eco-lodge at Princetown which has a restaurant or cafe, but it is unclear when that might be built and opened.

Owner of the 13^th Apostle group accommodation Pete Glennon said up to 200 cars a day would drive in, do a lap around the roundabout and drive away. But he often gets people knocking on his door just to get a coffee.

Corangamite Shire Council's growth and engagement manager Rory Neeson said help was needed at state and federal levels to drive up tourism in the region.

"Princetown has been heavily impacted by COVID over the last two years and would be one of the hardest hits towns along the Great Ocean Road with the loss of international tourists and its close proximity to the 12 Apostles," Mr Neeson said.

"An increase in major marketing campaigns by both the state and federal governments is something that council is advocating for, to help drive tourism in the region, especially with international borders starting to reopen."

Mr Neeson said the council had offered a variety of its own grant programs for businesses affected by COVID, some of which had been taken up by some businesses in Princetown.

The council, he said, had also contributed to marketing campaigns encouraging domestic visitation to our shire.

But Cr Gstrein said more needed to be done because COVID had "closed the town down".

"It seems to be a causality of COVID that people haven't been able to get staff or re-open after the lockdowns. It's the lack of visitation to the area," she said.

Some businesses closed in the first lockdown and never re-opened, and the "opening and closing" of lockdowns and the insecurity has had an impact, Cr Gstrein said.

She said the Great Ocean Road Authority had been working to get federal and state dollars into tourism.

"I use Princetown as our example. There's not a business open," Cr Gstrein said. "You go in there and it just feels deserted.

"People are still doing it tough.

"You come down this end of the Great Ocean Road when things are usually buzzing and it was noticeably quieter.

"We've had a reasonable summer weather-wise but there wasn't as many people around."

In mid-January she was surprised she could actually get a park at the foreshore it was that quiet.

Cr Gstrein said the businesses along the Great Ocean Road say they have had a reasonable season, but probably not the one they had wished for.

Apart from tourism, she said, there was an impact from COVID on locals who lived near Princetown as well.

"If you just want to buy a carton of milk you've got to go to Port Campbell or Simpson," she said.

Cr Gstrein said there was a perception that because Bright and Mansfield were doing well, then everyone had recovered but that was not the case.

Mr Glennon said they lost bus companies full of tourists when COVID hit, and when the pub closed it was too much and the general store had been closed for some time too.

"We've been quite successful now that things have opened up, but it is difficult because people still need to go 15 minutes down the road to Port Campbell if they need to get whatever they get," he said.

"It's a massive shame that it's happened.

"We have been a little bit lonely down this way. There's no business."

As for looking to the future, Mr Glennon said things were unpredictable. "It's like a Tattslotto ticket in a sense. You don't know what's going to happen," he said.

Before COVID, Mr Glennon said, Princetown was thriving.

"Now that it's all shut down, it is a ghost town," he said.

"It's a beautiful little spot. Given that we are literally five kilometres from the 12 Apostles and this township has been neglected, it is really sad because everyone misses out.

"We get people knocking on our door saying 'do you have any water or coffee?'"

Mr Glennon said he would help them out, even though that was not what his business offered.

"We've just copped it bad to be honest," he said.

"The amount of cars that come up and see the ghost town, it's a shame because the flow of people that would come through here.

"You'd get 200 plus cars a day and they'd drive around that roundabout and either drive back down that hill or they'd knock on our door and ask if we have coffee or water."

He said he had considered whether to open something to cater for the tourists.

Mr Glennon said it ruined people's holiday experience when nothing was open.

But Mr Glennon said government help would be appropriate, and some private investment was needed.

"The government definitely needs to take some action if they want to keep the town alive and if they don't it's a massive shame," he said.

"We're like a blip on the radar. We're a small town but we don't receive the love we deserve."

Mr Bowker said he knew full well the economic reality of what COVID had done to Princetown and the surrounding region.

"Despite the word being that there are people everywhere and it's all going great guns, that's not the reality," he said.

"It's getting busy at the weekends but during the week it's still very quiet down here.

"The visitation numbers at the 12 Apostles are way down and right across the board.

"It's really, really difficult to get staff.

"I've got three sons and the two oldest ones had three jobs over summer in different cafes and restaurants in the ice creamery and brewery. They were just going from one job to the other each day to help out with the staffing."

Mr Bowker said tourists would not come back in big numbers for a while, even with international tourism re-starting.

"International tourism in big numbers is at least two years away I would have thought," he said.

"I don't really know what the answer is."

Mr Bowker also runs the Cape Otway Lighthouse and the visitor numbers there were "way down".

Traditionally, half the visitation numbers had been international tourists and 30 per cent were from interstate. "There just isn't a lot of interstate visitors either," he said.

"While people are saying that there's lots and lots of people around and the tourists are back and everything is going great guns, that's not actually the reality. It's a long way down."

But it was a different story at Kangaroobie. "We're flat out. At Kangaroobie we are booked three years in advance. We're chockas. We've got 150 kids here at the moment.

"For the rest of this year we don't have any space which is great."

But that has come after nearly 11 months where school groups weren't allowed there, but he said luckily Jobkeeper had kept staff afloat.

However, family groups that stay at Kangaroobie have no where to go for a meal or a drink unless they drive to Port Campbell.

He said the recreation reserve did a good job running the popular camping area.

Mr Bowker said the perception was that Princetown was a gold mine because of the number of people driving past, but since COVID that had changed.

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