July 2010

Travellers support liquor plea

No takeaway booze sales at outback Lazy Lizard

A Northern Territory outback caravan park has been refused permission to sell takeaway alcohol and provide gaming facilities.

The 84-site Lazy Lizard Caravan Park in historic Pine Creek, heralded as the gateway to the World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park, is already permitted to sell booze with meals at its unique tavern, built with mud from termite mounds and featuring many artefacts from the heady gold rush days.

It had planned a small beer garden with alcohol and gaming facilities and had received support from 14 travellers for its application to the NT Licensing Commission to vary its liquor licence and extend the licensed area to allow takeaway sales and provide TAB and Keno facilities.

But the town's Pine Creek Hotel opposed the application, raising fears for the welfare of unsupervised children who visited the park after classes finished at the local primary school 100 metres away.

Representing the hotel, Mr Antony Downs claimed at the hearing that the Lazy Lizard store was the first port of call for many students and was likely to attract more if it offered internet services as proposed.

With alcohol and gaming facilities, the store would no longer be an "appropriate environment" and would expose the youngsters to alcohol consumption and gaming, he said.

Announcing the Commission's decision, chairman Richard O'Sullivan believed the application was outside the park's original concept.

"The Commission considers this to be an ill-conceived proposal and one that will add little, if any, amenity to the public or the existing licensed premises," he said.

"The Lazy Lizard is primarily a caravan park, providing the types of services and amenities normally associated with the operation of a business of that nature."

While the business had held a liquor licence - styled as a Tavern Licence - since 2000 the sale of liquor was not the primary or dominant purpose of the business as would be the case generally for a tavern licence, he said.

The Commission viewed the application for extension of the licensed area and a relaxation of the gaming condition as an attempt at "licence creep" which was not in accordance with the concept of the premises as originally envisaged, Mr O'Sullivan added.