Last drinks: Mark Jaska puts on a happy face as he prepares to close Airey’s Inlet only pub.
ERIN PEARSON
MARK Jaska is a broken man.
After 10 years in charge of Airey’s Inlet Hotel, the leaseholder will call last drinks this weekend at the pub in which he raised his family.
Mr Jaska said the Melbourne owners’ decision not to renew the pub’s lease would leave him with no choice but to shut the venue.
The closure would leave Airey’s Inlet without a meeting place for sporting clubs, its after-hour milk bar and takeaway food shop, he said.
The pub had been serving as the town’s sole watering hole for more than 100 years.
“It’s just surreal, that’s the only way you can describe it,” Mr Jaska said.
“I’m walking around the pub selling equipment, trying to trade while trying to get my head around it all.
“We’re shattered.”
Albert Anderson opened the Inlet Hotel in the early 1900s when he realised a shire project would change the main route into town, according to history books.
Ash Wednesday bushfires in 1983 destroyed the timber hotel but patrons rallied around a temporary bar under a tent to maintain the liquor licence until the pub’s brick replacement opened.
Mr Jaska said the closure had been “imminent” for 18 months but Airey’s Inlet residents were still shocked nothing could be done to extend the lease.
The closure would also cost 15 jobs, he said.
Mr Jaska’s family would also feel the loss.
“Our children have grown up here. They don’t know anything else.
“It’s a spectacular place – it has got a small village community that everybody loves. From a community perspective, this place is important to the town.
“I’m standing here looking at the junior football jumpers hanging up in our bar and all the other memorabilia. They don’t have another place to hang this stuff.
“All the club meetings are held at the pub, so that’s where their prize possessions hang.
The pub’s closure will culminate with the Airey’s Inlet Open Mic competition this weekend. Mr Jaska said he was unsure what would happed to the pub site.
The hotel’s business adviser, Nick Zandes, refused to comment.
The site would present an attractive proposition for residential subdivision, with its position opposite Great Ocean Road and few other allotments available in the town.
