Lord Exmouth Hotel wins shut down court battle
After a long court battle, the Lord Exmouth Hotel at Exeter can keep its beer garden open.
The Port Adelaide institution was battling a neighbour’s fight to have the hotel shut down over afternoon “soft rock” live music sessions.
Lord Exmouth, known as the Monkey House, is one of South Australia’s oldest pubs and has been serving beers since the 1850s.
Mother-of-three Sheena McCarthy, who lives adjacent to the venue, took the pub to the Licensing Court of SA to shut down its Sunday live music sessions, which she described as “oppressive” and “torture”.
McCarthy claimed the live music would start at 4pm on Sunday afternoons and end at 8:30pm, however would often go beyond that time. However, she also said, “it did not matter what time they played, they should not be there”.
The dispute escalated after Australia Day celebrations 2023, which McCarthy described as a “horrible day for her and her children”, particularly after a man entered her property and “urinated in front of her lounge room while her children were watching television”.
McCarthy left a letter under the windscreen wipers of cars parked near the hotel stating her case. It read: “Be a truly good Australian and stand up for people like us who are just trying to live in peace”.
Licensing Court Judge Brian Gilchrist was dismissive of the claim, saying patrons were best described as mostly “middle-aged and female” and the style of music as “soft or folk rock” played on Sunday afternoons “in periods of sunny, fine weather”.
Judge Gilchrist said he “found it surprising” that such customers would be concerning to neighbouring homes and said the assertions made in Ms McCarthy’s flyer were “either untrue or exaggerated”.
“The orders that she sought in pursuing this application are so draconian as to effectively amount to a request that the hotel cease to trade,” he said.
“My impression was that some of her evidence was reconstructed to achieve that outcome.
“By contemporary standards, most of the hotels’ patrons might fairly be described as relatively old and tame.”
Judge Gilchrist called pub owners Graham and Barbara Cox “competent, well-respected publicans” and dismissed McCarthy’s application.
“I understand Ms McCarthy’s frustration. A house directly adjacent to a hotel is not ideal accommodation for a young family (and) her personal circumstances might give her little choice but to continue to live there,” he said.
“However, I find the degree of offence, annoyance disturbance and inconvenience that Ms McCarthy is being subjected to … falls well short of being undue.”
Jonathan Jackson, 29th April 2024
