‘A beach bar in a dry zone creates problems for the police’: Peter Goers talks the newly extended dry zone in Glenelg

Holdfast Bay Council’s recent dry zone expansion in Glenelg has Peter Goers questioning the one spot still free to enjoy a beverage in the area.

When is a dry zone not a dry zone? When there’s a beach bar in the middle of it.

Holdfast Bay Council has extended Glenelg’s dry zone. The dry zone used to be Glenelg Beach, Moseley Square, Colley Reserve and Wigley Reserve but it has been hugely expanded to include all of Jetty Rd and every side street for an entire block and the tram stop on Brighton Rd. SA Police wanted this and the council has achieved it. The council did a poll of all of 102 people, 86 per cent of whom wanted the dry zone extended. Whoopee! The people have spoken … well, a few of them.

This is the same council which ignored polls in which thousands of people opposed the redevelopment of Jetty Rd. Some say dry zones are symptomatic of the nanny state and indeed dry zones are used to discourage anti-social behaviour often from the dispossessed. Dry zones generally work. Who wants to see drunks in the gutters or people getting shickered in the streets?

‘A beach bar in a dry zone creates problems for the police,’ writes Peter Goers.

However, the arrant hypocrisy of allowing a beach bar in the middle of a dry zone is galling. Enjoy a soothing ale on a park bench in Colley Reserve or quaff Prosecco on the beach and you can be fined $1250. That’s a very expensive drink.

Yet, you can go to the Moseley Beach Club on Glenelg beach and spend a fortune on cocktails in coconut shells and that’s perfectly legal.

The Holdfast Bay Council supports you. If you step out of the beach bar enclosure holding a drink you are in a dry zone and are breaking the law. I’ve seen this happen frequently and no one, to my knowledge, has been fined.

The beach is an Australian birthright. We are an island nation, girt by sea and pissed at lunch. There are 10,685 beaches in Australia on 66,530km of coastline and only one privatised beach – the beach bar at Glenelg. The beach bar seems to get bigger every year.

A huge section of Glenelg Beach is hived off and fenced off every year in a dry zone on one of Australia’s most popular and famous family beaches. It runs for at least 11 hours a day for up to five months.

I sit on the jetty above the beach bar and glare at the patrons. A beach bar in a dry zone creates problems for the police. They point out people drinking alcohol on the beach or the lawns and when told they can’t, they say, “What about the beach bar”. I’ve watched drunks stagger out of the beach bar and into the water – which is dangerous.

The public toilets are a long way away and beach bar patrons are observed urinating and defecating under the jetty. Does the Holdfast Bay Council really want this?

If there’s a storm the council bulldozers are there within minutes to patch it up; The beach bar pays a peppercorn rent to the council.

We are told the beach bar brings people to Glenelg. A brothel on the beach in a huge marquee would also be very popular. That would be illegal but laws can be changed to allow a beach bar in a dry zone.

It’s very welcome to have a libation after a nice day at the beach and people can walk up, hot and sticky from the beach to many excellent bars and hotels nearby. Why do people have to drink alcohol on a beach in a dry zone?

Victoria Square is a dry zone. Will we get a bar in the middle of that?

New Year’s Eve at Glenelg is also one big piss-up in a dry zone. I know, because I go out after midnight and collect beer cans and beer bottles strewn across Colley Reserve and donate the proceeds to charity so that at least some good comes from drinking alcohol illegally in a dry zone.