Ex-Drift restaurant owner relives the day he lost his s---

A decade ago David Moore lost everything and was forced to sink his award-winning restaurant. Now he’s back with a new venture.

David Moore will never forget the moment he lost it.

It was just before 6pm on January 11, a decade’s blink ago, when he was forced by police to walk into his beloved Drift restaurant on the Brisbane River and open all doors and windows, leaving the award-winning 400-seater to be ravaged by floodwaters.

“It was a dumb order, and I lost my s--t – I tried to argue with them, saying ‘give us 10 more minutes’, but they weren’t listening,” he says, reliving the day his world fell apart.

“Surreal, incomprehensible, infuriating, it was all that and more.”

David Moore reflects on the devastating floods of 2011 that destroyed his beloved Drift restaurant on the river at Milton. Picture: Steve Pohlner

Drift restaurant at Milton, the day after it was sacrificed to floodwaters, January 12, 2011.

Mr Moore, then 43, knew Drift had been engineered to withstand floods. It sat on extendible steel columns that could elevate it above the 5.45m high tide of 1974.

In that fateful summer of 2011, the river would peak one metre lower.

But the Department of Community Safety wasn’t budging, or the police tasked with carrying out its orders, despite the frantic and almost successful efforts of Mr Moore to save his “baby”.

He and a team of staff, tradesmen and engineers had been working for hours to release the venue from four tethers to the river bank (added after its original 1988 build and before Mr Moore established Drift, formerly Oxley’s on the River, in 2010).

Three tethers had been cut when he says police arrived, took possession of the site, and forced him to sacrifice it.

“They told us all to leave or we’d be arrested – they wouldn’t even listen to the engineers – and then they ordered me to go back in on my own and open everything up.”

Those stolen 10 minutes, Mr Moore believes, would have allowed the fourth tether to be cut, freeing Drift to, quite literally, rise above.

But it was not to be, and the next day Queenslanders watched unforgettable footage of the white sails of the 80-seater Jetty Cafe, a recent addition to the Drift venue, float downstream and crash into the Go Between Bridge.

Drift remained, a shell devoid of fittings, furniture … and its bright future.

“I was shattered,” Mr Moore says. “We had two years of forward bookings for weddings and events, and we’d just won Australia’s best new restaurant, sensationally beating Matt Moran’s Aria, and then we had nothing.”

David Moore at what remained of Drift, on January 14, 2011

Drift was insured but he says the insurance company “refused to pay in an unbelievable catch 22”. “It said we failed to take action to protect the site, but we couldn’t protect it once the police took it over.”

Months turned into years as Mr Moore sought compensation through the Disaster Act, and during that time he received death threats from suppliers and battled suicidal thoughts due to post traumatic stress disorder, which he still struggles with today.

“When I got a payout two and a half years later, the first thing I did was honour every debt. Businesses had already written off the loss so they thought I was crazy, but it was the right thing to do.”

Ten years on, Drift is in the throes of being resurrected by new owners, and Mr Moore is finally in a good place.

OMG! Decadent Donuts

In 2019 he and his partner Andrew Clarke established a doughnut company that now has 35 licensees across Australia. OMG! Decadent Donuts began as a market stall but friends – lawyer Steve Morris and marketer Di O’Reilly – came on board and convinced them to expand.

“From the outset, I said I only wanted to do it if I could help other people start their own business and benefit financially,” Mr Moore says.

OMG! are gluten-free, vegan and dusted with fruit sugars, and licensees make batches using supplied mixes.

The company bagged two prestigious Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards in 2020 for innovation, and OMG! were voted Brisbane’s best doughnuts in a Courier-Mail reader poll.

“We’ve been able to give people new income streams, including mums wanting to get back in the workforce and travel agents made redundant through COVID – many are on track to earn six figures,” Mr Moore says.

“I struggled for years after the floods, so you have no idea how happy it makes me to see the positive impact on others.”