Carolyn Reynolds vows to ‘die in the High Court fighting’ the closure of her Lake Bennett Resort

‘I’ll admit they were past their best before date, because pumpkin seeds, your honour, were found in Tutankhamun’s grave and they’ll still grow.’

A long-running dispute between Lake Bennett Resort owner Carolyn Reynolds and the chief health officer ‘all started over pumpkin seeds’.

LAKE Bennett Resort owner Carolyn Reynolds has vowed to “die in the High Court fighting” a decision to shutter the business due to public health concerns, a court has heard.

Ms Reynolds is appealing a Local Court ruling upholding NT chief health officer Hugh Heggie’s order that the resort’s restaurant be closed following issues with the use of lake water in its kitchen.

During a hearing in the Supreme Court this week, Ms Reynolds argued she had been denied natural justice by Local Court judge Tanya Fong Lim, saying “everything I did to try and make this a fair and open hearing was refused”.

“You know it’s worse than being to jail, knowing that you could help people, knowing that’s your passion and yet every single thing I’ve ever tried to do I’ve been precluded from doing,” she said.

“I haven’t been allowed my witnesses, I haven’t been allowed to put evidence in, I haven’t been able to help the court with experts, I haven’t been able to furnish the material.”

Representing herself, Ms Reynolds said the government “had it in for me” after she was terrorised by a neighbour who took “pot shots” at her and released a saltwater crocodile into her lake and who she described as being “good friends” with Mr Heggie.

After draping the court’s audio/visual equipment with Territory and Australian flags and producing her own bible on which to swear her meandering submissions, Ms Reynolds explained how her difficulties with the chief health officer began following some confusion over pumpkin seeds she kept in the resort’s refrigerator.

“This all started, your honour, because there were some pumpkin seeds that I was going to experiment with, with kids, that we’d set up into three different groups,” she said.

“One to go and crush up to make flour, in order to get them to make really great, fantastic damper to cook.

“The other section, your honour, we had so we could feed them to the chickens and do an experiment to see what chickens prefer to eat, whether it’s pumpkin seeds, sultanas, peanuts or Cornflakes.”

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Ms Reynolds said she was initially fined for keeping the seeds intended for the chooks in the resort’s “dry perishables fridge” after the neighbour had “kicked me to smithereens”.

“I’ll admit they were past their best before date, because pumpkin seeds, your honour, were found in Tutankhamun’s grave and they’ll still grow,” she said.

“I opened a packet of pumpkin seeds and started eating them and said ‘You must be kidding me’ and that’s where it all started, your honour, because I had a head injury and I was a bit impulsive at that time and … I made a mistake.”

Counsel for Mr Heggie, Josh Nottle, told the court Ms Fong Lim had ruled no new evidence was admissible during the Local Court review of the chief health officer’s decision.

“It wasn’t an application for judicial review looking at any alleged misfeasance,” he said.

“It was the Local Court standing in the chief health officer’s shoes and determining whether the Local Court was satisfied of the statutory criteria so any evidence that the chief health officer might give was irrelevant.”

But Chief Justice Michael Grant suggested that argument was a case of “trying to have your cake and eat it”.

“You can’t say that it’s purely a review of the merits of the decision and then say that the decision maker is then immune from inquiry into any issue of apprehension of bias can you, and is immune from giving evidence on that basis?” he said.

“That just doesn’t seem to be right to me.”

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Chief Justice Grant reserved his decision until a date to be fixed.