Batemans Bay struck by COVID-19 months after horror fires

Jacob Crooke had planned to take his staff to lunch at the Batemans Bay restaurant at the centre of a coronavirus outbreak.

Jacob Cooke, 34, outside his restaurant in Batemans Bay, NSW. After a busy seven weeks since reopening the restaurant is now closed again, with only three staff working, after 15 of his staff were placed in self-isolation. Picture: Sean Davey.

Small business owner Jacob Crooke had planned to take his staff to lunch at the Batemans Bay restaurant at the centre of a corona­virus outbreak, but a lucky twist of fate meant he reserved a table elsewhere.

Despite deciding not to eat at the town’s Soldiers Club linked to a cluster of eight cases, Mr Crooke was on Monday forced to temporarily close his restaurant — JJ’s at The Marina — after a staff member came into contact with an infected person.

Fifteen of his staff are now in self-isolation.

Since the outbreak more than a week ago, Mr Crooke said Batemans Bay on NSW’s south coast, which is normally inundated with Canberra residents during school holidays, had become a ghost town almost overnight.

“This time last week, it was a metropolis – the car parks have been full. We’ve been inundated with people for about seven weeks,” he said. Mr Crooke was quick to defend interstate visitors, saying the town could not survive without tourists following a horror bushfire season.

In a video on the restaurant’s Facebook page, Mr Crooke lashed out at fellow residents for “disgusting” comments about those visiting from out of town.

“It’s nobody’s right to say get out of our town. It’s a disgusting way of thinking,” he said.

“We need to band together as a community to come up with plans and positive thinking to try and get people to come later on.”

The town is a two-hour drive from the nation’s capital, and up to 80 ACT residents who visited the club last week have been forced to self-isolate.

No new cases were recorded in the territory on Tuesday, where the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases remains at 113.

A father and son who visited the Soldiers Club on July 13 while unknowingly infected had come from Sydney.

The nearby coastal hamlet of Mogo has also been affected by the spike in cases, with three shops temporarily closing after being visited by a positive case.

Lesley Eade, left, and son Harrison Millett 19, leave the COVID-19 testing facility in Batemans Bay, NSW. Picture: Sean Davey

Mogo Zoo director Chad Staples, who stayed behind to protect hundreds of animals when the Black Summer bushfires rolled through, said the spike had meant locals were starting to take the virus more seriously.

“The really good thing is seeing a lot more people truly practising social distancing and PPE because it did start to seem that people were starting to think all the measures were unnecessary,” he said.

A Southern NSW Local Health District spokesman confirmed on Tuesday there had been no new cases of COVID-19 on the south coast over the previous 24 hours.

ACT Chief Health Officer Kerryn Coleman said anyone holidaying in Batemans Bay should be vigilant and get tested if they had any COVID-19 symptoms, no matter how mild.