A NSW caravan park owner struggling with a lack of visitors as a result of Sydney’s COVID-19 outbreak says he is on the verge of closing if he can’t get financial support.
Curlwaa Caravan Park owner Ric Young said he hasn’t been able to qualify for the NSW Government’s JobSaver and grants programs despite an almost-empty caravan park and just “three caravans” passing through in the past three weeks.
“My wife and I, we smile, we laugh, we try to be upbeat and friendly. And then we get to times when just want to cry,” Mr Young said.
“We we know there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, but where is it? There’s so many twists and turns in that tunnel. We can’t see that light.”
Mr Young and his wife Margot bought the caravan park in 2016 and have been building up the business over the last five years.
In 2019 and 2020, the business “made money”, but not enough to prove a 30 per cent downtown.
In order to qualify for support payments through Services NSW, businesses must show they have experienced a decline in turnover of 30 per cent or more during the Sydney lockdown.
“For the JobSaver (support payment) we miss out by $16.32, and for the business grant, we miss out by $820.04,” Mr Young said.
“Because of where our caravan park is, we’re basically people’s last stop from Broken Hill and regional New South Wales into Victoria and that dried up because of COVID,” he said.
Mr Young said he has “some hope” he may still be able to qualify for a payment, but he fears if the support doesn’t come soon he will go further into debt.
“We’ve got a few weeks left of being able to self-fund, but without any help, we’re going to have to increase our loans,” he said.
“We’ve got some permanent (residents) in the park, so we can’t close because they’d be homeless.
“But the worst case scenario is we may have to close unless somebody can come in and bail us out.”
“This is this is everything we own. We sold up everything in Gippsland and came here five years ago.
“If this falls over because we can’t get any help; thank God we didn’t sell our tent … we might have to live in it.”
Mr Young said he wouldn’t need much to get the business through until the economy opens up again.
“We won’t be able to do the improvements that we want to do, but we’ll be open,” he said.
In the meantime he is burning through his savings to get by.
“(The money) we’ve had saved, we’re using to stay afloat.”
“We’ve got enough (savings) for about another six to eight weeks without assistance, and then we’re going to struggle.
“Our saving grace was going to be the Country Music Festival … (but) the other day it was cancelled.
“So that’s a massive blow to us … we were relying on that income to get us through to Christmas.”
He said COVID-19 had been able to leach out into the community because NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian refused to put a ring of steel around Sydney when the latest outbreak started.
“That has had devastating consequences for us.”
