Patricia Gill, Denmark Bulletin

A café proprietor says Denmark is having ‘growing pains’ and an acceptance is needed that the town is now ‘on the map’, particularly over peak holiday periods.

Mrs Jones Café proprietor Sam Jackson is among other accommodation and food-provider businesses which have been under the pump over Christmas and New Year.

“Things will change whether we like it or not,” Sam said.

He believes a major infrastructural change is needed regarding parking which has proved to be a ‘huge problem’.

Sam and co-owner Justine Curwen daily manage the café parking lot to ensure it is available for patrons only.

The couple have previously raised their concerns about parking with the Shire of Denmark.

“Tourists express their frustrations to us a lot about where to park,” Sam said.

The couple make parking suggestion slips available on their tables despite there being few options to consider.

Though no official data is available, Denmark Chamber of Commerce chief executive John Gates said there was the feeling throughout town that everything was full and stretched to the limit.

The Chamber-run Denmark Visitor Centre recorded more than 200 people daily through its doors over Christmas and New Year.

“All you have to do is walk down the street; it’s been cold and windy and they (visitors) haven’t been using the beach so much,” John said.

“We’ve had caravans queued up at the dump point (at the visitor centre) and there have been queues at the servo.”

Social media chat had raised the question as to why more food venues had not been open.

Those businesses had replied that this was the result of no staff being available.

There had been talk about the shortage of staff and housing in Denmark since the beginning of the Covid pandemic.

“If you can get staff then there’s the problem to get somewhere for them to stay,” John said.

Sam Jackson said he and Justine were set to open seven days a week over summer but they had not been able to recruit a skilled chef, despite lodging a subclass 400 visa in early December.

This had not been approved 30 days afterwards.

“We do need a lot more staff for summer,” Sam said.

“Luckily we have a mix of locals, returning staff on uni break and juniors for the front of house.

“But skilled chefs are hard to find, which is why we have had to seek people from overseas.”

Sam would like to see a ‘nice steady flow’ of tourists throughout the year and for this to be an aim of the Shire Tourism Strategy.

“At the moment businesses get absolutely slammed in a short timeframe, then they need a break and shut for winter, leaving Denmark winter holidays a bit of a let down,” he said.

“The town can’t handle it.

“Throw a power outage or two in the mix and it runs the risk of visitors leaving even more disappointed.”

Walpole Visitor Centre manager Davina Eden-Austen believes the influx of visitors is not unusual for this time of the year.

During the visitor centre-run Walpole Markets on December 30, 359 people were counted through the centre’s doors over three hours.

“We only had two people; it was challenging but fun,” Davina said.

Walpole VC runs the Bookeasy platform for both the Walpole and Denmark VC with all available accommodation full for the summer holidays.

The Bookeasy platform had to compete with AirBnB and Booking.com and other platforms in the ‘melting pot out there’.

Davina said accommodation figures were likely to be skewed with owners making their properties available to friends and family over the holidays.

But booking through the visitor centre enabled customers to have an over-the-counter or personalised telephone service from people with local knowledge, plus the ability to pay instalments on early bookings.

Davina believes, in general, Walpole is ‘over-saturated’ with accommodation options which were difficult to fill in off-peak times.

The Walpole VC did a roaring trade in hoodies, a regular occurrence when people did not realise how cool the weather could be.

Staff sometimes had to contend with angry customers in a noticeably quickening trend of people taking to social media to register their objections.

On one occasion there was only one person at the Walpole Visitor Centre which had experienced difficulty in recruiting volunteer helpers.

This article appeared in the Denmark Bulletin, 11 January 2024.