Bucketty's story archive
Trying for approval in Bucketty - again
Written by Nick McDonald
Remember the original dream of building Bucketty’s brewery in the actual suburb of Bucketty?
A lot’s happened since my last blog post seven years ago, when our original DA was rejected. I’ve intentionally kept the details off our website since then, because the last time I wrote about it, my own words were quoted back at me by the people opposing it.
But I’m ready to spill the beans on the saga that has been our mission to get a humble restaurant, pub and brewery approved on our land in Bucketty.
The phone call
It’s June 2021, and I get a call from a compliance officer at Cessnock Council.
“Hi, this is John Somebody from Cessnock Council’s compliance team. Am I speaking with Nick McDonald?”
Gulp.
“Yes, how can I help?”
“I’ve received a report that you’re brewing and distributing beer at your property in Bucketty without consent.”
“Ah, no sir. We brew our beer in Brookvale. We’ve kept the name, and we distribute to a few bottle shops around the area.”
“Right, OK. So you’re not brewing beer at your property in Bucketty?”
“No, we’re not.”
Then I told him the whole story: how our first application was knocked back after brewing was reclassified from an agricultural produce industry to an industrial use, and how frustrating it had been to watch the dream sink under opposition from a small group of residents.
And then he says:
“Mate, you should apply for a pub or restaurant and make the brewery an ancillary use. That’d be permissible under the zoning. Good luck, and I hope to drop in and enjoy one of your beers one day, because this sounds like a great place for it!”
Thank you, John. That sounds like a cracking idea!
Take two
So Lexi and I decide to have another go at this thing. We pull in an old architect mate, Julian Furzer, and get to work re-imagining the venue as a hospitality offering with ancillary brewing. Basically a smaller version of what we’ve done in Brookvale, minus the raucous live music and late nights.
Cue Kevin McCloud:
A humble, yet aspiring shelter. A bushland oasis offering travellers relief from the brutality of the Australian sun, while simultaneously quenching the thirst for both a cold beer and the desire we all have to soak in the majesty of mighty and ancient gum trees.
Over the next 12 months we hired a town planner, a bushfire consultant, a traffic consultant, an ecology consultant, a koala consultant, structural engineers and acoustic experts. I project managed the exhausting process of herding these very busy, and often very pedantic, experts into producing the documents needed for the DA.
Then I get a call from Julian.
“Mate, I’ve just found out they’re changing the zoning in Bucketty to prohibit restaurants and pubs. You could be in trouble here.”
Shit.
I got on the blower to our town planner, and Julian was right. Council was planning to change the LEP to remove restaurants and pubs from our RU2 zoning. But not for another few months. As long as we got the DA in before the change, we’d be safe.
The clock was ticking.
Within six weeks we’d pulled everything together and lodged the DA with Council.
This time I kept the whole thing under wraps. Because during the first DA process, I’d tried to be a good neighbour, visiting everyone individually to share our plans. Then we held an open day for the whole community, with free beers and a BBQ. About 100people turned up for it!
I guess free beer and sausages will do that... but still!
On the day we heard nothing but praise and excitement. Then the letters from council seeking feedback went out for comment.
And waddayaknow... seven of our eight adjoining neighbours objected to the proposal.
So this time I saved Lexi and me the trouble and we just submitted it without warning.
The noticeboards go berserk
The community noticeboard lit up.
Some of it was positive, some negative, and some just plain mean. Rumours started to circulate.
I was accused of illegally clearing the land, and of secretly planning a live music venue.
Then a local newspaper ran a two-page article claiming that the I had already illegally cleared an entire hectare of the site and built without approval, it included statements that we'd removed koala habitat trees and basically painted me, Nick McDonald, as a piece of shit.
The article finished by announcing that a group of residents had formed to fight the proposal, under the name “Buckettarians Against Destructive [sic] brewery”, or BAD Brewery for short.
For the record, those claims were wrong. In addition to the article, I was reported to council for illegal works, twice, they came and inspected the property and found that we were doing nothing wrong.
But what stung most was that the article had gone out to thousands of local residents and nobody from the paper had asked me for comment.
So I got in touch with the paper, which I later discovered is run by one bloke in his spare time. And when I asked why he hadn’t contacted me, he replied:
“I actually haven’t read the article. I just put it in and printed it.”
And I’m like… what the actual?
To his credit, he gave me a right of reply, which I took. But the internet is written in ink, and the article had already found its way onto Reddit with comments like this one:
I thought about taking legal action. But life’s too short, and as long as we got our approval, none of it would matter in the end. So we let it go and focused on the DA.
The numbers turn
Letters went out to the neighbours seeking submissions, and this time it was a little more balanced. From memory we had roughly four in favour and twelve against.
But Council received so many complaints about the short submission period that they decided to run it again, giving residents more time to go through the proposal. This time I put a call out for support on the community Facebook page.
And to my surprise, the community got behind it. The final count was 41 submissions in favour and 27 against.
After months of reading the worst things people had to say about us, that number meant a lot. It turned out the quiet majority quite liked the idea of a beer under the gum trees.
There was a catch, though. With that many submissions, the matter could no longer be decided by council staff. It had to go to a full council meeting and be voted on by the councillors themselves.
No worries, I thought. Surely the councillors would get behind it, given the benefit to the community and the region.
What followed was nine months of back and forth with council officers, ironing out the details. Gum trees were surveyed. Traffic was counted. We even had a bloke camp out overnight to look for signs of wildlife. All of it to strengthen our case.
Decision night
The DA was due to be voted on at the council meeting in 2024. Then one of the reports needed a small amendment, so we got bumped to the following month. Then it was council elections in September. Then it was a new council, sworn in that October, finding its feet and not keen to vote on anything. Then it was Christmas.
Eventually we got our hearing in late February 2025.
Old Man Bucketty and a couple of mates came along to watch me address Cessnock Council, plead our case and answer questions.
Here’s me addressing the council, trying not to sweat, but heartened by the defibrillator you can see in the background, should I need it.
The objectors made their case too, to applause from the fifteen or so supporters they’d brought along to the gallery.
I thought it went pretty well, but the councillors elected to take another month to consider everything before voting. I was desperate for a resolution, and very much looking forward to a celebratory beer. Still, I sensed most of the councillors were in favour and just wanted things to simmer down first.
After the meeting, one of the objectors pulled me aside and told me"If you win, we'll take it to the Land and Environment Court to have it overturned"
That rattled me. I called our town planner straight away to ask what the chances were. He told me not to lose sleep: a court challenge is an expensive exercise, and a decision that’s had this much scrutiny is rarely overturned.
I breathed a little easier.
A month rolled around, and in March 2025 the council met virtually, so this time Lexi and I tuned in to the live stream from home.
Without fanfare, the council brought the matter to a vote. It was hard to see what was happening on the stream, but the first vote was the Mayor’s, and it was a yes! Then around the room: yes, no, no, yes, yes, yes, yes, no, yes, yes, yes.
We won!!!
Nine votes to three.
Time to crack a beer.
Finally, we were approved. The slog was over and we could look to the future.
Or so I thought…
Part 2 coming soon.