Donlevy Fitzpatrick

August 1997

Donlevy Fitzpatrick has come back home. Last week he moved his offices from The George Hotel back "home" to the Dogs Bar which he says, "has done a lot for me and I want to go back and enjoy it a bit."

He now feels greatly relieved but a bit sad to be cutting the ties with The Melbourne Wine Room and The George Hotel projects which have "driven (him) grey" over the past decade.

Don explained that he has been asked by the other partners to retain a small share in The Melbourne Wine Room but feels that "I have to break totally away from it, I need to shed that baggage."

Things have changed a lot in St Kilda since Don first bought Harley Court and Colombo Court in Acland Street to start a local bar and hotel eleven years ago. Many locals were suspicious about his intentions then quickly adopted the bar as their own but when council squashed Don's dreams for the "pensione" above the bar, he turned his attention to Fitzroy Street and the much bigger, grander and then, very derelict, George Hotel .

"It was just me and it was a hugely expensive and grand development to take on. I had to move slowly, too slowly." But one thing he did not do slowly was to get totally immersed in the wine industry. "When I looked at the fragility of the hotel industry and at the site, this huge building, a corner stone which reflected, and has done so for many years, the standards up and down Fitzroy Street, I realised that I couldn't re-open (such an important building) and just pour beers".

"The place forced me to go out and buy grapes and make wine and do things and to think about bread -- I felt compelled to start baking bread and making wine." Don explained that this was not to "do the Jesus Christ thing" but to be involved in all parts of the hospitality process and to create a business which the locals would become dependent upon.

Now it houses a gallery, a cinema, Melbourne Wine Room Bar, The Ballroom and will have some units built at the back, one of them which Don hopes will be a home for his son, James.

Most of The George development was financed by the Dogs Bar. "It's never been given the respect that it deserves . . . it has poured thousands into the George Gallery and into the cafe."

So what's the secret of the Dogs Bar? Perhaps its position, in a cut off part of Acland Street, away from the bustling shopping strip; perhaps its quirky style, the wrought iron on the gates and doors which designer and regular patron Mark Douglas put in eleven years ago; the good quality and good value wines, chef Sabrina Santucci's array of food on the bar?

For Don, the secret lies in the locals themselves, "The Dogs Bar has been one of those incredible businesses that has worked on auto pilot, thanks very much to all the locals and everybody else, and the staff."

Now the Bar is managed by a staff team including Janet Galpin who has been a customer since day one. She has lived in Acland Street for many years and is thrilled that Donlevy is now back there watching over "this amazing room, it's absolute magic". Immediately you walk in you feel that people are comfortable. They enjoy it at all times of year, in summer sitting outside in the sun or inside in winter with the cosy fires, papers to read, lack of pretension in its style and in its prices. It certainly provides "the extension of the locals own living room" which Don believes is the basis of its success. But he wants to improve on this, without changing anything "I wouldn't be allowed to" but to keep adding special details, "things to eat always coming to the bar, it's the backbone of the place", to resurrect the actual dogs' bar (which gave the place its name), the street trough which is now clogged up, to drain it and have a tap and hose connected so the St Kilda local dogs can drink there more easily.

Going back to the "dogs" and simplifying his life are high in Don's priorities. He's had an intensive twenty years in the hospitality industry, learning as he went. He started with Donlevy's, the original intent of which was to have been the Jimmy Watson's of the south. Don became a fervent convert to wine and to wine bars late in life. When his first wife left him in his late 20's he went out and got drunk and says "I think I've been enjoying a drink ever since."

Donlevy's in Middle Park became a great success but as a BYO restaurant not as the wine bar Don had dreamt of. So he then initiated the Smith Street Bar, then Vic Avenue and then the two St Kilda projects where he "got back to what I was originally intending to do". In between and at the same time, he has renovated flats, warehouses, built kitchens, developed a farm, run a vineyard (Clyde Park) and raised a family of three children.

Now, at 51, he wants to concentrate on "life style, on getting less complicated. "Things have got to become a little bit simpler before they become more complicated again. My life was charging off in various directions and now I want to stop for a while"

But it's unlikely he will sit still for long, be it at the farm, be it in his Dogs Bar office or at Clyde Park (he is selling off the main part of the vineyard but retaining 15 acres to continue his search for the pinot grail). He is already thinking seriously about another area, another "neglected" piece of territory to be conquered.

The vision is to focus on Central Victorian Shiraz, to promote the region, to revitalise some of its hotels, to make it highly desirable and accessible to visitors. "Shiraz is Australia's great strength and there is so much demand now for the wine world wide. We have to make it known to the world what this region can do." Don is not sure yet whether he will involve himself in planting or exactly how this project might develop. But if he decides to do it, Donlevy will certainly make something happen.