Saddles Burger Ranch open for business after wild 2020

Its owner, Cecil Grobbelaar, endured a crazy 2020 that involved spending months stuck in his native South Africa with a rapidly spreading pandemic, hotel quarantine in Adelaide and returning to Stawell with his business needing a lot of work to be open once again.

Mr Grobbelaar said he was initially planning to South Africa for around a month, but that plan went out the window quickly.

"We closed here for a while there at the start of COVID-19 because my mum's got stage four breast cancer and my brother gave me a call and said to come back and say my goodbyes," he said.

"So I had an exemption from the Australian Government to fly over to South Africa, and I was meant to only stay there for a month, and I had my return tickets booked, but they kept getting cancelled one after another.

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"I think I ended up having six or seven plane tickets cancelled.

"The worst one was when I flew from Cape Town to Johannesburg and I was in line at the international airport and I was about three people from the front and then I get an email saying my ticket was cancelled."

Mr Grobbelaar said his tickets kept getting cancelled because the airlines were prioritising those with first-class and business class tickets.

Apart from the challenges of trying to get on a plane to take him home to Stawell, Mr Grobbelaar also had to deal with a worsening pandemic in South Africa.

"We are very lucky with how relaxed things are here, the COVID over there was just horrifying," he said.

"Over there, we had 30,000 new cases a day (of COVID-19) at one stage.

"When you buy your groceries, you have sanitise and wash everything before you put it in the fridge.

"After a while, my fingers were all peeling from using sanitiser all the time.

"The army was parked everywhere, and only one person could go out; it was a completely different experience to over here.

Fortunately, through the Australian Embassy's help, Mr Grobbelaar was able to go on a flight that would bring him back to Australia.

He landed in Australia on January 3, but wouldn't get back to Stawell until January 18, because he had to complete hotel quarantine in Adelaide.

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Mr Grobbelaar said he spent most of his time watching Netflix, talking to family and friends on the phone, and talking to other quarantining residents from his balcony.

After such a crazy time, Mr Grobbelaar said he is happy to back in Stawell and to be firing up Saddles Burger Ranch once again.

"When I got back, my business registration had ran out and there was a few things I needed to fix with the shop and whatnot, so I have done all that and got the okay from the council to open up again," he said.

"I also didn't have any staff because it had been eight or nine months, so they have all moved on, and so we needed a whole new staff.

"The first week was great, all the new staff were really good, and all the community were really good too.

"There was lots of people saying they were excited we were open again and I was really happy with the turnout.

"We are hoping the staff will all be fully trained and ready for Easter because that is a big one.

"At the moment we are just open at night time and we will looking to be open during the day then, running a few specials and getting back out there."

Saddles Burger Ranch is currently open on Main Street Tuesday-Saturday night from 5-8.30pm.

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