Bar has fire relief on tap

A group of Karratha businesses have teamed up to raise much-needed funds for those affected by bushfires devastating the country.

Blanche Bar, Karratha Earthmoving and KAW Engineering will combine to donate $5 from the sale of every tap beer and Jack Daniel’s product across all three Blanche Bar venues.

Throughout January, Blanche Bar will donate $1, while Karratha Earthmoving and KAW Engineering will each double that figure to bring the total donation to $5.

Blanche Bar owner Bart Parsons said he wanted to donate the funds to an area that wasn’t already heavily funded.

“We want to try and find something where it’s going to go meaningfully to something on the ground,” he said.

Blanche Bar manager Lara Ducie agreed, saying they had the entire month of January to decide where to donate.

“There’s a lot of money being funded towards the areas that need it, but there’s not so much going to others,” she said.

“So once the hysteria around it and the attention around it wears off a little bit, you might find there are other things that actually needed a bit more support than what they got, so that’s where we are looking at focusing.”

Mr Parsons said he hoped other businesses would follow in his footsteps.

“We’ve been pretty much the forefront of hospitality, so when we do something, other people tend to too,” he said.

“So it’s a bit of a challenge I suppose for other businesses’ owners and other pubs around the place to try and put something together.

“If we can make that 20 grand by being a little bit crafty with how we leverage the money then that’s the sort of thing business owners should be doing, trying to maximise the benefit of what they’re doing.” Ms Ducie said she hoped to give as much as she could to the bushfire relief efforts.

“Obviously the more people that get on board and talk about it, then hopefully the more that local and Federal Government realise that there is an issue and they need to talk about ways to tackle those issues,” she said.

The fundraiser comes after Blanche Bar raised just over $3700 last year for community services organisation Mission Australia.