The Icehouse, Then and Now
How a Richmond River icehouse became Seabreeze Bays Club — the short version, and a few of the details we still argue about.
An Icehouse by the River Mouth
This building packed ice around prawns before it ever held a card table — the trawlers used to tie up two doors down, and the ice ran out to them by hand cart.
When the ice trade moved elsewhere, the building sat idle for years before we took it on, keeping the cool-room door as a curiosity by the kitchen.
We added the tables ourselves, one by one, over the first couple of years — the fourth didn’t go in until well after we’d opened.
What We Kept, What We Changed
We kept the cool-room door and the low ceiling by the old loading bay; everything else in the card room is ours, added over the years.
The kitchen’s a newer addition, built onto the river-facing side once we worked out dinner and cards could both run from the same building without getting in each other’s way.
We’re still adding to the place a little at a time — the fourth table, the tea counter, the lamps over each table all came later, not at the start.
