The store weighed crays here for fifty years. The scales never left.
Trap crates make the seating, the brass beam scales still hang over what is now the pass, and the tally boards on the back wall have the last season's numbers chalked on them. We cook what the boats bring in, pour beer brewed up the coast, and run nine card tables where the chips count points and nothing else.
A packing store that stopped packing in 2016
Number 41 took crays off the boats, graded them, weighed them and put them on a truck. When the processor consolidated up the coast the store shut, and the crates, the beam scales and the tally boards were still inside when we signed the lease.
We built a kitchen into the loading end, ran a bar along the sorting bench and put nine card tables through the packing hall. The floor is the same painted concrete, drain channels and all.
Sixty-five covers and nine tables is the ceiling. It is a shed with a high roof, and past sixty-five nobody can hear the other side of their own table.
Nine tables
Crate-height tops, felt re-stretched each winter, one lamp apiece.
An ocean board
Written on the tally boards after the boats unload.
Six of us
Two on the pass, two on the bar, two walking the hall.
What people ask before they walk in
Is any of this playable from a phone?
No. Veloras is a shed on Marine Terrace and that is the entirety of it — no app, no account, no online room and no way to join in from anywhere but a chair in the hall.
Is there money in the game?
None at any point. Chips are scorekeepers with no cash value, no stake is collected when you sit down and nothing is paid out when you get up. It is not that kind of room.
Do you have pokies?
Not one, and it is not an oversight. We hold a kitchen and bar licence and nothing else.
Can I get lobster on a Friday?
Only if the boats obliged. When there is none, the board says so plainly rather than quietly substituting something frozen.
Should I book?
For eating on Friday and Saturday, yes, and early. For the seven open card tables there is nothing to book.
I have never played anything. Where do I start?
The learners' bench on Wednesday or Sunday. One hour, free, four people at a time, and you can stay in the hall afterwards or go home.
Crates, scales, felt and the pass
Nine tables through the old packing hall
The hall runs the length of the building with the beam scales at one end and the roller door at the other. Games are social — five hundred, cribbage, euchre, friendly poker — and none of them has anything riding on the result.
Chips count points for the evening. They are house property, they are never sold or cashed, they buy nothing at the bar, and at close they go back into the crate under the counter.
The learners' bench runs at the front two tables on Wednesday and Sunday. An hour, no charge, and you leave knowing enough to sit at any table in the hall.
Seven open tables
Sit down where there is a chair free — no booking, no charge.
Two held tables
Reserved on the phone for four to six people.
Learners' bench
Wednesday and Sunday at 6pm, one hour, free.
What runs on which evening
Where the store is and when it is open
The store
41 Marine Terrace, Geraldton WA 6530
Phone and email
+61 8 9921 4468 · counter@playveloras.com
Doors open
Wednesday to Sunday, 4pm – 11:30pm
Western rock lobster, snapper and whatever the wind allows
Lobster is the thing we are known for and the thing we are least able to promise: the boats decide, and in a bad week it comes off the board entirely rather than coming in frozen from somewhere else.
Beside it, dhufish and snapper off the same boats, greens grown in the wind out on the flats, and potatoes done in the lobster butter, which is not subtle and is not meant to be.
The beer is Mid West — three taps that rotate with whatever the brewers up the road have finished — plus a short list of southern whites. Kitchen closes at ten, the bar runs to half eleven.
Off the boats
Western rock lobster when there is any, split and grilled.
Off the line
Dhufish and snapper, whole or filleted, depending on size.
Off the taps
Three Mid West beers on rotation and four whites by the glass.
Six lines, chalked on the tally board
- This is an over-18s building from the door in, dining tables included, and staff will ask to see identification whenever they want to.
- Chips count points. They cost nothing to pick up, they are worth nothing to put down, and they cannot be exchanged for money, food or drink.
- Nothing is wagered here. No stake is taken at a table, no prize pool is held and no payout is ever made.
- There is not one gaming machine in this building and we have never applied for the licence to have any.
- Held tables are let go fifteen minutes after the booked time — the hall fills fast on a Friday and we will not leave nine people standing.
- The bar serves responsibly and calls a stop when it needs to. Nobody at the counter enjoys that conversation, and nobody is talked out of it either.
How an evening moves from doors to last hand
- 4pmDoors, kitchen opens, first crates carried through
- 6pmLearners' bench sits down, one hour, nothing to pay
- 8:30pmRoom at its fullest, held tables released if nobody has turned up
- 11pmBar calls last, tables finish the hand they are on
Nothing here is timed to the minute — the kitchen and the size of the room push it around — but this is the shape of most nights, and it is chalked on the old tally board by the door so nobody has to ask.
One phone call and the table is yours
The counter picks up from two in the afternoon. Give us a name, a number and a headcount — there is nothing to pay ahead of time and we do not ask for a card.
Ring the counter