Why this award-winning St Kilda bar has suddenly closed

In a swift and surprising twist, The Walrus in St Kilda – named The Age Good Food Guide’s Bar of the Year in October – has closed amid a dispute between the directors of the business.

The oyster and wine bar on Inkerman Street opened in December 2023 and quickly won over the neighbourhood with its unpretentious attitude and quality offering: Wapengo Rock oysters, seafood-friendly but affordable wines, great martinis and a parade of other bites.

A since-deleted social media post on December 10 announced that director Martin Webster and his partner Amy McGouldrick (the bar’s general manager) were stepping away from The Walrus. The post said they would concentrate on their other business, The Carpenter’s Ruin, which opened directly next door to The Walrus in September, and take all their staff with them. This has since occurred.

The Walrus is listed as temporarily closed on Google. The doors did not open over the weekend and Webster’s closure announcement is taped to the front window. Some furniture and fittings have been removed.

The other director of The Walrus, Michael Weal, is not involved in Carpenter’s Ruin and says that he’s unable to reopen The Walrus partly due to the departure of staff.

Webster and Weal met when working in kitchens in Sydney in 2005. As McGouldrick and Webster developed plans for The Walrus, they brought in Weal as business partner because they couldn’t fund it by themselves: Webster put in $120,000 and Weal $70,000. Relations soon became strained, according to Webster, and Weal has since been a silent partner.

Documents seen by this masthead show that in November, Webster made a formal offer to purchase Weal’s share in the business for $70,000, the same amount he invested. Weal refused.

On November 17, three weeks after The Walrus was named Bar of the Year, Weal blocked McGouldrick’s and Webster’s business credit cards associated with an Amex account, and withdrew $100,000 from the business’ CommBank trading account into the now-locked Amex account.

Weal says he did this as a precautionary step because he did not want Carpenter’s Ruin expenses being paid for with money from The Walrus.

However, the funds freeze put The Walrus in an untenable trading situation, relying on uncertain cashflow to meet its commitments to staff and suppliers.

“I was genuinely doubtful we would be able to pay the next rent and the staff,” says Webster.

“We’ve worked for crap people in the past. We don’t want to be those people. We pay our super weekly, all our suppliers are paid. We have spent $10,000 on legal fees already and we don’t have any more money. We couldn’t see a way out of it but for me to resign as director and walk away.”

From Weal’s perspective, the opening of Carpenter’s Ruin is at the core of the relationship breakdown. Weal approved a loan from The Walrus to Carpenter’s Ruin to get the doors open, but says this came with a verbal offer of a stake in the new business. Webster denies any offer was made; the loan has since been repaid.

Webster and McGouldrick considered taking on the space next door before The Walrus opened. When the site became vacant in May 2025, they approached a different group of business partners and worked towards a spring launch of the “mini-pub”.

Weal says he is now meeting with insolvency experts to assess the financial situation of The Walrus and whether he can reopen the bar on his own.

Weal was asked by this masthead why he won’t reopen the doors of a business that, he says, “is in a relatively good position … we had a great line of credit”. He responded that “we’re still investigating … We’re doing our due diligence on that one.”

Meanwhile, Carpenter’s Ruin is busy enough to absorb all staff from The Walrus, and Webster and McGouldrick are working towards reopening Tonc, the Mornington Peninsula venue they launched in May, only to have it burn down on opening weekend.

“2025 has been a lot,” says Webster. “Amy and I are in grief. We love The Walrus space so much, we put everything into it, and we would go back into it in a heartbeat. Hopefully that will happen one day.”