I turned 60 this year so decided to have a 60s party to celebrate. This meant 60s props. And the best place to find these is either in the back of your cupboard, in your mother's stuff, your friends' stuff or in your local op shop. However, some shops are more savvy about the value of retro items than others. Here is my glasses collection at the party. The tea towel and swizzle sticks came from a friend, but the beautiful glasses in the foreground with the white and gold decoration came from Grapples at Chermside. Places I did not buy from included the Lifeline Super Store at Virginia. They know the value of retro goodies and were out of my price range.
Back to Grapples. It sits behind the Uniting Church on the corner of Gympie Road and Rode Road. This is the second Chermside Uniting Church of my life time, the first being a red brick building on the south-east corner of Gympie and Hamilton Roads. It had a small hall out the back containing the original op shop and a larger hall where my son David used to learn Tae Kwon Do. When the church moved, the op shop relocated to the last building from Chermside State School that remains on its original site. My tenuous connection with Chermside SS goes back to when I was in 7th grade in 1965 at Wooloowin State School, and was reserve on the girls' tennis team. Every Friday afternoon they would hop on the tram and head to Chermside to fight it out on the courts. My big day finally came when someone was sick and I got to catch that tram. Not a single point did I earn for my school, and there endeth my competitive tennis career. The site of the tennis courts is now Grapples car park (which is a good place to park if you also want to pop into Aldi without wrangling with the Gympie Road traffic).
Grapples is wonderfully crammed, especially with clothing for older persons. This means it's a good place to shop for things for Mum. I suspect a significant amount of stock comes from dying parishioners. Anyway, they have lots of goodies and their prices are SOOO cheap. But there's more to the Grapples experience than a rummage and a side trip to Aldi: at the front of the Uniting Church sits Chatters Coffee Shop run by church volunteers. It is open from 9.00 till 3, Monday to Friday, and serves good old-fashioned home cooking at low prices. A great venue to take your granny. Don't expect fast service, though, as the place is usually full.
These photos are of part of my friend Jo's retro collection, amassed over many years of careful op-shopping, taken at the 70s fondue night she held last year, so she could use it all. We had such fun. The sausage dog was her pièce de resistance. The actual fondue recipes were taken from genuine 70s recipe books as well and were delicious. Try it sometime.
Another good op shop I explored this week was the RSPCA shop at New Farm (have you spotted my favourite 'brand'?), which lurks in James Street at the corner of Merthyr Road. If you are after retro tablewear, head there right now. This not-so-good photo shows why. This is as far as my interest in retro goes. Vintage clothes aren't my thing. I was there!
I have often wondered why some towns have an op shop and others don't. Does it require a motivated organiser, or an active charity with plenty of volunteers to do the work? Is it possibly just the lack of a suitable vacant shop space? When I pass through country towns, I always have my op shop radar turned on, because these are the shops where you often find true treasures and get great bargains. Imbil has a great little Red Cross shop, for example, which is particularly wonderful because it opens on Sundays, the day when the Mary Valley Rattler used to come to town. Since the Rattler stopped running, the line has become rather overgrown, and the Sunday market looks a little sad.
Some towns are op shop hubs, for example Caloundra and Coffs Harbour. I have many relatives in Coffs, so have often stayed there, usually with Mum, and we have always devoted at least a whole morning to 'doing the op shops'. Since she has been in the nursing home, there are no more Coffs trips so my info may be a bit out of date.
Op shops ofter occur in clusters and Coffs has two; one in the centre of town with two on Gordon Street (the Salvos and Lifeline) and the Red Cross around the corner in Harbour Drive, plus The Smith Family in the mall itself. Of these, I always liked the Salvos the best. It's big but friendly.
The second cluster is in Scarba Street. Scarba Street has the Legacy Shop, Vinnies and The Helicopter Op Shop, as well as The Bizarre Bazaar, which sells everything from second-hand goods to fruit and veg. Around the corner is my favourite. I can't remember what it used to be called but I looked it up on Google Maps and it's now 'Market on Murdoch'. They used to have great 'fill-a-bag-for $1' deals. Here is a (not very good) photo of one of my pick-ups from there many years ago. They had several of these: never-used official team merchandise from the 2000 New Zealand America's Cup challenge. You may not be aware of the fact that Michael and I are both America's Cup obsessed, so I had to buy one. In Mum's room at the nursing home, we all have our own individual coffee mugs and this is Michael's. New Zealand won, by the way.
There is an op shop cluster near us at Geebung, with Red Cross, Aid For The Blind, Lifeline and the Salvos all in the one block. Why, I'm not sure. Cheap rent? A lot of shops have died there over the years. I can understand there being clusters in areas of low income, but Geebung doesn't quite fit that demographic. Perhaps it is just in the best interests of op shops to cling together to attract more customers. I wonder how sales at the isolated Vinnies shop at the other end of Newman Road compare to these four. The Salvos is good for kitchenware; but I like Aid For The Blind the best. It is more of an old-style traditional Op Shop. An added advantage of the Geebung shops is that while there you can visit Ron Bird's wonderful old-fashioned hardware store where screws etc are available in minimum quantities of one.
It is rare to find op shops in larger shopping centres because the low cost of their merchandise would make it hard to earn sufficient funds to pay the rent, even with volunteer staff, but there are a few. There is Lifeline in Centro Lutwyche, and this one in Greenslopes Mall. It is a nice little shop, with a cheapies rack out the front; a good range of clothes, books and bric-a-brac, but for some reason, I have never managed to find anything there that I wanted to buy. I would like to support them, honestly.
Now for the latest photographic offering from Memory Lane. This is me on my 34th birthday, wearing an impressive black velvet op shop number, while the camera wears its soft focus filter. This was a memorable day, because it was on that evening, during the birthday celebrations, that friend Allison and I shaved off Michael's beard, the only time his chin has been exposed in nearly 40 years. You've heard of sights that 'frighten the children'? Well bare-faced Daddy truly frightened baby David. The beard went straight back for good.
I mentioned last time that my love affair with op shops may have started simply with bits and pieces required for fancy dress costumes. Needless to say, that is still going on into the present, and for my children as well. Looking back at my early photos, I think it was also part of a natural progression from home-sewn (by Mum), through home-sewn (by me) to dressing on a student's income.
The earliest fancy-dress outfit photo I can come up with is of Michael and me dressed as a leprechaun and an Irish washerwoman (that is a potato in my hand), for a Telecom Australia Revenue Branch function in 1977. His waistcoat certainly is op-shop wear (I'm not sure about that object on his head), but my lovely little hand-embroidered apron was a real find. It is another item that I still have, and it comes in handy often. I wore it occasionally during my bush band days and it recently almost made it on stage in a production by the Mount Cotton Drama Group. I'm pretty sure that Heather wore it for something at school once as well.
Then there was the 1950s party in 1978 when I needed a full skirt. No problem. Unfortunately the only existing picture of the complete outfit is sadly out of focus. I then found photos of the schoolkids party in 1981. I can't remember whether my uniform was from St Rita's or All Hallows. I think friend Greg here may be wearing his actual uniform.
Of course, I often find really nice clothes. This next photo shows me in an op-shop dress at a wedding, albeit a rather informal one, in 1982. It was obviously pretty hot, too, as Heather is stripped to her underwear. For those Brisbaneites who go back as far as me: do you remember the truly wonderful Julian Jones and the Avengers who were the resident band at Snoopy Hollow disco? They did a fantastic cover of The Moody Blues' Nights in White Satin. Well the entertainer at this wedding was THAT Julian Jones. I think I may have been a bit starstruck.
Now for another op shop treasure. For my everyday china, I acquired a plain white fluted set, which over the years I have managed to increase to a twelve-person setting, plus milk jug. If a sugar bowl exists, I have yet to track it down. However, a few years ago I stumbled upon the matching casserole dish and I just love it. especially the handle on the lid, which resembles a lotus bud. Unfortunately, it also makes the piece fairly tall, which means with the lid on, it will only fit on one particular shelf. I can live with that.
Finally, may I introduce you to my favourite local op shop, the RSPCA shop, 18 Edinburgh Castle Road, Kedron. In its previous life, it was tiny, cramped (but good), and on Gympie Road in the corner premises of the former Kilcoy Butcher, next to the bike shop. When it closed, I mourned its passing. Recently it reappeared at Kedron, bigger and better, in the old Adept Party Hire premises. Lots of good stuff here, and at reasonable prices. I also like being able to donate stuff directly to them, rather than via a bin.
I can't remember when my obsession with op shops began but it was a long time ago. I know I was frequenting them when I was at Uni in the early 1970s. Perhaps it started with props for party costumes and grew from there? However the journey began, it has been a long and fruitful one.
Another early influence was the church jumble stall, for which my mother was the convenor for many years. This was as St Andrew's Anglican at Lutwyche, next to the Kedron Park pub, and in 1976 I would be married there. The stall was always in the shade of the wonderful big rickety wooden church hall (with the scary dark loos under the back stairs that were only used when you were really desperate). The photo below shows the stall in 1977, with Mum in the middle. That hall was demolished in 1990, replaced by a no-doubt excellent new brick facility, which sadly lacks the character of the original. The old hall was also the venue for ballet and Art of Speech lessons provided to me by Doreen Thomas; Sunday School, which I taught; Companionship, Fellowship and Girls Friendly Society (GFS) meetings, all of which I attended at some stage. I also sprained my ankle near the bottom of its front stairs.
I seem to have digressed somewhat... Mum would beg parishioners to donate before fete day, ostensibly to give us time to price everything, but also because it gave us a chance to pick over everything and buy the good stuff ourselves. One fete day, a woman came up to the counter and handed us this clock, which together we lovingly lowered straight under the counter (we did pay for it). It still chimes in my lounge room every quarter-hour.
The earliest dress I can definitely remember buying at an op shop was a full-length, long-sleeve purple velvet dress that I still have. It came from the Lifeline shop in Gympie Road at Chermside, which has only closed in the last few months. I bought some black, white and purple braid and sewed it over the edges of the yoke to make it that little bit extra-groovy.
This morning I hunted through my old photos to find the earliest pic of me wearing op-shop finery and here it is. The Med Ball of 1974. With my then boyfriend Andrew. Somebody (possibly me) has spilled a drink all over this little number - it was a Med Ball after all. The dress was a plum colour with a built-in satin ribbon effect. I know I had to take it up on the shoulders (as usual, because I am a short-arse). The skirt was very floaty and feel-good.
I will continue this tale of obsession and memories periodically, until it culminates in The Great Op Shop Road Trip. But more about that later...
