Op Shop Geography

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  Since she has been in the nursing home, there are no more Coffs trips so my info may be a bit out of date.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.