I regularly take the bus route that runs past my street to Highpoint West, so I know a lot of the other frequent bus passengers.
One is an elderly chap who is always friendly and chatty, and who has lived in Avondale Heights his whole life (ie since the early 1950s). He knows a lot of local history that I find interesting – such as when there was just one bus running between Keilor East and Footscray over the wonky old bridge, and that the bus driver would be sipping from a tall beer bottle on the job.
He also said that the only shop in Military Road was the one which is now a news agency, but which at the time was the General Store.
When I moved into this area in March 2003, there were still some hints that the news agency used to be something more – there was a table of books for sale for $2 each. Those were all HSC/VCE English texts, presumably left over from when the shop used to stock text books for the local high school. I picked up some bargains – The Great Gatsby, various Shakespeare plays, and a number of the sort of books which are more obscure but beloved of the cabal of high school English teachers.
That news agency has changed since then. It mostly now stocks a few magazines, hardly any newspapers, some stationary, and a lot of giftware. Most of the business now consists of selling lottery tickets. [They don’t even act as a dry cleaning agency anymore, which is a damned nuisance as I now need to haul my jackets to Ascot Vale.]
That former news agency is not the only one transforming. Earlier this week, I wandered into the news agency at Highpoint West, looking to buy the latest Phantom comic (the 2000th edition by Frew publications actually), and saw that workmen were busy out the back. The shop was being reduced in size.
This is not the first time that shop has been reduced in size – during the COVID it moved from another nearby location in the shopping centre where it was significantly bigger.
Which I suppose is unsurprising. We do not read physical newspapers as much anymore (if I am going to lunch at the Savage Club, I will browse all four major papers in the Social Room whilst waiting for my guests to show up but otherwise I rarely read the paper anymore). Nor do print magazines do particularly well anymore.
Most of the business news agencies now do seems to be lottery tickets. That is even more pronounced at the Milleara Shopping Centre, where the lottery agency sells a few newspapers, but there is a giant queue of ticket buyers just before each big lottery jackpot.
I guess that is just the way things are going. Just like the suburban milk bar has either died out completely or morphed into something which relies on tobacco sales to keep its doors open.
But I don’t have to like it.
Lost For Words! 