During the first Covid-19 lockdown when the autumn weather was still and clear, I walked every day. It was a time to observe and reflect. One of my longer walks was on Easter Sunday. Normally, at this time, the main street of Yackandandah would be crowded with locals and tourists occupying the tables at the outdoor cafes. On Easter Sunday the main street was deserted.
When we first moved here in 1985, this historic gold mining town was a semi-ghost town. Many of the shops were vacant with grubby fly-specked windows. There were the basics: a butcher, a newsagency, a milk bar, two pubs, an historical post office, two banks, a bakery, a garage, a haberdasher, a general store and two second-hand establishments. The shop fronts are heritage listed so, apart from a coat of paint and some resigning; the exteriors have remained the same. It’s the interiors that have been reimagined as different businesses over time.
As a young mum with two toddlers, I would push the stroller down the main street from our rented house in Bells Flat Road and wonder at choosing to live in a town that might fade, continue to close-up and eventually die. At that time, you couldn’t buy a coffee anywhere, not even at the bakery although they sold cakes. Now you can sit and sip a coffee in five cafes. Yackandandah, growing up in the gold rush, came to maturity as a town serving the surrounding farming population and is now basking in the glory of being a tourist destination. It didn’t die; it prospered.
On this Easter Sunday, I pass the newsagency, relocated from the building it occupied when we moved here, a building that had housed the first newsagency in Yackandandah. I linger in a shaft of sun, enjoying the warmth and the prospect of the empty street and, in moments, I’m that mum with a toddler reading the news headlines secured in wire frames leaning against the shop front. Suddenly, my two-year-old pitches forward from his stroller and within seconds blood is flowing down his face. I see myself now gasping in horror, scooping him up in my arms and flinging myself through the newsagency doorway, rushing past the stunned owner, calling out, ‘He’s spiked himself on the wire outside. I need something to stop the blood.’ I can almost feel again the wave of guilt that any parent feels when they’ve dropped their guard and something fatal happens to their child. In the end, there was more blood than wound and he grew up with only a small nick scarring his forehead. John the proprietor and I bonded over this experience and Owen’s blood marked a spot near the doorway until the newsagency moved to bigger premises.
Another link to this story originated from the Yackandandah Museum, housed in the Bank of Victoria building across the road from where I’m standing. In 2011, I remember, the historical society organised an event celebrating local identities, past and present. It was at this event I learnt that a man called Francis Waterloo Stiles became the first bookseller and newsagent in Yackandandah, in 1859. Thirty years later, after his death, his wife Ellen continued to run the business. An account from a resident who remembers this ‘most wonderful shop’, recalls that ‘It sold all sorts of things: sticks two for a penny, toys of all sorts, school books, papers, magazines and stamps’. Another resident, Mrs Flora Collins, remembered Ellen Stiles, ‘Mrs Stiles weighed fourteen stone and rode a pony weighing ten stone. The pony couldn’t be seen for the flowing dress worn by the rider’. What an amazing sight it would have been to see Mrs Stiles riding down the main street on her pony.
We still have a newsagency in town. The business was relocated to a larger premise and expanded – in the spirit of Mrs Stiles’ establishment – to include books, toys, stationary and, under the management of its most recent owners, Australiana. The wire frames containing the headlines of the day are long gone though.
The shop has become more than a newsagency, not unlike the store run by Ellen Stiles, I imagine. People leave small parcels behind the counter to be collected by someone else; it’s a means of getting an update on the weather – pretty chilly out there this morning; a quick chat about the football scores; an update on the progress of the rail trail being developed through the town (the recent proprietors are keen cyclists).
I continue my Easter Sunday walk and think what a complex narrative this town has. This street, High Street Yackandandah, is layered with stories. My newsagency story is only a small fragment, one of thousands. I could also walk down the street at another time on another day and retrieve a completely different set of memories and spin offs, explore other stories of past residents and even muse about a possible future for the town when people – and this would be a terrible thing – may no longer read paper newspapers or books.
Beverley Lello – August 2020
Accompanying Photo: Ellen Stiles in front of the Yackandandah Newsagency – late 1800s (photo supplied by Yackandandah & District Historical Society)
