In the small tourist town of Port Fairy, property regularly sells for millions, but when the owners of the local hardware store decided to retire and sell up, they refused offers from developers until they found a buyer who would keep the 100-year-old business alive.
Ken and June Brookes have grown their business since they got into the industry in the 70s and now own several combined titles making up their large hardware store and timber yard.
But the lure of a big sale wasn’t enough to compromise their values.
“It [the store] has been on the market for about three or four years, and there’s no doubt that we’ve had plenty of interest in it,” co-owner June Brookes said.
“But a lot of the interest was in the development of Port Fairy, and they weren’t interested in buying a hardware shop,” she said.
Part of the desire to keep the hardware store in Port Fairy is the history of the site.
“This site has been a hardware store for about a hundred years,” Ms Brookes said.
The Brookes were recently sent a photograph from the 1920s of a horse-drawn delivery down the main street of Port Fairy, which was being delivered to a family, who are still customers at the store today.
But mostly, their condition of sale was about their dedication to the town’s tradies and residents, who Ken Brookes has loved working with over the years.
“Our attitude was – if another business didn’t stock a type of product, we would try to stock it, so people didn’t have to leave town to get it,” Mr Brookes said.
“We still follow that somewhat today, hence the wide variety in store.”
Stepping inside the store is a bit of a time-warp to the days of the true-to-name, country-town general store that stocks everything from televisions to timber, thongs to tea-pots, garden stakes to floral dinner sets.
“A common catch-cry as people walk through the front door is, ‘You just don’t see stores like this anymore!'” Mr Brookes said.
Over the past half-century, the site has grown to be a bit like the Myers windows, with four shop frontages along the main street, but with barbecues rather than barbie-like mannequins.
Inside there’s a converted alleyway, a timber yard, even a disused squash court that acts as a warehouse.
The long wait to sell to the right people has taken the Brookes well past their desired retirement date but now they’ve found a buyer, it has made people in the town very happy.
From the many tradies who service Port Fairy to the ‘DIYers’ who have no idea where to start but have enjoyed the tutelage of Ken and June over the years, locals have been flocking into the store for weeks to say thank you and goodbye and pay up their accounts.
One such self-proclaimed ‘no idea DIYer’ is Councillor Jordan Lockett, who owned a café next door to the hardware store in the late 90s.
“I was almost in there every second day needing something for the cafe!” Cr Jordan Lockett said.
Cr Lockett thought the decision to only sell the site with the business was heroic.
“Obviously it’s prime real estate, going across four blocks and right in the centre of town,” he said.
The Brookes remain deeply appreciated in Port Fairy for their old-fashioned style of service that goes above and beyond, delivering gas after hours in the old days, ordering specialty goods in, and in recent times, making sure that the builders could access hard-to-come-by supplies of timber.
Not to mention their decades of donations to town projects.
They’ve supported the Francis Foundation op-shop rent-free at the back of their site for many decades, and have raised funds and donated thousands to community projects, including helping to build a COVID-safe visiting room at the local nursing home, Belfast House, in 2020.
Ms Brookes said that she would not miss the paperwork, tidying away or vacuuming, but she would miss the problem solving and encouraging people to give DIY projects a go.
“People bring photos in of what they’ve done, so to be able to see people come in and say, ‘Look what I’ve done, look what I’ve done!’ she said.
