In the morning I headed north on the west side of the main street, past empty shops, their faded signage with letters missing like lost teeth. But they were not all vacant. The partial failure of a country town makes its grand buildings look even more impressive, if a little ghostly. Across the road, the Palace Hotel was a retro-excess concrete and brick art nouveau monstrosity, in a good sense. It was one of three or four hotels within a block or two, all of which looked as though they had been in competition when the original owners had commissioned their design. Gold money or wheat mnoney? Bizarrely, on the next corner, the post office (then), and more recently, was a mock-Tudor red-brick stack straight from a story book. The town hall further along was a cross between a cream brick nuclear power station and an art deco architect's version of a medieval castle.
I walked another block. These once-prosperous towns always had at least one furniture store, several clothing stores, a few hardware merchants, several butchers and greengrocers, each of the big four banks, one or two family (i.e. run by a family, not necessarily engaging in divorce business) law firms of the type not specialising in ambulance-chasing, several coffee lounges and milkbars, stock and station agents, and haberdasheries, milliners and shoe repair booths. Much of this retail diversity is lost forever, its functional variety turned over to $2 junk shops, out front of which the formerly swept footpaths are loaded up each morning with wheeled racks of cheap brooms, plastic kerosene pumps, rolls of kitchen wipes, garish plastic junk and sunglass stands that look like they will topple any minute. One formerly grand fashion outlet had one of those entrance set-ups with the door set back into the shop, so that you once entered past temptingly displayed frocks in the return windows; now the once-grand entrance was just an ornately tiled rubbish scuttle.
A shambling building at the top of the street had once been a farm machinery showroom. Its enormous glass frontage now displayed second hand goods, bric-a-brac, gold and brass knick-knacks, crockery, antiques, jewellery, books and old wares. A sticker on the door said 'Consignment sales'; giving the impression that a hundred years of accumulated local farming wealth was gathered into one final shipping-off place.
Sigh. I keep hoping that the newly expanding ability to work remotely will help revive these towns, which have so much character and history. The phenomenon is the same in the States.
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The evidence is already there that people are moving to these towns. The price of houses has skyrocketed.
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