They’re closing the old folks’ home in Dimboola.
‘It’s such a shame, it is,’ says the volunteer with dark grey hair cut around determined eyes. ‘My grandmother was one of the first three residents who ever lived there.’
‘And my mother-in-law was there too,’ chimes in the other volunteer, who has a kind, engaging face and snow-white, cropped hair.
The two volunteers are packing crocheted Christmas ornaments into plastic bags, ‘Packing away Christmas,’ they tell us, when my friend and I set foot in the shop. I can never walk past an op shop without going in.
This is not, however, an op shop, the sign on the door declares. It is the Gateway Shop. It raises money for the local Girl Guides… and the soon to be closing nursing home in this country town in western Victoria.
‘But where will everybody go?’ I want to know.
‘Oh, everywhere,’ sighs Determined Eyes. ‘Bung one in a room in Horsham, another in Ballarat. It will be so hard for the poor dears. They’re part of the community here.’
‘I guess it’s not profitable for them to run it anymore,’ I wonder sadly.
‘Well that’s right, it’s only a twenty bed facility but you still need all the staff. They just can’t do it anymore.’
'We have seen what a pandemic can do to global supply chains and to the state of supermarket shelves; what, then, might a climate catastrophe do? In what ways will we need each other, need our gardens, need our industrious hands?'
Anger begins to swell inside me. ‘Isn’t that what the government is for? To make sure places like this stay open?’
Determined Eyes shrugs, resigned. ‘Well of course we asked. But they wouldn’t do it.’
I wander around the shop, incensed at all that is wrong with this story. How our elders – mothers, fathers, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends – are so undervalued they are packed up and sent on their way to balance the bottom line, as unnecessary as Christmas decorations in January.
I rifle through a collection of second-hand CDs, all for sale – Greatest Hits by Michael Crawford, an old soundtrack of Phantom of the Opera. There’s a blue tooth speaker, still in its box, and a power adaptor for travelling to other countries. ‘These are all donations from local people,’ says Determined Eyes, who is sorting some shelves nearby. ‘And the crafts – all the work of locals too.’ There is a rack crammed with baby knits, all creams and baby blues. I imagine mottled, bony hands knitting in front of the TV, expertly, faithfully.
‘People bring in food they grow as well,’ Determined Eyes informs me, proudly, pointing to large mesh shelves, empty now, in this fallow season between Christmas and New Year. ‘Whatever’s growing in their gardens. Fresh eggs as well.’
‘And don’t forget to have a look at the clothes on that rack,’ says the second volunteer, Kind Face, looking up from her sorting. ‘Everything’s five dollars.’ I run my hands over the clothes: thick, good quality fabrics, all brand new.
‘This shop used to be a clothing factory, before we moved in,’ explains Determined Eyes. ‘Used to sew all the school uniforms. Shut down two and a half years ago.’
Another woman has walked into the shop: denim shorts, sunglasses on head, makeup on. ‘We have to go into Horsham now to buy the kids their uniforms. They don’t fit, mind you. Course they’re all made in China.’
Determined Eyes shrugs. ‘What can you do? We’re lucky we had it as long as we did.’
Determined Eyes and Kind Face pull down tinsel while I look at the handmade wares of the creative people of Dimboola: crocheted donuts, knitted cuffs to go around your coffee cup. There are boxes crammed with dress patterns from the 1970s.
It strikes me that this funny shop on the main street of Dimboola is a site of active local resistance. I think of the vegetables withering on the shelves at the supermarket around the corner, sagging from their refrigerated journey from farms to massive distributions centres and back to the places where the farms are again. A crazy, illogical system, reliant on fossil fuels and vulnerable to any hiccup, regional or global, which can easily leave shelves bare. But here, in Dimboola, are local people placing plump zucchinis and fresh eggs on shelves for other local people to eat.
And while most of us are buying our kids’ clothes from Kmart, the people of Dimboola have been manufacturing them themselves. When the local factory could sustain the pressure of offshore competition no more, it was the elderly people of the town – the elders! – who kept knitting clothes for the children.
And these are the people we are packing up, and sending out of town, because it is more efficient that way. As though our economic system knows anything about efficiency!
Christmas is over, and so might be another era, an era overseen by the wrinkled, steamed faces of older women stirring caldrons of cumquat marmalade, who know how to make a wax seal so it keeps in the pantry. Maybe this era is getting packed away too, to make room for cheap goods in warehouse-sized stores, and fast fashion woven from oil and exploitation. An era where it is not deemed viable to keep elders in their home community, close to their children, nephews, nieces, friends.
But my sense, as we leave the Gateway Shop, tomato chutney and cumquat marmalade in hand, is that the time of local economies of sharing is not over at all. We have seen what a pandemic can do to global supply chains and to the state of supermarket shelves; what, then, might a climate catastrophe do? In what ways will we need each other, need our gardens, need our industrious hands?
I wonder how long the Gateway Shop will be around for, and what other iterations of local resistance might take its place. Whatever happens, one thing I know is that the Gateway Shop, with its endless racks of crocheted goods and shelves giving off the scent of fresh-cut basil, beckons us down a path that we desperately need to go.
Andreana Reale is a Melbourne-based writer and currently a candidate for ordination in the Uniting Church.
Main image: Chris Johnston illustration.