Rob Houlihan is, quite literally, a jack of all trades. Chef, barista, postie, fuel attendant, shopkeeper and, informally, the eyes and ears of the small rural community of Lowanna, west of Coffs Harbour.
With his wife Michelle and two teenage sons, Houlihan owns and runs the Lowanna General Store.
General stores, especially those in small or rural communities, are one-stop shops. Or, as Houlihan says, “We are absolutely everything here.” A post office, cafe, grocery store, lolly shop, service station and meeting hub.
The Houlihans’ shop is the beating heart of the small community it serves – roughly 1200 people, many of whom live on farms. People pop in to grab the paper or a milkshake and spend a half-hour chinwagging with the neighbour.
The loss of such a store would be, at the very least, an inconvenience for most and, at the very worst, life-threatening.
“When you shut the door, the phone keeps ringing,” says Houlihan, who had lived in the area for many years before buying the general store three years ago. “If there’s anything going on, we’re the information point.
“Everybody rings and asks, ‘What is going on here?’ ‘Is this road open?’ ‘What is happening with that fire?’ It’s the social point, the meeting place. It’s a very old-fashioned thing.”
Old fashioned? Yes. Outdated? Certainly not.
The humble general store has made a roaring comeback in recent years, driven in part by a renewed enthusiasm for staying local and supporting small businesses.
And a new generation of shopkeepers is modernising and refining longstanding businesses across the country.
In Kilcunda on the Victorian coastline, four young women – three from Melbourne and one from the UK – took over the local general store in 2019.
“There’s pretty much just us and the pub in Kilcunda,” says co-owner Jacqui Rossetti. “So we’re a bit of a hub in town.”
The store’s primary focus is its cafe, serving homemade gourmet options, often with produce grown on-site, along with classic takeaway favourites.
“We sit in this fine balance of being a classic general store with a Melbourne twist,” Rossetti says. “We don’t go too far in one direction – you get the push-back from the locals.”
The women have decided to list Kilcunda General Store on the market with price expectations between $400,000 and $450,000,
“I’m never surprised if it’s local people who end up buying it,” says real estate agent Jo Ginn of Alex Scott & Staff, “because they already feel a connection with the region.”
If the buyers are from out of town, Rossetti offers a piece of advice: get to know the locals.
“Bringing fresh ideas is lovely but take your time to sense what the community wants,” she says.
The general store is often part of a town’s social fabric. During Victoria’s series of pandemic lockdowns, dropping into the Kilcunda general store was, for many, their only social interaction of the day.
In Lowanna, Rob and Michelle Houlihan saw how vital their shop was to the community during the catastrophic bushfire season of 2019.
“A few years ago, when we had the bad bushfires up here, we had the only fuel in the area,” Rob says. “We were open for 24 hours a day for a couple of weeks running because we were continuously filling fire trucks with diesel.”
Defying evacuation orders in order to stay open for the fire services, Rob and his eldest son worked around the clock. “I must have made 5000 ham salad sandwiches over that time,” he says.
The firefighters were under orders to protect the school and the general store.
The Lowanna General Store has been open since 1923 – quite a feat, considering the cutthroat prices of major supermarket chains and service stations.
The Houlihans, aged in their 60s, are now preparing to hand over the keys. “I’ve got a farm that’s been neglected,” Rob says. “We’ve had our run and made a bit of money.”
But selling the business isn’t just about finding someone with $600,000-plus to outlay. “I won’t sell the store to somebody who I don’t think will make it,” he says. “The community can’t do without the store.”
General stores for sale
Maclagan Store: The general store provides the bulk of the town’s services – fuel, food and post.
Lower Beechmont General Store: sits within a mixed-use commercial building for sale.
Kilcunda General Store: a well-known destination for locals and tourists.
Lowanna General Store: serving a community of around 1200 people.
