Forget the chain stores on your average high street or tearing your hair out trying to rumble the logic behind K-Mart’s bewildering store layout – Australia has better shopping experiences than this. It also has weirder ones – this is a country that allows the bizarre shop to survive.
From insects in jars, marbles or clothing for strippers, let’s take a nationwide shopping expedition with a twist…
World of Marbles
Where: Sheffield, Tasmania
Ostensibly, World of Marbles is an outlet for local artists. It’s half gallery, half shop, and has plenty of pictures and photographs for sale.
But these are overshadowed by the sheer weight of marbles. The shop is owned by Jan Rigden-Clay, who fell in love with marbles at an early age but realised that they couldn’t be sourced in Australia. So she went all the way to the United States to learn how to make marbles properly, and has now come back to Oz to pursue her labour of love.
Jan has a glass-making studio at the side of the gallery, and what she makes there goes on display. She’s undeterred by the fact that nobody plays marbles any more, and is hoping to add a workshop where she can teach others how to make them.
Wunderkammer
Where: 439 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne, Victoria
Back in the good old days where rich men had far too much time and money on their hands, they would start a cabinet of curiosities. They’d go round the world, collecting unusual things that they thought were kind of cool, and put them in a display cabinet to wow/ bore guests with.
Many of these cabinets of curiosities (or Wunderkammers) became museums. Many of the world’s big tourist draws started this way – especially in the UK.
Well the tradition hasn’t died out, and in Melbourne the Wunderkammer store is a strange hybrid of shop, museum and dusty old attic in which a mad old scientist has horded things.
Amongst the stranger things on display is a miniature perfume library, featuring the scents of human breast milk and swamps.
And, of course, it’s the ideal place for those needing to stock up on vintage first aid kits, fossilised faeces and beetles in petri dishes.
Strippers World
Where: 77 Bulwer Street, Perth, Western Australia
Almost certainly the least classy shop in Australia, this grim-looking dive specialises in selling items of clothing that strippers may like to wear. Which instead of tasteful, sensual lingerie generally means cheap satin-effect undies with crude words for female genitalia emblazoned across the front.
Throw in some ludicrously high heels, the odd bit of dominatrix gear and the sort of skirt that your father would refer to as a belt, and it’s a delightful display.
But let’s face it… it’s kind of cool that there’s a shop just for strippers, isn’t it?
MJ Dawson: The Saddler
Where: 2 Church Street Glen Innes, New South Wales
You know you’re in horse country when the most revered shop in town is the saddle-maker’s. And even if you’ve got no intention of mounting so much as a docile pony, it’s worth popping in to see the master in action.
He works on much of the saddle in full view, and so long as you pretend to be vaguely interested and don’t just gawp, you’ll be able to squeeze a bit of information out of him.
Apparently it takes 35-40 hours to make the simplest saddle, and it costs $2,650. Ouch…
So if you’ve not got that much spare change sloshing around, just go in for that overwhelming whiff of leather.
Old Umbrella Shop Launceston
Where: 60 George Street, Launceston, Tasmania.
In an old heritage building, this shop takes cutesy almost to the point of unbearable. There are lots of old-style toys, tea-towels that middle-aged women will find strangely endearing and more kitsch books about birds and cats than you could ever wish for.
However, the name of the shop isn’t some clever Alanis Morrisette-style attempt at irony. What it really specialises in is umbrellas. They come in all shapes, sizes and colours, with each one somehow managing to be more garish and bright than the next. No more do the good people of Launceston have to settle for the bog-standard black umbrella – they can pick one to match whatever they’re wearing.
It’s somewhat surprising to discover that there isn’t a special secret agent section with poison tipped umbrellas, but nonetheless it pretty much covers the rest of the available options. Rihanna, no doubt, would love it.
Road Kill Cafe
Where: Mindil Beach Markets, Darwin, Northern Territory.
Not so much a shop as a stall, this one gets in on name alone. Despite all pretences to the contrary, the Road Kill Cafe doesn’t scoop up stricken carcasses from the Stuart Highway in order to serve them up to iron-gutted customers. Less excitingly, the meats are all legal, hygienic and cooked by a qualified chef – but why let the truth get in the way of a good story, huh?
Those wanting to eat their way the beasts that hang out on hard shoulders across Australia can tuck into buffalo, emu, kangaroo and wallaby. Also on the menu are crocodile, camel and possum.
The stall also sells a smattering of merchandise, resplendent with tasteful slogans such as “COME TRY THE CARNAGE.”
This article was originally written for Ninemsn.
Copyright David Whitley
