Jackson's Hardware Thirroul has in its window the proud proclamation that it has been serving Thirroul and the northern suburbs of Wollongong with hardware for over 55 years. You can't read the sign in this shot, but it's in the central pane of the windows and was obviously (if your math is good) painted a few years ago.

But now the building has been sold with the new owners apparently planning to redevelop it, and the posters in the window declare that All Stock Must Go!

Time has passed businesses like Jackson's by, just as the tail lights of this car are. (An effect that I hoped would be more dramatic, but there are double demerits over the Australia Day long weekend and people are being more assiduous about sticking to the speed limit.) It's a tale of small businesses the world over and I, and doubtless all of us, are in part the cause of that.

I've gone to Jackson's on occasion when I've been looking for something, since it's not a particularly long drive from home. But admittedly most of the time when I've needed tools or hardware my default thought is always "Bunnings Warehouse"; I rarely give a thought to Jackson's, though if I do I may go there. Bunnings is a huge hardware mega store which is maybe an extra 10 minutes' drive compared to getting to Jackson's, but which I know will have almost anything I need in the way of gardening and hardware, at a decent price, with easy parking, and generally very friendly staff who really know what they're talking about, somewhere inside its cavernous and humungous interior. Jackson's obviously has a much smaller range, parking is a pain, and the prices, while competitive, are generally a smidge higher. And admittedly I'm a shareholder at Bunnings (albeit not a huge one) but merely a customer at Jackson's.

Of course, it may just be that the family got sick of running it. Later generations don't necessarily want to yoke themselves to the family business, trying to eke out an increasingly marginal existence competing against market behemoths, and working 7 days a week, call it 51 weeks a year (after public holidays) for the privilege of doing so. Especially when they're sitting on valuable land that could probably return a lot more in a year than the business would in a decade.

60 years is, for many people, literally a lifetime. From birth to school to work to the border of retirement, if the Grim Reaper hasn't given an approving nod in your direction first. Maybe it's enough. Will the community be less than it is without businesses like Jackson's? Also hard to say. I hail from the city suburbs where most businesses like this vanished long ago, and there is certainly no sense of community there. There is in places like the Illawarra, which is much more parochial (and I mean that in a descriptive, not derogatory way). How much of that has to do with there still being Mr. Smith the grocer and Mr. Jones the butcher scattered through the local shopping strip is hard to say. But the times are changing here just as they did there, just a few decades later. You're seeing it in action here.