The second in a series that I started last year of small retail shops that make up our environment, and which we never miss until that "Hey, what used to be there?" moment.

On this day I had to head into work early. Rain was forecast so I drove to the station, and found that I had plenty of time to take a PAD before the train arrived. Since I had the car I hoiked the tripod out of the boot and went and took some early morning shots of a few shops. What I had underestimated was the incredibly strong streetlights along that stretch, which you can see streaming in from the upper left corner here.

A few years ago now I shot a statue which was brightly lit by a sodium streetlight, and used that light to good effect. However that was slightly later in the morning, when there was a smidge of light in the sky to diffuse it. Here, it was still well before sunrise so the full intensity of the street light came through.

This was once two shops; the shop on the left was the original FairFlights travel agency with the standard counter and bar stool arrangement common to surviving travel agents. The one on the right was a surfboard shop. When the surfboard shop moved up into the central part of the village Fairflights took over that part of the building as well and created one of their "Travel Emporium" branded stores. Which is still essentially a counter and bar seats, but with décor that is more of a cross between a 1960's jungle safari and Michael Palin's Around The World In 80 Days, albeit with a modern coffee machine.

Regrettably I've not had cause to use their services. (Although I'd like to buy the little b*st*rd who tagged the Telstra phone booth a one way ticket to an Ebola hot spot.) Although I'll never deal with Wotif again, I may with its parent Expedia and any of a number of other web-based booking companies. I'm a loyalty member of a number of hotel chains and booking directly through the hotels gets me bonuses. Within Australia? I can't imagine the need to go to a travel agent. Outside it? Possibly if I was travelling to a non-Western country, but I'm not at all sure. If it was a western country then I might, maybe, compare what they had in the way of packages with what I could do for myself. As will others, undoubtedly, which is why for a while now travel agencies have been on the endangered species list and why gimmicks like this store layout desperately need to be tried.

I do wish them well, but it'll be interesting to see whether this is still here when the 2017 PAD rolls around.

Postscript, July 2022: Nobody saw The Bug coming way back in 2015, nor the way it would rip the travel industry to pieces between the end of 2019 and 2022, but you can probably guess at the outcome of this.

By July 2016 (according to Instagram account Thirroul Guru), the agency had moved up the road to the northern end of Thirroul Village, where the St Vincent de Paul ("Vinnies") opportunity shop now is. It was a smaller, narrower shopfront (presumably with lower rent) but they maintained the "Around the World In 80 Days" vibe.

Some time after that (and I know I took some phone photos of this but I can't find them at the moment; always keyword your photos, people!) I saw the the shop front empty save for a hand written note on a piece of paper on the floor saying that they had moved to a mobile only business. That's right, not even on line, but "mobile". I remember thinking "That's going to work really well, because if you're splashing out 15 grand on an overseas holiday via an agent you sure as heck don't want anything more than a telephone number behind it". This was confirmed by a website aggregator site, which records this message on their site: "travel emporium has recently moved to a mobile consulting model, we are all local, and happy to meet you at a location for your choice to organise your travel, at any time convenient to you." I found a near identical message on the dead remnants of their website on the Wayback Machine from March 2020. How is that not going to work from a consumer confidence point of view, let me count the ways. (And I'm not saying that snarkily; it's just the reality of the situation. They did what they could to try to stay afloat, but the ship was too far down by that point.)

It's academic since that was the time when The Bug first started to bite, killing off travel agencies left, right and centre. As of the time of writing, the Google entry for them shows "Permanently Closed", and their web site is not on line.

It is indeed a pity.

Last Year