Meet Warwick and Pam Grace from Fairy Meadow's Graces Hardware

Meet Warwick and Pam Grace, who many readers will remember ran Graces Hardware in Fairy Meadow for 25 years. Footage by Adam McLean

Transcript

00:00Well, it was the 1960s and it was a time of development.

00:06We had the Fairy Meadow Migrant Hostel, we had people from Holland, Italy, Greece,

00:15every other European nation pretty well, and we had some wonderful customers from those.

00:21And every suburb had a hardware store, smaller or larger than ours, most of them are about this size,

00:32and they performed a great service in the community.

00:36But of course, eventually, changing business ideas, we had to give up, but we loved the hardware trade.

00:49I came from teaching and gave that up to go into the hardware, and the family all took part as they grew,

00:59so it was a real family business.

01:01We employed about 12 people, so it was a significant time for the area,

01:08and all of these suburbs up towards Balgownie, they would all be part of our, what they call the drainage area.

01:20And Dad had developed own brand stuff, which we used to sell a lot, repack bulk stuff and sell it with our own brand.

01:35We also hired out equipment for painting, free of charge, to encourage people to buy house slots of paint and so on.

01:46So yes, it was a wonderful period, 1960 up to 1982, when we eventually sold the business.

01:55So yes, it wasn't a lot of bags of paint.

01:57No way, he did not make a lot of bags of paint.

02:01But we didn't open up all the bags of paint.

02:02I had first a couple of bags, as well as the whole bag of paint,

02:07so I mentioned it, which couldn't be a big holder that we got together,

02:10but I knew that, that's the last of the bags we were specifically on.

02:13I had to find one of the bags, it's a big gift.

02:16And then, we also had to press the bag that we wanted to do.

02:18And then we had to press the bag data.

02:20So we had to do that, and we're going to start the bag.

02:22So, we were going to have to pay our shoes.