Century-old watch tower transforms into quirky bookstore for regional Victorians

ABC NEWS (Australia)

For 100 years, Wodonga's water tower has stood over the regional city's main street. It was decommissioned in 1959, but now it's found a new life. And it might not be what you expect.

Transcript

00:00After 100 years dominating Wodonga's skyline, this water tower is turning over a new leaf

00:09as a bookshop.

00:10I love quirky sort of stuff like this and I think you're going to get a good mix of

00:15different kinds of books by the looks of it.

00:17Just good to have a space to come and find some more reading material.

00:22It's the brainchild of Melissa Boyes.

00:25It was just like a concrete shell really, so we had to carpet it.

00:30My husband built a lot of the bookshelves and then like painting and just kind of making

00:36it a little bit cosier than it was before.

00:38Cramped into a space that once housed a shoe repair business, she hopes to make it a haven

00:43for bookworms.

00:44I think particularly second hand bookshops, like they always have like a little bit of

00:48a quirkiness about them anyway.

00:50Miss Boyes has long had a love of books in odd places.

00:54During lockdown my husband and I started to renovate it because we were kind of stuck

00:57at home and wanted a project and gave us an excuse to be away from our children.

01:03Opening a bookshop in a water tower might seem unusual, but regional Victorians have been

01:08opening new chapters on old buildings for decades.

01:11I love an unusual bookshop and I think bookshops lend themselves to that because they're interesting

01:18spaces anyway, so to put an interesting space inside an interesting space becomes extra appealing.

01:25To borrow from Mark Twain, the demise of regional bookshops has been greatly exaggerated.

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