A trip to “Town” in the 1960s and 1970s was a big deal. Town was where everything happened and where all the important shops were. If it was a week day and my Dad was at work, Mum and I would walk to the bus stop and ride in, usually getting off down near The Store. We might walk up the street and go to the movies, if I was lucky, and if I was very lucky indeed we would go to one of the department store cafeterias – maybe Winns – where I would get…
In decades past, many Australian households had little pocket-sized albums in which were stuck hundreds of tiny stamp-like coupons. These were diligently saved until the books were full and then traded for items at special stores that were operated by the companies that issued the stamps. A number of these loyalty schemes existed, but for many years the biggest and most popular was probably the Green Coupon. It seems that Green Coupons began in the United States in 1896 when the Sperry and Hutchinson Company introduced their clever scheme, under which they sold sheets of "trading…
As a small boy in Newcastle, NSW, in the 1960s, I remember Winn's store mostly for its cafeteria where, if I was lucky on a day out with my Mum, I might be treated to my favourite salmon sandwich and chocolate milkshake. Winn's was a revered Newcastle retail institution with a history that stretched back to October 1878, when local brothers Isaac and William Winn and William Winn's widowed sister-in-law Marian Aird decided to set up shop as drapers on Hunter Street. The brothers had been raised in Newcastle, mostly by their mother, Harriett, since their…