south gippsland op shopping

The boys and I recently spent a few days with my parents in South Gippsland. We usually travel late in the day or weekends, so to go mid week gave the rare opportunity of visiting a few op shops on the way. Apart from all the op shopping opportunities, the scenery along the South Gippsland Highway is beautiful and worth the trip in itself.

Our first stop was Korumburra with its four op shops, a surprising number for a town of about 3000 people. Three are stretched along its main street, with another, a Vinnies in a back street parallel to the main street. Of the four, I found the Kilmany House shop in the main street to be the best. Its a good, old fashioned, heavily stocked store, with lots of rummaging opportunities. The Salvos, on the other side of Main Street is another good (and quite large) store.

15klm further down the Highway is Leongatha, with another three stores. First stop was another Vinnies, just off the highway in Bruce Street. A typical Vinnies store, it was very neat and tidy. This store had quite a few craft books and I found this bundle for 10 cents each.

Bruce Street is the continuation of Peart Street, and here you will find St Peters Anglican Church shop (opposite the car park). The best shop of the trip, its in an old house, with lots of little rooms for rummaging in. I picked up a few embroidered hankies and a lovely embroidered supper cloth, which my Mum was quick to claim before I could photograph it.

On the highway itself is a Salvos store, which, as it looked like the store roof was about to blow off in the gale force winds, we left for another day.

From Leongatha we continued eastward to Meeniyan and its Community Store, housed in the old roadhouse that used to serve fantastic fish and chips. These days, the old chiller cabinet is home to the op shop "good stuff" and the lolly shelf now holds assorted novels.

Another 25klm along is Foster with its single op shop. It is located in what used to be the Water Board building until they relocated to the old Shire Offices, the Council having moved out following the amalgamation of a couple of local Shires into the wide ranging Shire of South Gippsland.

This shop, staffed by one of my old school teachers (we pretended not to recognise each other!!), is always a good haunt. This time I picked up a coffee jar of extremely dirty buttons for $2.50. By the looks of them, these buttons have come from garments worn to milk the cows.


The undoubted highlight of the trip (seeing the parents notwithstanding...), was the second hand book sale at the Foster Arts Centre. This annual event is really popular, and the crowd was quite thick, even at 9.30am on a Friday morning.

The boys and I selected a fruit box full of goodies, including 10 copies each of Martha Stewart Living and Notebook magazine, six books each for the boys and a book about cat behaviour (in an effort to figure out why our cat races around the house like a lunatic at 9.00pm every evening). This worthy (and extremely heavy) haul set us back $4.50 for lot.


Welshpool is a tiny little village 25klm further east again and counts an op shop amongst its five or so shop fronts. I was very surprised to learn that my Dad is this shop's best customer as it has a great book selection. Best second hand books in the area, according to Dad. And you think you know someone.....

Our last stop was Yarram with its single shop in the main street. Another typical country store, it had a great selection of knitting needles and kids toys.

An added bonus of driving all the way to Yarram is a trip to its bakery with a lovely choice of cream cakes. Yum!