(By Chloe Fraser – Published on Sound Telegraph local newspaper on Wednesday, August 12, 2020)
Rockingham Uniting Church’s Opportunity Shop is celebrating 50 years in the community. The op shop first opened on August 29, 1970, in a small cottage on the Rockingham waterfront. It was opened to raise funds for the church, which was facing financial difficulties at the time. The rent back then was $4 a week, with the initial president and secretary covering that cost.
Just six weeks after opening the shop, the group was forced to move to bigger premises at the former Bank of New South Wales House on railway terrace. With that building facing demolition, the op shop moved again to premises on Kent Street in June 1971. Over the next nine years on that location a band of 20 volunteers were rostered to run the op shop. Then it moved again, to a shop directly behind the bank. Its final move was to a house on Parkin Street – Opposite IGA – in 1991.
By 1990 the Op Shop had donated $116,677 to the church and various charities. By 2005 the op shop was in need of another extension to cater for donations of furniture. A big shed was built at the rear of the premises.
The op shop is one of the original business of its kind in Rockingham and its success is largely credited to its volunteers. About 25 people from both the church community and the public now keep the doors open six days a week with funds raised put towards the church and for local and national emergency relief. Some money raised at the store is fed back into the community via support for Coastal Care Rockingham, which cares for the homeless and disadvantaged in the community.
Volunteer Gwen Miller said the volunteers were the heart and soul of the shop, which had firmly cemented its place in Rockingham’s history. “This shop has been visited by many locals over the years, some as volunteers and others as customers and donors,” she said. “Everyone’s been in this shop almost once.”
Open six days a week from 10am to 3.30pm on weekdays and 9am to noon on Saturday, the op shop continues to provide vital support for those in need and remains a place of friendship to the many volunteers who have walked through the doors. “In the last 50 years we’ve had floods, break ins ... nothing has ever stopped us,” volunteer Helen Duncan said. “We’ve always been open.”
