In and out and over and under in Bendigo.
Geoff Hocking

I think I may have told you this beforeÑ my dad used to work in Myers. In fact he holds the record as the longest serving Myer employee ever Ñ 40 years in Myers in the Mall, selling carpets and floor-coverings on the top floor. In todayÕs world of short-term, part-time, flexible, negotiable, unreliably unstable employment no one will ever beat that record.
When we were kids we used to go into Myers at night and help him measure out lengths of carpet and rolls of lino.  While no one else was in the store we rolled out the lino and dad tallied up how much was left and wrote it all down in the stock-book.
When he was otherwise occupied my brother and I took off on our own and found a labyrinth of back-stairs, hidden rooms and passageways, that werenÕt really passages but openings into ÔsecretÕ chambers that allowed us to scurry like rats across the beams and beneath the rooftops of the CBD. 
Did you know that up above AllanÕs Walk Ð so-called because AllanÕs Music-Store was halfway up the walk, just near HartleyÕs Gun and Sports Store (which also did boot and shoe repairs) Ð there is a complete level of old shops. There were, still are, two sets of charming old curving stairs with hand-rails set into the wall which let you up to the first floor. A cast-iron balustrade curved around a walkway, you could see down into AllanÕs Walk, a clerestory window ran the full length flooding the walk with daylight. This was the old Bendigo Stock Exchange. 
There are a number of large rooms up there, over to the back, now littered with dry leaves and pigeon droppings, and who knows what else. HartleyÕs shoe-man was up there; a dumb-waiter [a little hand-operated goods-lift] could be summonsed from the shop below and your mended boots would be cranked down from the floor above. 
A number of businesses once operated from the old Exchange: tailors, funky clothing shops and other interesting characters were in residence. The floor has been padlocked away for many years now, and AllanÕs Walk suffers in its darkness. With a little more love and attention this important arcade could again be the charming ÔVictorianÕ walkway it once was.
Fred and Flossie LeechÕs, Ladies Lingerie, was just on the bend of the Walk, behind EveryÕs Bookshop. Fred was my motherÕs cousin and we always stopped for a chat every Friday [shopping day]. In all the years before I went to school I watched Fred carefully caress ladies undergarments into gold and silver embossed flat-pink boxes, wrap the silky items in tissue and fold them away.  They donÕt do that in the chain stores when you buy your bras and knickers today.
At the entrance to the Mall stood the Dad ÔnÕ Dave; a cafŽ of the toasted sandwich, hot malted milkshake, chocolate sundae and Tarax spider type.  Frank Barr painted some large murals with cartoons appropriated from Eric JolliffeÕs. ÔSaltbush BillÕ. Dad ÔnÕ Dave were archetypal bushies created by Queenslander Steele Rudd Ð no not KevinÕs father because he real name was Arthur Hoey Davis Ð no not KRudd, thatÕs his real name. A radio program called ÔOn Our SelectionÕ played every week and was hugely popular. These great big murals, on removable panels, were the branding for this cafŽ. I wonder where they are now? They had replaced the framed pictures of Greek musclemen, and the Parthenon, which had once graced the walls of the then aptly named Parthenon CafŽ.  The Parthenon had cast-iron, marble topped tables, and you could get a milk-shake in there served in ice-cold, heavy bottomed, good-old aluminium  ÔbucketsÕ. I remember they did an iced pineapple crush as well. How good were they?
But I digress; I started out talking about clambering in and out, over and under Bendigo.
Victoria Lane, beside MullyÕs, used to open into what was then the back of Woolies. You could cross from the Mall to Hargreaves Street through here.
The first entrance to the labyrinthine Myers, always in the Mall, had those old lead-lighted bay windows that you walked in and around. They disappeared in the sixties. My brother and I were paid £1 every Saturday morning for a couple of months to clamber around in and out of the demolition site and clear out the rubbish. A cellar used to reach out under the footpath, it had those little thick glass ÔtilesÕ inset into the tarmac, which let a milky light pass through. We used to refill port and sherry bottles from barrels under the footpath, slapped on a label and they were sold in the licensed grocery section.
Myers main competitor in Bendigo, The Beehive, opened into both the Mall and Hargreaves Street.  Because customers would traverse Bendigo via the Beehive Myer needed to the same facility. Sometime in the sixties they acquired the very old-fashioned counter-lined haberdasher Matthews Brothers and knocked a hole in the back wall. Although this entrance has been shifted along a couple of shops today [the young ladies fashion area used to go through to Hargreaves] you can still meander in and out of Bendigo through the Myer Store, yet the ÔBeehive PassÕ has been closed off.
I lament the closing of the Commonwealth Bank arcade, the chopping off of the Backhaus, there used to be an entrance at the back of the old BoltonÕs building. Now the Myer subsidiary Officeworks seduces me into spending more than I should on stationery as I cut through the city via their store; but I do like shopping in and out, over and under, out on the street and around and back again, down the alleys, along the walks Ñ and for the life of me I canÕt remember where BennettÕs Arcade was, with its terrific little stalls opening onto the walk and the clock with the smiling policeman.
PS: My dad did freelance carpet-laying on Saturdays. We borrowed Myers Austin ute, strapped a roll of carpet to the roof, packed a thermos, and mumÕs pasties wrapped in foil, and took off for the bush Ñ anywhere from BearÕs Lagoon to Baringhup, Axedale to Avoca. If you live in one of those far-flung farmhouses, carpeted by Steve, and his two under-aged labouring sons in the late fifties, early sixties, consider it as my first ÔinstallationÕ. It may be worth something one day.