A Part of Buderim's History

The First Buderim Shops - that I remember.

by Joyce Short
September 2011

When I started school in 1932 there were two General Stores and a Butchers shop on Buderim.

Mr Ernest Middleton (he was always called Middy) had his shop where Middy’s complex is now.  Mr Norman Fielding had the Top Shop at the top of the School Hill fronting onto Gloucester Street.  This top shop as well as selling groceries had a petrol bowser out the front and the bakehouse attached to the northern side of it.  It was also the local newsagent.  About 1940 when electricity had come to Buderim a café’ was built onto the School Hill side of the building to serve people with sandwiches and tea.  During the later 1930’s Mr Fielding built a small shop in Main Street close to the Ballinger Road corner and this was called The Bottom shop and opened at 1pm daily for a few hours.  It was welcomed by people living south and west of it, saving a walk up School Hill to get papers and bread.  It was good for all the school kids from those areas too, as most had the job carrying bread and papers and even groceries home each afternoon, usually in a sugar bag tied with a rope and usually slung over one shoulder.

The Butcher shop on the corner where The Hub buildings are4 now, had shifted to there during the early 1930’s from its former site past Middys and the Case Mill (which cut timber for the farmers to make into cases for fruit packing for markets).  The new Post Office, now called the Old Post Office, was almost opposite the new Butcher shop across the Main Street and operated from about 1937.

Middy’s shop had the slogan “We sell anything and everything” and he certainly had a big variety of goods.  From a front window of tantalizing lollies at the front to farm tools and heavy work boots out the back, to Fancy Goods, Kitchen Utensils, haberdashery and linen work to the left and groceries and anything else to the centre and right side of the shop it was a treasure trove to wander through (if you could squeeze through)!  Many goods hung from the ceiling and you had to duck your head often.

The electricity was brought up Jones Road for a start and along Gloucester Street.  Everything was done by man and horse power except for trucks dumping the long electric poles.  Men dug the holes and then with horses dragging the poles into position and men and horses heaving the pole up and heavy wooden props to steady them it was a fairly slow process.With electricity, all the shops installed refrigerators, but frozen goods had not hit the market in those days.  For us kids though the thought of an occasional ice cream or ice block was wonderful.  Buderim had really come of age in our eyes.

The Quarry:

Twice, while I was young, the Quarry behind Lions Park was opened up to gouge out the rock face to be crushed into blue metal for road making.  With it’s constant blasting that often hurled rocks up to a hundred metres away it was the bane of the lives of neighbours and pedestrians alike.  How we’d run when the workmen passed us going to each end of the danger zone to block people and traffic until the blast was over.  On the little road slope opposite Lion Park entrance we had a game stamping hard on the dirt road to hear a hollow echo below the ground.  The bitumen road, when it came, stopped that game as yould only hear a foot stamp after that.