The Known World

 It's been a long, bleak winter here in Melbourne, so it's been great to enjoy a warm, sunny, spring-like weekend. With spring, then summer, on the way, people will be getting out and about more, so I thought I'd update this blog with a post on a fabulous second-hand bookshop I visited over winter.

The Known World is owned by Michelle Coxall, who I knew - very fleetingly - through work in the late 1990s. Her beautiful bookshop is located at 28 Main Road, Bakery Hill, Ballarat, and stocks high-quality books, including art and history books, modern first editions, and vintage children's books. Don't miss the passageway leading to a staircase that takes you down to a second room full of books.

Michelle has run a second-hand bookshop for a couple of decades now, at various locations in and around Ballarat - many booklovers will remember The Known World's predecessor, Buninyong Books in nearby Buninyong. It is always a joy to explore her bookshop - she's selective with what she stocks, so whatever you're looking for, if she has it, you're going to go home with a lovely copy.

There is, as everyone knows, plenty to do at Ballarat, including visiting Sovereign Hill and the Eureka Centre. This part of Victoria has a number of second-hand bookshops to explore, so it's worth spending a day driving around the Goldfields region to visit them.

I haven't been getting out and about as much as I'd like, and because I don't post very much, this blog receives little engagement. I'm wondering whether to stop blogging here and move all future second-hand bookshop posts over to my Instagram account. My Insta account is currently a mish-mash of posts about my writing, my favourite vintage books, and my visits to second-hand bookshops and other literary places. I'm thinking of making it less of a mish-mash and focusing mainly on second-hand bookshops and my favourite vintage books - more of a hobby account than a writing account.

If you see this post, let me know what you think of this idea.  I shall leave this blog up regardless, so people visiting Victoria can find the bookshops I've blogged about (those that have survived the last few years, at any rate). 

And if you've a trip to Ballarat planned, don't forget to check out The Known World.

Time Booksellers

 

You know the expression "Never judge a book by its cover"? Well, the same applies about never judging a bookshop's stock by its premises.

I was a bit taken aback to pull up outside a soulless-looking warehouse in an industrial estate in Somerville. Could this really be a bookshop?

But when we stepped inside Time Booksellers, it was like entering the Tardis. Not only is this a bookshop, it's an enormous bookshop. More than that, though, it's not like being inside a warehouse. It has a real antiquarian bookshop feel, complete with old-fashioned ticking clocks and fine-quality books.

There are thousands of books here, so many that's it's almost overwhelming. Their specialist area is Australian history, including Aboriginal history, military history, and history books about Australia's various states.

There is also an emphasis on literature - mostly Australian literature, but also UK and US literature.  I don't think I've ever seen so many volumes of poetry in a bookshop before. There's also a collection of chess books that Beth Harmon would be proud to own!

Sports books are upstairs, along with even more history books. The owners are planning to extend their collection with a newly built mezzanine section that's just waiting for more bookcases to be installed.

Time Booksellers is open by appointment during the week. However, the owners recommend that if you know what you're looking for, their website is the best starting-point. That way you can see what they stock, and either order online or go in to check out the books.

This makes a lot of sense, as the bookshop is so enormous that you could probably have spent Melbourne's July-November lockdown in there and still not have seen everything. 

 

Books at Yarck

I'd never heard of the tiny Goulburn Valley township of Yarck until the other day when we stopped there on the way back from Euroa. But I'll definitely be going back because among its few facilities is a gorgeous bookshop.

Books at Yarck has a great collection of books, from cookery and gardening books near the front of the shop to crime fiction and sports titles in the smaller room at the back. The sports section was well stocked with Olympic histories (something I also noticed at the bookshop in Euroa), so if you want to mug up on previous Olympic Games in the run-up to Tokyo, you'll find some great books here.

A sofa near the children's section allows you to peruse the books in comfort and there's a fire for cold winter's days.

Books are reasonably priced and there are some great bargains to be found in the trolleys outside the shop.

There's a bakery just down the road from the bookshop, but there's not much to do in Yarck. However, book lovers won't need anything else when they visit - searching this gem of a bookshop for treasures will be more than enough. 

The Already Read Bookshop

What's even better than coming across a gorgeous, well-stocked second-hand bookshop in a small country town?

Discovering that every dollar you spend in that bookshop goes to supporting the town's library, that's what.

The Already Read Bookshop in Euroa's main street is entirely staffed by Friends of the Library volunteers. It sells jigsaw puzzles, DCDs, records and magazines as well as books.

And what a great selection of books it has. An entire room is devoted to Australiana, which includes history and reference books, sporting memoirs and histories, novels by old and modern day Australian authors, as well as stacks of once-popular magazines.

All the genres, including crime and romance, are represented in the main room, and there's a particularly impressive collection of Penguin classic paperbacks, most of them with the distinctive orange spines.

Prices are colour coded and very reasonably priced. There are some great bargains to be found here, including the three history books I snagged for $7. 

The Already Read Bookshop has a lovely, welcoming atmosphere, and is only a short walk away from the library it supports.

We found another delightful second-hand bookshop on our way home, and I'll blog about that in a couple of days.

Euroa is a quiet town with a community rather than touristy feel. It has some great cafes and bakeries for lunch or morning tea. 

Paradise Books

 

Back in the early 2000s, when I started re-collecting girlsown fiction, Daylesford in central Victoria was one of my favourite places to visit. It had two brilliant bookshops - Paradise Books (then called Avant Garden) in a former bank building in the main street, and the lakeside Book Barn.

Paradise Books/Avant Garden contained 14 rooms on two levels stocked with a mixture of second-hand and new books, comics, sheet music, and CDs and DVDs. It boasted a huge collection of vintage children's books - a beautiful copy of Dimsie Among The Prefects was among several purchases I made there.  

The Book Barn was gorgeous in a different way - one large, split-level room, with a woodfire in winter and an amazing view over the lake. The well-stocked children's section was near the fire, giving it a cosy feel.

But times change. I visited Daylesford yesterday for the first time in eight years, and sadly the Book Barn closed its doors two years ago. There's a cafe there at the moment, but it was closed.

Paradise Books is still there, however, offering the same eclectic mix. The main room (where the counter is) is now totally devoted to new books, with the second-hand books arranged by subject in the other rooms. There's a good range of second-hand detective fiction, but the stock of vintage children's books seemed very depleted. I'm assuming it's been hard to get hold of stock over the past year because of the various lockdowns and restrictions. I spotted some Lorna Hills and a copy of Ivy L Wallace's Strangers at Warrender's Halt, so it's still worth girlsowners dropping in to see if there's anything they want for their collections.

 

One room I always visit on the second floor is the one with all the comics. I always look to see if there are any copies of old girls' comics and there never are - but yesterday I spotted a pile of Bonnie comics. The title meant nothing to me, but it looks like it was a contemporary of Bunty and Tammy. There were also copies of some old comics aimed at very young children in the 1960s and 1970s - Playhour and Jack and Jill.

 

Daylesford has changed a lot since our last visit, and doesn't 'feel' as family-friendly as it was 20 years ago. It has lots of cafes and restaurants, and there's nearby Hepburn Springs for spa treatments, if that's your thing. Outdoor types can enjoy plenty of bushwalks around the area. Bibliophiles will want to explore other nearby(ish) towns with bookshops, including Castlemaine, Woodend, Ballarat and Kyneton.

Through the Looking Glass in Sassafras

 

So many shops in and around Melbourne have closed as a result of lockdown, so I was amazed and thrilled to discover that Sassafras, on Mount Dandenong, has a new second-hand bookshop.

Through the Looking Glass opened around the time Melbourne's four-month-long lockdown ended, and couldn't be in a better location, right in Sassafras's main street.

If the name sounds familiar, that's because the owners have another bookshop just down the hill in Belgrave. I've reviewed the Belgrave shop previously, and it's fantastic that they are doing well enough in these challenged times to open a second bookshop.

The Sassafras shop is absolutely gorgeous inside - spacious and with lovely bookcases, old tables and chairs, and, of course, an eclectic range of books to browse. Their children's section tends towards more recent authors like John Flanagan and Rick Riordan, but there are some older books by authors like Enid Blyton as well. There's a large selection of fantasy and sci fi books to the left as you enter the shop and lots of contemporary and literary fiction.

If you're up in the hills for the day, Sassafras has several cafes and gift shops, and you don't have to travel very far to find pubs, restaurants, and more cafes and gift shops. Alfred Nicholas Gardens and the Dandenong Ranges Botanical Gardens (aka the National Rhododendron Gardens) are also close by.

If you're visiting with kids, you might also want to check out the nearby Olinda Pool and Olinda Playspace.  

As a local, I'm delighted to see another second-hand bookshop in the hills. With the Belgrave and Sassafras shops, along with Rainy Day Books in The Basin and Kallista Books in Kallista, it could well be time for the Dandenong Ranges Second-hand Bookshop Trail from around 10 years ago to be revived.

Finally, a road trip!

After what's seemed like a very long year, my husband and I went away for a few days' break earlier this week. We went to Cape Paterson and Wilson's Promontory, testing our fitness by climbing Mount Oberon. Proud to report we had no trouble ascending Mount Oberon, but we were very surprised by how many other people were at the top. I think Melburnians have collective cabin fever following our long, hard lockdown.

Anyway, no trip would be complete without a bookshop visit or two. This isn't a second-hand bookshop, but anyone driving to the Prom should drop into the Alison Lester Gallery and Bookshop at Fish Creek. Alison Lester is a leading Australian children's author, and the shop sells her picture books as well as prints and cards of her illustrations. It's well worth a visit, especially if you have young children or grandchildren. 

 The Ramalama Book Exchange in Wonthaggi has survived lockdown, which is good news for anyone heading to Bass Coast beaches for the upcoming Christmas holiday period. I've reviewed them before on this blog, but they stock a good range of crime, romance, children's and sci-fi/fantasy books, and are located in a former bank, complete with some of the old furniture.

There seems to have been a proliferation of little libraries over lockdown, and there are now at least three in Cape Paterson. This one, in Spray Street, is my favourite. 

I'm busy with work and writing at the moment, but hopefully we'll have a few days out over Christmas and summer, so I can check out some more bookshops.

In other news, my fictional second-hand bookshop owner, Matilda Channon, has had a couple more adventures tracking down the original owners of things she's found in donated books. 'Stranger Than Fiction' was published in The People's Friend a couple of weeks ago, and 'Secret Santas' is in their bumper Christmas issue, out now in the UK. I'm really happy with Sarah Holliday's illustrations, which capture perfectly the cosy feel of Matilda's bookshop. GOers will have noticed occasional references to children's writers and books in these stories, including (so far) the Chalet School, Enid Blyton, Malcolm Saville and Antonia Forest.

I hope everyone in Victoria is enjoying these first few weeks out of lockdown, and perhaps making trips to second-hand and other bookshops too.