Eamon Donnelly: Shop Here for Value and Friendly Service

Overview

Once upon a time, on suburban neighbourhood street corners across the nation, the most important decision of the day was made at the local milk bar — bubble o’ bill, hot jam donut or a packet of fads?

In today’s increasingly “organically grown, locally sourced” food culture, quinoa salad and a tub of biodynamic yoghurt may be more the order of the day than a pie and a handful of sherbet bombs for your average lunch order, but we’ll always have those lazy sun drenched afternoons spent unwittingly spending our pocket money on dental fillings, right?

As more and more of these nostalgic, decaying relics are edged out of business by slurpie day at the local 7-11, local artist, archivist and historian Eamon Donnelly has stepped in to memorialise the milk bar. His photographic exhibition, Shop Here for Value and Friendly Service, celebrates an Australian icon that might otherwise be doomed to join its friends the yo-yo, tamagotchi and Baby-G in the realm of forgotten childhood joys.

Image by Eamon Donnelly.