Blarney Books & Art

I wonder if all booksellers had a similar dream. For me, it went like this: a little shop in the country, with overflowing shelves filled with lovely books. There were probably geraniums in the window. Maybe a shop cat, maybe a shop dog, maybe both. Being my own boss, helping myself to endless cups of tea, reading at my desk, a bit of sorting and shelving, and that was it - the complete dream. (It perhaps goes without saying this dream came before children.) But the one thin

Today is the 13th anniversary of our bookshop, so it seems reasonable to look back on our beginnings. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it wasn’t really something we planned out carefully. Get pregnant, move to Port Fairy, set up a bookshop. It was mid-October in 2004, when we finally pulled out of our Newport driveway in Melbourne and headed down to Port Fairy, following a couple of trucks loaded with books and shelving, and our own belongings. Our car was stacked

Life in a tourist town means that most of our customers are the visitors who are all about having a happy holiday, and they’ve come to the right place to do so. The articles written in the glossies about Port Fairy, voted The World’s Most Liveable Small Town, will have directed them to Coffin Sally (a little taste of Fitzroy in the country), the Farmer’s Wife café (laneway cred), and Poco’s Artisan Ice-creamery (fig and burnt caramel, anyone?). The glossies will have definite

On James Street in the coastal town of Port Fairy, Victoria, about 300km south-west of Melbourne, lives a brilliant independent bookstore. Blarney Books and Art is abuzz with books for inspired readers and unique art for everyone; there are life drawing classes, French classes, regular book-related exhibitions and every year there’s an ‘edible books’ competition, as well as the well-known book-art competition called the BIBLIO-ART (it has nothing whatsoever to do with Bibles