Above: Former milk bar/grocery store, Geelong

Neat trick as kids was to cash in Coke and Tarax bottles at the milk bar before sneaking around the back to retrieve them, pull the same stunt again next day and double your money.

Earn you a serious clip behind the ear if you were sprung but if you had a gang operation you were laughing. You won’t find that kind of entrepreneurial nous these days … the milk bar, like so many Aussie institutions, is dead.

Gone the way of Saturday arvo footy, of so many pubs, of churches, back yards, kids playing kick-to-kick and cricket in the street, girls skipping, hopscotch, riding bikes – even watching TV.

Was reminded of this on Christmas Day by a deafening neighbourhood silence. No child noises in the street, the back lane or back yards. Like lockdown Mk263.

No new bikes, scooters or skateboards being whipped through their paces. No squeals of Yuletide delight, no backyard howling or howzats.

All like the poor milk bar. Institutions. But the milk bar’s departure is particularly sad. It was a cultural epicentre growing up in Oz, delivering magic in spades to generations of kids.

That magic came in Coke and Fanta, Tarax, Marchants, Schweppes, milk shakes and spiders, lemonade, raspberry, orange, creamy soda.

It came in Choo-Choo Bars and licorice blocks and cigarettes, musk sticks, Jaffas, Freddos, Cobbers, toffees and gobstoppers. In icy poles, ice cream cones,  choc wedges, drumsticks, Paddle Pops, Eskimo Pies, Glugs and Sunny Boys.

Geelong writer Eamon Donnelly has captured all these and more in his Milk Bars books, look him up.

Moving into your teens, you could add Viscount, B&H, Stuyvesant, Drum, Dunhill, Alpine and any number of other cancer-stick breeds to the tab.

Looking around Geelong today, it’s hard to find milk bar survivors. They’ve transmogrified into cafes, wine bars, kebab shops, dog-washes, financiers, even grocers. The few survivors that are about offer additional services such as clothing alterations, home-made dumplings and dimmies, post offices. They’re very thin on the ground.

Most milk bars were belted to the fence by larger, longer-hours convenience stores years ago. Ironically, these are up against supermarket giants which in turn face price inquiries, staff issues and smaller, cheaper operators.

What goes around might come around but don’t hold your breath waiting for the old milk bar’s resurrection. Small business is a never-ending battle, even when you live in the place 24/7 and work 12 or more hours a day.

I was alarmed to hear the Libs suggest 10,000 businesses will go down the gurgler before parliament returns next month. I’m not subscribing to the size of that claim but it does make you wonder what institutions might be next in the firing line. So many already.

One thing for sure, given the economic and political ructions we can expect in 2025, they’ll need more than Coke bottle-style shenanigans to survive – although you can probably expect to see a few.

At least that’s still a tradition.

This story appeared in the Geelong Advertiser 7 January 2025