Carlton Rotary opens new second-hand bookshop in Docklands

The Rotary Club of Carlton has combined with the Rotary Club of Albert Park to open a second-hand book shop in a shopping centre in Docklands, known as “The District”.  This is near the now closed Southern Star Observation Wheel, and the Costco Warehouse.

The shop is in an internal street of shops called Wharf St. The large space we have allows us to store and sort our books as well as display around 6000 for sale. All categories of books are on sale, including travel, biography, history, arts and crafts, cooking, gardening, fiction, crime, children’s, theatre, literature, and humour. Also included are a large selection of DVDs, CDs and vinyl records.

Members of both clubs staff the shop which is open from 10am to 5.30pm, seven days a week. Prices of most books are between $2 and $4.

Previously, Carlton Rotary ran an annual book fair at Kathleen Syme Community Centre in Carlton, and then ran pop-up shops over the Christmas/New Year period in vacant shops in Lygon St. The benefit of the two clubs working together means costs can be minimised, and returns maximised through having the shop open for extended hours.

The two clubs previously shared a purely storage space in the centre but this new space is much more conducive to having a sales area. The shop opened on February 5, and the current lease is for six months.

The funds raised allow the two clubs to support a wide range of their community, and international projects. Local activities supported by Carlton include swimming lessons for refugee children, offering Outstanding Community Leadership Awards, attendance at police camps for troubled youth, encouragement awards for secondary students and attendance at aspiring young leaders’ camps.

Carlton also supports Rotary world projects on controlling malaria and eradicating polio, as well as a club-specific project providing online education to girls and women in Afghanistan.

Janet Ferguson, who leads the Carlton volunteers, said it looked forward to welcoming members of the local community to come and browse and hopefully find interesting reads or a hidden treasure.

Princes Hill Secondary College

The club has developed a rewarding relationship with the college to support aspects of the students’ work. Last year we wanted to recognise the enormous demands placed on students during the COVID pandemic.

Awards were created to recognise both Perseverance, and Leadership and Resilience during this time. Each award was a voucher for $500 from Readings to support the purchases required for subjects studied in 2023. School coordinators chose the students most deemed to have displayed these characteristics.

James Nuttivey was awarded the Leadership and Resilience Award and Rose Coleman the Perseverance Award. •