Bondi Local | Jane Turner
Bondi Local | Jane Turner
Everybody loves Gertrude & Alice on Hall Street. It’s an independent bookstore, a café, a wine bar … and a great meeting place for locals and visitors alike.
Melanie spoke to the owner Jane Turner down the road at Fish Mongers.
———————
Can we have a little bit of your background? Did you grow up in the Bondi area?
I did. I guess I’m a born and bred Bondi girl. We had an old terrace house on Bondi Road up near the Council chambers. There were 4 generations living in this big old terrace that my grandmother bought in the 30s or 40s. So yeah, we grew up there and my grandmother lived with us. She was a widow. We went to school at Wellington Street Public School.
What was it like back then? It started out with 1,200 students but got down to only 80 before its recent resurgence.
I can’t remember how many students there were back in the 70s but there were 2 classes for each year. My daughter went there too. My son went to Galilee Primary. There was just Bondi Beach Public School and Wellington Street back then. There weren’t all these streams of schools. I did all of my primary schooling there. And I think I was captain in 1972. That was a really big thing. I can remember being involved in a lot of community things – planting trees around, etc. I’ve taken the kids around and shown them what we used to do. And yes there is a sense of belonging. I went to high school at Sydney Girls and that was a big intake year. Some of the friendships from that time have been life-long. I lived overseas for some time. I worked for a company that took me to Fiji for 8 ½ years. And then came back to Bondi. I’ve gone for little periods of time but always come back.
Where are your kids up to?
The older one, she still lives in Bondi. She lives in Consett Avenue and Jordan still lives at home with me. They say they’ll never live anywhere else. They really love living here. But some times as you get older you think you need a little bit of a change.
When did Gertrude & Alice open?
I don’t know why I can’t remember but this is either our 15th or 16th year. I think we are going into the 16th. We opened in 2000 I think, after the Olympics.
It feels like a lot longer than that!
Yes, sometimes it feels like that. After a busy summer it feels like a long time! We moved the shop about 8 years so we were 7 years in the first shop and we’ve been about 8 in this one (just a few doors up from the original shop).
How did it come about? Was it a love of books?
When I left a management job for which we were living overseas, my son was very small. We were living in the Pacific Islands and the health care wasn’t what it should have been and when the kids are small you worry about those sorts of things and plus living away from home for that length of time, I really missed the arts. As much as it is really culturally rich in those places there just things I missed. I missed my friends and my family so it was time to come back.
I wanted to have some time off but I worked for a little while in a second hand bookshop in Glebe. I had worked in the book industry all my life. I learnt the second hand business which is something completely different. And I met a girl there, Catarina Cosgrove, who had started Sappho Books with another lady. She had been off travelling after she had sold her share and she said she wanted to do something and did I want to do it with her? We got along really well. She had been on the café side of things before and she said we should do something small. We looked at a few different venues, had a few things fall through on us, and then someone said this had become available. This was back in the day when finding a shop in Bondi was actually really hard. There were no for lease signs. You almost had to buy people out. We had been looking in the area for a long time and I think when we took over the shop there was a surf shop going out of business and we offered him a nominal amount of money for him to leave some fittings behind and he was really happy with that.
Retail is changing. Only a couple of years ago there were 8 or 10 shops in Bondi with for lease signs on them. And Gertrude & Alice needs a big shop and there’s not lots of big spaces here.
We moved from our big shop when the owner decided to redevelop the building, He said it would be a 6 month build and we could go back in. It ended up being almost 2 years. In the meantime this one became available as a sub-lease. The Thai restaurant was trying to get a DA but they couldn’t get one. So they ended up buying the Thai shop next door the ladies had been for 25 years running their little business. So that’s how they got their DA and then eventually we got our own lease.
It seems to work very well for what you do. Especially now that you have more of a café at the front.
We were really worried because with had this amazing space that people loved and it was a very comfortable place. We had had weddings in there and it had lots of great things happen there. So to move and try to recreate that ambience … Plus I had done it with Catarina! I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to create that same sense of comfort and belonging. For the first 6 months we all really hated it. We’d all had separate working areas before but now we were much more on top of each other so it took a long time to be comfortable. Most of the oldies said “Oh I don’t like it!” For the first few months it was a real challenge.
People now say “you’re like a Bondi icon” or “you’re an institution” and sometimes it feels like an institution!
It is a lot of hard work. Hospitality is hard and there’s so much more competition nowadays. And some days I think I’ve had enough. I’m in my 50s now … And then some days someone will come in and say that they’re “read about this place and I have travelled all this way just to see it and it’s amazing and we’ve had the loveliest time here and I’ve found a book from my childhood.” And then you just take a deep breath and say that’s why you do it.
It’s a very special environment …
I guess it’s like the REMO thing. People still talk about it all these years later.
There’s something beyond just the straight retail – there’s heart and soul in the place that people respond to. And you can’t conjure that from nothing; you have to feel it and be it.
We’re not one of these stainless steel pole businesses. There’s a genuine warmth. We love and really care about our customers. Some of them have been with us from the beginning. We love watching the kids grow up and giving them their first babyccino and have them sit up on the bench with all the baristas. We love all that. And we watch them go to school and we watch them do things.
We, and a lot of the local business owners, really care for our community. You couldn’t do it day in, day out and not have a sense of community involvement and care. That’s where your sense of fulfilment comes from. We don’t make heaps of money, but it has educated my children and supported 20 staff while they go off and study and they’re with us for years until they get their degrees and go into their full time roles. If I think of the really fulfilling times it’s those connections that you make. And I think that there’s times when Bondi gets very busy it can be very isolating for people. Now as we all work in our home environment and everyone works online and on their own, cafes are becoming places where people can connect.
The café can be a place where you meet people, like on the communal table, they can join conversations if they want to or they can stay in their isolated space. Having a little wine licence means that they can call by on the way home, do a little work have glass of wine then go. So it feels more service oriented than it has before. But it’s nice to able to have that connection with the service you provide.
What are your favourite places to eat/drink in the area?
We love China Diner. We love Bondi’s Best for the seafood. We use that a lot both here and up in North Bondi. But my café that I love to go to when I’m not working is up at Charing Cross – Ruby’s Diner. I love the Organic Bakery. When I don’t want to come in here and think work I’ll definitely venture round Bondi. My kids love Harry’s Café – I haven’t been there before so I’ve got that on my list.
What are you reading or watching at the moment?
I’ve just been in a reading frenzy over summer! I go through cycles of when I read like a maniac and then I can’t read for 3 months. So I think the staff and I have all loved A Little Life. It’s been our go to book. We’ve sold hundreds and hundreds over summer. We’ve been on the social media tagging her, and she’s talking to us! I got to do a bit of travelling with my kids in November. We went down and did a bit of a road trip in Tasmania. We had the book and we were reading in some exotic locations and she [the author Hanya Yanagihara] really liked that. One of the places we stayed at was called Thalia Haven and it was on a cliff face, and we lifted our chairs right on the edge of the cliff and just sat there reading. It was like heaven. I loved that book. The characters stayed with me. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea. It’s harrowing. But there’s not often a book where you worry about the characters. I wanted to finish it because I wanted to know what was going to happen to him. The first half of the book was introducing those characters. You get an understanding of their relationship. And the second half is almost how the trauma that happens to one of them affects the rest of them.
I don’t know if it’s the same for other booksellers but The [Man] Booker is a huge book prize that sells and sells and sells all the time but A Little Life has outsold the winner 10 to one for us. I haven’t read the winner yet I’m sorry to say, but I often enjoy the shortlist more than the actual winner. And while a book might be chosen for its writing, for me the story and characters always win out. Life’s too short.
Some Australian ones; Charlotte Wood’s, The Natural Way of Things. It’s a great read – again a bit dark, I like books that are a bit dark. I don’t know why. I’ll throw in a little bit of non-fiction too. I wanted to read Helen Garner’s This House of Grief. There’s a new New York Times best seller, Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng. Customers ask about things. It’s not always me finding the book. I often get intrigued why everyone’s asking about a particular title. That one was about a death in the family and all the secrets that are behind that death and how they never really knew the person and what happens from that. I did that one in a couple of days.
We’ll have to find you something jolly!
People often come in and ask for something funny and I really do have to think. It’s not like people don’t write funny books. I mean you have to read like a Tina Fey or Amy Poehler or something to get a bit of a laugh but when I’m asked I think what am I going to give them. There definitely are beach reads. And you sell a lot of books for people who want a bit of lighter reading. People who have come out of a really heavy study experience for example.
When you have come out of your reading cycle are you a TV watcher?
Yes I like to get stuck in a series.
Anything lately?
One of our customers is starring in the new The Family Lawseries by Benjamin Law. It’s on SBS at the moment. The second episode was on last night. And it’s a story about growing up Asian in Australia. There’ve been lots of reviews about it. Anthony Wong plays Benjamin’s dad in the series. We’re talking to Benjamin and Ant about doing a little event here in February. They’re going to come here and talk about the series. If you have ever seen Benjamin live, he’s very funny. And he has a column in the Sunday paper. We’re just trying to set a date that suits everyone for them to come and have a chat in February.
Do you have a motto for life?
There’s just one thing that always sticks in my mind and it’s something that my grandmother told me. She said to: “Never let the sun go down on an argument.” And so I’ve tried to never stay angry. There’s lots of things that can tick you off but I try to process it. I’m a pretty fiery character, at least I was in my past, but I’ve learnt to chill a bit. We sing out in the shop sometimes if we’ve had a ratty customer or we’ve had a situation: “Let it go, let it go, let it go!”
I often think of my grandmother as she would always get me to resolve things.
________________________
Full interview on SoundCloud below or HERE
