Owner Merrill honours former Gundaroo business woman Sally Paskins. Photo: Tenele Conway.
Sally Paskins’ Store in the quaint county town of Gundaroo is hard to explain in words. Part antiques store, part fantastical home for set design and part historical journey, it’s all crammed into a rare timber slab hut on the town’s historical main street.
Filled to the brim with rare finds and custom-made ephemera, the unusual shop has come from the brain of Merrill Vellenoweth, a set designer who moved to the town from Sydney shortly before COVID.
The slab hut that dates back to 1886 had sat abandoned for some time before Merrill came to town, and after rehoming the resident possums, Merrill used the downtime during COVID to build a pastiche dedicated to one of the building’s former operators, Sally Paskins.
Without the store, it’s unlikely anyone would know the name Sally Paskins, and that’s kind of the point. Feeling a deep connection for a woman she has never met, Merrill keeps her name alive through her quirky little shop.
Sally Paskins’ Store was once a general store and is now a treasure trove of unusual finds. Photo: Tenele Conway.
Merrill has been piecing together Sally’s story since she moved to the town and tells the parts of the tale that she has uncovered on the website for the store.
“The little store was originally run by Sarah (Sally) Paskins. Sarah, pregnant with their first child, sailed from England with her husband, bound for the Palmer River goldfields in North Queensland, Australia,” Merrill said.
“After many adventures, she also settled in Gundaroo and opened her general store, where her beloved white cockatoo was a much-loved feature, as it often kept her company sitting on her counter.”
Despite being separated by well over a century, Merrill has been so inspired by the idea of Sally and her cockatoo shopkeeper that she has employed her design skills and crafted a range of homewares in her honour.
You’ll find the custom homewares scattered throughout the store: an apron here, a tea towel there, pretty little gift cards featuring flora and fauna as well as custom fabrics.
With a mix of antiques and custom homewares, the store is eclectic. Photo: Tenele Conway.
The designs are then continued and woven into the very fabric that lines the walls of the hut, creating a dramatic backdrop for the shop and its unique pieces.
Merrill’s set design skills are evident in each room of the small slab hut, and you can imagine the bold prints coming to life on the stage just as many of Merrill’s designs have done for decades.
By bearing Sally’s name, the business has even attracted visitors all the way from England who have family connections with the Paskinses, and the local newspaper reported that Robert Paskins and Sue Jackman were excited to be walking on the same floorboards that Sally once walked and happily shared the historical research that they had undertaken on Sally and her life in Australia.
Many of the facts from Sally’s life are lost to time, but she crops up on Trove every now and then. Sometimes in less than flattering terms, such as the advert placed by her former husband after their separation stating that he will no longer be responsible for any of her debts.
If you visit the store, which you should, Merrill now sits behind the counter, just as Sally once did, and that humble act in itself is another form of tribute to the woman who inspired her to build the store in the first place. Unfortunately there is no longer a cockatoo keeping shop, but that may be for the best.
Sally Paskins’ Store is located at 28 Cork Street, Gundaroo and is open on Saturdays and Sundays from 11 am until 4:30 pm.
