Sunday Shopping

  Good things come to those who wait…and wait…and wait.  The state of Western Australia was ‘founded’ by English colonists  in 1829.  Fast forward 183 years and it is only now legal to buy a loaf of bread, a pillow case or clock radio anywhere in the state on a Sunday.  Welcome Sunday shopping, you were a long time coming.

   I come from the land of 24-hour shopping.  Odd work shifts or sleeping habits did not leave a person outside the world of consumer commerce.  It is entirely too easy to get used to that convenience.  Indeed, ease gives rise to expectation.  Imagine my surprise and culture shock when I moved to Perth just a few years ago to find that the sidewalks were rolled up at 5:30pm daily and buildings practically boarded up on Sundays.  How did a working person shop?  Two options: fight the crowds on Saturday mornings or go out on the government-approved Thursday Late Night Shopping. Stores stayed open until 9p.m.  and it was actually a family event for many people.  I could not hide my incredulity at what seemed a comical sight:  Whole families slowly strolling down aisles ooohing and aaaahing  the grocery shelves as if taking in the latest exhibition at the Art Gallery. Cracked me up this did.

    Why was this so?  Why would the state government care about retail trading hours, much less regulate commerce? The government was protecting the little guy from the Goliaths.  Small business owners felt they could not compete against the big corporations and beseeched the state government to help them by limiting hours of trade, especially for shops of certain consumer goods.  Slowly, over the last 25 years, this has been evolving  to respond to the needs of  nontraditional work and family models as well as joining contemporary business thinking.  Sunday shopping  and extended hours were allowed in the tourist inhabited downtown area of Perth.  The tourist zone was widened into the suburbs. Certain consumer goods were exempt from the laws.  And finally, the last weekend of August, the last veil dropped and all is fair in commerce and war.  Sunday Shopping had arrived in Western Australia! Great fanfare, sales, giveaways and  entertainment sirened “come hither” to people not used to handling their wallets on the seventh day.

    All this is still a far cry from round-the-clock cash register ecstasy, but it feels a whole lot less like Pluto here in Perth.