Norma is almost 90. She just bought a beloved general store in regional Victoria

It’s good to have a hobby in retirement, but for 89-year-old Norma Hancock, reading and pottering around the garden just wasn’t cutting it.

So in a move that gobsmacked her grandson, she bought the century-old general store in the Victorian goldfields town of Guildford, 100 kilometres north-west of Melbourne.

New challenge: Proprietor Norma Hancock inside the Guildford general store, which re-opens on Saturday.Credit: Jason South

Curtis Hancock knew his nan was active and a hard worker, but said “it was a bit of a shock, to be honest”.

“I was not expecting that at all,” he said, adding that she had since recruited him to manage the historic shop.

The Guildford General Store will re-open on Saturday, bringing to a successful end a spirited local campaign to save it after it closed last year.

Hancock said she had never been a shopkeeper before but seized the chance to do something different.

Happy result: Norma and Curtis Hancock with Save Our Store campaigners including Christine Mierisch, seated, front right, and Liz Monty, standing left, in green, and store staff.Credit: Jason South

“I’m not the sort of person to sit around, but that’s what I was doing before this,” she said.

“You have to keep having challenges in life – otherwise you just rot.”

The building dates back to 1865, when it opened as the Commercial Hotel. After a fire destroyed the store next door, the pub was converted to the general store in 1916.

Residents in the town – which is near Castlemaine and home to about 330 people – are overjoyed the store has reopened.

The Guildford general store building when it was the Commercial Hotel, prior to 1916.

“We’ll have our heart back, our spirit,” said resident Christine Mierisch.

After the shop – the only one in town – closed last March, heartbroken locals rallied with a plan to run it as a co-operative.

Liz Monty, leader of the Save Our Store campaign, said it attracted pledges worth $800,000.

But the funds were not needed: Hancock bought the store at auction last August.

Norma Hancock with a photo of herself as an 18-year-old ballerina.Credit: Jason South

Monty is rapt that it will go on being a social and retail hub.

While the new store will sell the staples – bread, milk, toilet paper – it will also offer barista-made coffee, cakes and sandwiches. Chefs will make breakfast and lunch.

Janet Zepnick, aka Zeppy, a former owner of the store, is giving them the recipes for her famous pies.

One reason Hancock moved to Guildford was that her daughter, Angela Henry, and grandson Anton Perry, run Hilltop Kennels and Cattery there. Curtis has also moved to Guildford.

An old advertising sign for The Age newspaper inside Guildford store.Credit: Jason South

“I was a bit lost because my [second] husband Bruce died five years ago, and I felt I needed to be closer to my relatives,” Hancock said.

Originally from Fitzroy North, Hancock was an elite ballerina in her youth, studying at the Royal Academy of Dance in London and touring Europe and South America.

Hancock and her first husband Ken Hancock ran an apple and pear orchard in Wantirna in the late ’60s and early ’70s.

For 20 years until 1997, the couple ran a South Melbourne business supplying lighting for film, TV and theatre. Having divorced Ken, Hancock retired to Castlemaine and married Bruce McIntosh in 2003.

Hancock is confident about her first venture into retail at Guildford.

“I’m looking forward to seeing something rise from the ashes,” she said.

”We’ve done a lot of work getting the shop ready, and locals have been impressed and happy to see it happening.“

And does she see herself as an inspiration for older people?

“It’s either inspirational or it’s stupidity,” she said.

“But I hope people see it as inspirational, because we all have to have something, don’t we, to attain in our lives? It’s too easy to drift on.”

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