By Cara Waters
Milk bars are a dying breed as the once ubiquitous corner stores selling milk, newspapers and mixed lollies struggle to survive in the face of online delivery and 7-Elevens.
Artist Eamon Donnelly spent over a decade documenting Australia’s remaining milk bars and the faded signage left behind on those that have closed down for his two books,The Milk Bars Book, of which volume two was published last year.
Eamon Donnelly at Cowderoy’s Dairy in St Kilda West. His book captures many of Melbourne’s old milk bars. Credit: Simon Schluter
Donnelly grew up running down the road to his local milk bar in East Geelong, which he said was “sort of like an extended family”.
On a trip back to where he grew up, he went to check in on the milk bar only to find it was closed.
“ I thought I’d love to walk through that corner door and see how much it had changed and what little remnants would be left that I could recognise,” he said. “Is the lolly counter with the wooden frame still there, with all the scratches and decades of kids’ fingerprints on the front of the glass? I remember the squeak of the door, it was such a distinctive sound, I can almost hear it right now.”
The milk bar was being renovated into a new business, but the old signage remained so Gallagher took some photos.
“That really opened my eyes and I started realising this has slowly been fading away,” he said. “I thought I’d really love to document the advertising, the signage, and anything that was left of the colourful memories I had.”
Australia’s first milk bar opened in 1932, The Black and White Milk Bar in Sydney, owned by a Greek migrant, Joachim Tavlarides, who went by the Anglicised name of Mick Adams.
Tavlarides merged the American concept of the soda fountain with the Greek experience of milk shops to create a uniquely Australian venue: the milk bar.
Milk bars, often run by migrants, quickly became community hubs and over time they diversified into selling cigarettes, newspapers, milk, bread and lollies.
The Forgot What milk bar in Prahran. Credit: Eamon Donnelly
“Unfortunately, the ’90s was the last decade where they really couldn’t compete any more,” Donnelly said. “You’ve got supermarkets, 24/7 shopping, petrol stations started to offer milk bar items so they became drive through milk bars essentially.”
IbisWorld recorded 6978 convenience stores in Australia in 2023 – a number that has flatlined since 2018.
“Small businesses constantly need to evolve and if they don’t evolve, then they unfortunately can’t survive and have to close down,” Donnelly said.
He said some iconic Melbourne milk bars like Rowena Corner Store in Richmond, Cowderoy’s Dairy in St Kilda West and Jerry’s Milk Bar in Elwood had managed to reinvent themselves as hybrid cafes and specialty grocery stores.
Dinah Parade milk bar in Keilor East. Credit: Eamon Donnelly
Con Coustas, owner of the Rowena Corner Store, said it was a sense of community not nostalgia which enabled his milk bar to thrive.
“One of the things that I loved about milk bars in my childhood was that’s where we all hung out, that’s where we got the news,” he said. “It wasn’t just a transactional thing, it was a sustaining connection throughout the community.”
Coustas said that after 22 years at Rowena Corner Store it had never been more evident to him how important small family-run local places were and local community.
“Using food and coffee as a medium to make these places where people could actually sit and congregate and talk and sort out local issues and get to know each other and share stories, share births, share deaths and tragedies,” he said. “I think it’s a step back into the possible future where people actually want to interact with each other and it provides a warmth in an otherwise cold, barren landscape.”
Eamon Donnellly, on the right, at a milk bar in the 1980s.
However, ghost signage is all that remains of many milk bars that have closed down and have been converted into other types of retail, cafes or apartments.
Pat Nourse, creative director of the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival, said the rise of Australian cafe culture had taken its toll on milk bars that had not changed with the times.
“Unless something surprising happens, or unless there’s a big change, I think they might be a dying breed,” he said. “We still consume per capita quite a lot of milk compared to other countries. But if you talk to the dairy authorities, they’ll say that the main reason for that is because we drink a lot of flat whites.”
Where once people went to a milk bar as a third space, now they go to a cafe or a bubble tea bar, Nourse said.
“It’s not that the milk bar is gone, it’s just that it’s been transformed,” he said. “We are drinking our milk in coffees and we’re having it through a wide gauge straw with some tapioca pearls in it.”
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