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Tales from the small business workplace during COVID-19

As Victoria moved into crisis mode this week, small business in southern NSW was just emerging from lockdown. Now there are more challenges.

The future is uncertain for Larry Sher’s hydronic lettuce business at Millingandi, just outside Merimbula. Picture: Sean Davey
The future is uncertain for Larry Sher’s hydronic lettuce business at Millingandi, just outside Merimbula. Picture: Sean Davey

Larry Sher grows salads at Millingandi, just outside Merimbula. He used to be a glazier in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, but a work injury eventually led him to a new career.

Seven years ago he and wife Karen bought a hydroponic lettuce business that now grows, picks, washes and packs wholesale salad mix for restaurants and clubs around the Canberra, Goulburn and NSW south coast region. Karen works part time in the local Centrelink and “Larry Lettuce”, as he is sometimes known, focuses full time on Millingandi Greens, which processes about 13,000 lettuces a fortnight — in a regular year.

The past six months have been far from regular. First there were the bushfires, then “we were raring to go for the April school holidays when we got shut down”. Stuck with lettuces part-way through their 12-week growing cycle, Sher slowed the hydroponic process.

“We can control the growth,” he says. “We put them to sleep, we put the farm to bed.”

 
 

The Shers also donated product to local cafes and a local wildlife sanctuary as well as pivoting to smaller salad packs and home deliveries, and by the end of April they were operating at 50 per cent. Business picked up and, as tourists returned to the region with the July holidays, Sher was optimistic. The Victorian crisis has set him back because about 30 per cent of revenue is from local sales highly dependent on tourists crossing the border.

The future is uncertain but Sher says: “We will keep going. We have a very good product in high demand.” As for his work: “I love it, I love my job, we live on site and it’s the most beautiful office. There’s so much to the job. I love the science of hydroponics. It’s nice to have a product where customers are pleased to see you. I have had jobs in the past where you were always putting out fires and it wears you down.”

Dom Boyton from Merimbula Gourmet Oysters. Picture: Sean Davey
Dom Boyton from Merimbula Gourmet Oysters. Picture: Sean Davey

At Merimbula Gourmet Oysters, Pip and Dom Boyton have faced huge challenges — drought, fires and subsequent ash, and now the loss of markets for the 150,000 dozen oysters they sell each year.

Dom’s parents, Chris and Shelley, were Canberra public servants who started oyster farming on the side in the 1970s, then went full time in 1981. With about 36ha of leases at Merimbula and Pambula the family operation is one of the biggest, independently owned oyster farms in southern NSW with 10 staff. Dom loves applying his degree in aquaculture to the science of oyster growing but also finds “trudging around in water” very therapeutic: “Like all farming, it’s a challenge every day.”

As the lockdown hit, the couple was tested as customers in Queensland, NSW and Victoria cancelled orders at short notice and they were forced to diversify, adopt new processing methods and seek new markets in Canberra and the regions. Says Pip: “As a family farm of 40 years we have gone through flood and fires, and we will ride this out. For us, this is not a business, it’s our family.”

Jasmine Fleet and her staff at Little Bouquet florist shop, Merimbula. Picture: Sean Davey
Jasmine Fleet and her staff at Little Bouquet florist shop, Merimbula. Picture: Sean Davey

In the centre of Merimbula, Jasmine Fleet was forced to close the Little Bouquet in March while she waited to see if florists would be exempt and if she could re-establish her supply chain from Victoria.

She and her staff of three reopened six weeks later, serving customers through a window, but with the border closing this week supplies are once again in doubt.

Not so lucky is Jade Griffiths, who owns the historic art-deco Narooma Kinema on the far south coast of NSW. The 24-year-old bought the art-house cinema from her grandparents last November, but because of New Year’s Eve bushfires and COVID she was able to open for only three months since her purchase. The cinema will reopen in the middle of next month when a batch of new movies will be available.

Jade Griffiths owns the historic art-deco Narooma Kinema. Picture: Sean Davey
Jade Griffiths owns the historic art-deco Narooma Kinema. Picture: Sean Davey

Griffiths grew up in Sydney but spent school holidays hanging out with grandparents John and Janette, moving to work with them a few years back before taking over when they retired.

“I have an attachment to it,” she says. “We have a lot of regular customers and I love seeing them every day.”

The bushfires turned the hamlet of Cobargo into a household name in Australia, so devastating were the flames. But one business that escaped was local bookshop Well Thumbed, Books, which has been run for 10 years by Linda Sang, Louise Brown, Virginia White, Heather O’Connor and Nichola Hutteman. The shop doubles as a community hub. It closed for two months in the lockdown but sales are not too bad now, says Sang, despite a drop in takings compared with last year.

Linda Sang’s Well Thumbed bookshop escaped the fires in Cobargo. Picture: Sean Davey
Linda Sang’s Well Thumbed bookshop escaped the fires in Cobargo. Picture: Sean Davey
Business is booming for Tarquin Moore, in his shop Arcadia in Tilba. Picture: Sean Davey
Business is booming for Tarquin Moore, in his shop Arcadia in Tilba. Picture: Sean Davey

At Central Tilba, south of Narooma, Tarquin Moore and partner Daniel Esther spent their six-week shutdown repainting and repairing their ethically sustainable shop, Arcadia.

Now business is booming for the couple, who make and sell jewellery and sell rugs, alpaca jumpers and other clothing. “It’s like January every day here,” says Moore. “We have had a lot of people from Canberra, for example, who really love Tilba and want to support it.”

Footnote: We turned to Studs Terkel’s 1974 classic, Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do, for headline inspiration.

Helen Trinca
Helen TrincaThe Deal Editor and Associate Editor

Helen Trinca is a highly experienced reporter, commentator and editor with a special interest in workplace and broad cultural issues. She has held senior positions at The Australian, including deputy editor, managing editor, European correspondent and editor of The Weekend Australian Magazine. Helen has authored and co-authored three books, including Better than Sex: How a whole generation got hooked on work.

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/the-deal-magazine/tales-from-the-small-business-workplace-during-covid19/news-story/9f9e2fe331467d4d250bf51225246ecf