Kookaburra Books and Clothing turfed from South Hobart home

18 months after a Hobart retail icon was forced to move from Battery Point due to spiralling rent, it now faces permanent closure, after the building’s new owners elected not keep them on.

Michael Richmond of Kookaburra Books and Clothing in South Hobart will close at their current location in January due to the lease being ended by the new building owners. They are now looking for a new location. Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

A Hobart duo who have been a fixture on the city’s retail scene for 30 years, first at Battery Point then South Hobart, face imminent closure after their new landlord elected not to keep them on in the tenancy they moved to just 18 months ago.

Artist Georgina Richmond and her husband Michael, alongside business partner Jacki Kennedy, founded Kookaburra Books & Antiques together in the early 1990s.

When rent became too much for the Richmonds in 2020, the three went their separate ways: Ms Kennedy remained at Hampden Rd, Battery Point, operating as Kookaburra Antiques, while the Richmonds moved to 365 Macquarie St, a heritage-listed house and shopfront, where they opened Kookaburra Books & Clothing.

Kookaburra Books and Clothing in South Hobart will close at their current location in January due to the lease being ended by the new building owners. They are now looking for a new location. Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

Everything was going great – until it wasn’t.

“Our old landlords (Phil and Debbie Long, property records show) were really lovely but they’d gotten to an age where they wanted to retire. They told us seven or eight months ago they wanted to sell,” Ms Richmond said.

The sale went through on August 22.

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“My husband got the phone call last Thursday saying the new owners were taking over on January 15 (2023), get out in four weeks,” Ms Richmond said.

“We’re very down and sad.

“We haven’t been here very long, we put a lot of energy into the place. We painted it and made it lovely.

“We are so upset and shocked we were only given four weeks.

Artist Georgina Richmond in 2014. Picture: File

“They could at least have given us three months. It’s really disheartening.”

The phone call was followed up with a “formal letter” officially advising them of their deadline.

Ms Richmond said she is ready to begin the search again for a new home for the business, if family circumstances permit it.

“I would like to find somewhere else in a similar sort of area,” she said.

Ms Richmond said she believes her experience to be illustrative of a wider malaise facing Hobart’s small business community: that the character of the city is being taken away.

“Small businesses are having to fold because they cant afford huge rents. I know a few people who’ve had similar things happen to them, they can’t find anywhere. I think it’s sad,” she said.

EIS Property director Hank Petrusma said the new owners of the site were “private people” who would not be willing to share their future plans for the site.

He said the Richmonds were “lovely people” and parties are always faced with a “dilemma” when property changes hands.

Mr Petrusma said he understood there to have only been a “verbal, week-by-week agreement” between the Richmonds and the Longs.