History of Rodgers Supermarket

Rodgers’s Supermarket

James Oscar Rodger

 When my parents and myself bought out Jack Barnes’ Groceries, part of the deal was a horse and delivery cart included.  Ray McCusker used it to deliver groceries around town for Jack Barnes.  But Owen Hagan and myself wanted nothing to do with it.  We used Oscar’s 35 Ford sedan for deliveries while Owen rode a pushbike around town gathering orders.  Later on we had an old Dodge truck to deliver orders.  One time brother, Stuart, took the corner at Alice and Fitzroy Street a bit fast and unloaded all the grocery orders there and then!  Then we bought a Tempo Matador van for the deliveries.  Joe Taylor, the stationmaster’s son, would deliver our groceries from the train to our shop.  Then he sold the run to Len Rumsby.

We went and collected the biscuits ourselves as all biscuits came in bulk in tins.  When you bought biscuits, they were weighed and put in paper bags.  All groceries had to be wrapped in brown paper as there were no cardboard cartons in the early days.  Monday was the weigh-up day.  Any items that came in bulk, such as sugar, dates, currants, mixed fruit, raisins were weighed up and put into paper bags ready for sale.  These jobs were done by the girls.  For kerosene, shellite, metho, etc. you brought in your container and had it filled.  Green groceries were trucked in by Jack Monahan from Newcastle and Boulos Bros from Brisbane.  Smallgoods came from Northwest Smallgoods at Inverell.  Once a fortnight, I would go to Tamworth and get our egg supply and go and collect any groceries we were short of from Cohens or Wright Heatons grocery wholesalers.