One of Melbourne’s last suburban milk bars listed for $1.2m-$1.32m

One of Melbourne’s last suburban milk bars, where kids could once buy 1¢ lollies, is waiting for a new custodian — one with $1.2 million or more to splash.

The nostalgic Northcote shop is so old – and so original – there is even an outdoor loo. 

When the sale sign went up on the window at the charming 202 Bastings Street, it prompted locals to drop in and share their memories with agents.

Stocking everything from sweets in jars, to ice-cream, potato cakes, newspapers and bread, the brick store behind a timber verandah was the beating heart of the community before supermarkets took over.

The owner – a “grandma”, as locals remembered her, who ran the milk bar for 40 years – was a Bastings Street identity. Her grandson now lives in the property, which has a residential area at the rear.

“You’ve got the shop at the front and the grandma would sit in the room behind and watch television,” agent Claire Spring of Nicholson Real Estate says. “As soon as the doorbell rang, she’d come out and cook the dim sims and the potato cakes, and she lived at the back of the shop.”

The shop has been staged as a living room, and the walls are lined with the original shelves, including an ancient cigarette dispensary.

Behind is an office, and beyond that, two bedrooms, a neat lounge and a pink timber kitchen. In the concrete courtyard is a laundry, the loo and a Hills Hoist. 

Spring and her colleague, Gabriel Mercuri, had a special auction sign created in a vintage font. Since that has been applied to the front window, numerous curious neighbours have stopped by.

“Everybody has said, ‘Oh my gosh, what is happening here?’ And as all the furniture was going in, they were all poking their heads in,” she says.

“Every single person from the community wants to know what is going on. They say, ‘I used to buy my milk here’ and ‘I remember the old lady’. Everybody has been loving it, and everybody’s got a story about how they remember it.

“Honestly, I’ve never experienced so much community engagement with a listing.”

Spring says the milk bar thrived until the GST was introduced 25 years ago, and did not last long after that.

Now, in part thanks to Northcote’s gentrification, it has a pre-auction guide of $1.2 million to $1.32 million, and will go under the hammer on September 13. 

Offering 303 square metres of prime inner-city land, and with options galore, even agents are not sure what its future holds.

“We’ve had interest from people who want it turn into a home office,” Spring says, “and we’ve also had people who are wondering if they can take it down … so it’s anybody’s guess as to what’s actually going to happen.”

Northcote’s median house price is $1.6 million, representing a yearly rise of 3.3 per cent, or 19.4 per cent over five years, according to Domain’s latest House Price Report.

SOLD - Price Withheld

202 Bastings Street, Northcote VIC 3070

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