Pictures' from our store

I thought you might like to see some pictures from our store. You can see that we have murals on the walls and there is a history behind them. They were painted in the late 1950's and early 1960's by a gentleman known as "Johnny the bolt". He was a pharmacist in his early years until he was captured as a prisoner of war. As you can imagine, he went through quite an ordeal, and when he returned to "normal" life, it was anything but. He became an alcoholic and ended up homeless. He used to sleep under the little "bridges" along the main street of Cobar for shelter. One day he just started painting in one of the local shops, and as it kept him busy and gave him a purpose, the retailers allowed him to continue. He went from shop to shop, and at one time most of the shops in town had a "Johnny the bolt" painting on their wall. He was sometimes paid with a meal or even a bottle of wine, (so he didn't have to drink the bottle of "metho", that he would have hidden somewhere. From what I've been told, he was a very friendly man, but the local police used to put him in the cells occasionally, so he would have a good feed and "dry out" for a while. He also did paintings in the cells. Sadly there are very few of his paintings left and this one is the biggest. There is still one at the local police station and I've heard that there is one in a house which is now behind a built in wardrobe! When we purchased this building we weren't sure what to do, and we had advice to paint over them, so we could display our quilts properly, but there was a little voice telling us that we couldn't do that. As we were both born in Cobar it just didn't seem right to disregard some of our history, so we do have a few things hanging in front of some parts of them, but they are still there. We have had a lot of positive feedback about the murals still being here, so I guess they'll be here for a while to come. I hope you have found this interesting and enjoy the pictures.