A friend on Thursday afternoon sent me a screenshot of a post on the Kambah Community Noticeboard that stopped me in my tracks.
The post read: "I was just talking to a worker at Coles Wanniassa and they were saying it looks like it may close down as one of the slowest Coles in Canberra. That would be sad!!"
My reaction?
"Not the shops!"
Said with a Ted-Bullpit-Not-The-Kingswood kind of flourish, of course.
I wasn't alone. There were soon more than 100 comments on the post, most people saying how much they loved the Coles at Wanniassa and didn't want it to close. And that it was hardly an under-used supermarket.
Before we go any further, Coles says the rumour is not true.
On Friday, Coles regional manager John Appleby told us:
"There is no truth to this rumour. Coles Wanniassa remains open and our team looks forward to continuing to serve the community.
"We are grateful for the support of our Wanniassa customers and thank our team members for the great service they provide every day."
Let's hope that remains true.
Most people in Canberra love their local shops.
Outsiders talk about Canberra lacking a soul. Have to admit, you don't find it much in Civic these days. But you do find it at the local shops. It's where you see the same faces, bump into people you know, feel part of something. And the reason local shops exist, more often than not, is that they are anchored by a well-functioning, popular supermarket.
Coles is like my second home. I'm incapable of doing a "big shop". So I'm there most mornings at opening time to get stuff for my kids' school lunches and often back there after work picking up ingredients for dinner. Very inefficient, I know. A friend of mine is the same and we invariably bump into each other, laughing, again, that we're both back at Coles.
But apart from the gorgeous staff, what I love most about Coles in Wanniassa, and the reason I do visit so often, is that it's so easy to access.
There's no walking for miles in a shopping centre to get to it. There's no going down a twisting underground car park.
No, instead we have a lovely, open-air car park to which you can park literally metres away from the front door of Coles. And the parking is free.
I really get why some Hawker residents have objected to Woolworths' plans to knock down the existing supermarket at their local shops and put up a bigger supermarket, one that will take over some of the existing open-air car park and put in underground basement parking. People don't like the idea of having to park underground to get into the shops. One objector also reckoned a larger supermarket at Hawker would "ruin the little community store you have at the moment". Sometimes bigger isn't always better.
And it was only the other day, I was looking at the vast open-air car park at the Wanniassa shops thinking, "I wonder how long this will last? I wonder how long the community will get to use it and enjoy it and benefit from it before it's taken away and given to a developer?" Never, I hope.
At Wanniassa, we've already lost our butcher, which closed suddenly. And we've lost the homegrown business The Markets Wanniassa, in that case, due to escalating rent. (The family-owned business has since gone online. You can check it out at www.themarketswanniassa.com/)
Without Coles, the Wanniassa shops would be in real strife. We don't want another Richardson or Giralang situation there. The local supermarket at Richardson was forced out in 2019 due to a stalemate with the landlord and the other shops went with it. The centre is still empty, although there is a breakthrough apparently under way facilitating new tenants moving in. The Giralang shops sat dormant for 15 years before an upgraded centre with new tenants opened in July 2025.
I'm hoping what Coles management has said is true, that the supermarket is safe at Wanniassa, and that it won't be cruelled by rising rents or anything else.
