CRIME, yobbos and falling sales have sunk Swan Hardware, which has been trading for more than 60 years.
Owner Maria Sciano says she is too traumatised following a recent robbery to continue working alone in her Hamilton Hill store.
More than $1000 was stolen and she’s decided to call it a day.
Over the past year, she’s had to deal with a woman dousing herself in kerosene, another giving birth in a car in the parking lot, and a string of thefts and anti-social behaviour.
Things came to a head recently when a man, brandishing thongs and yelling, backed her down a shop aisle.
While she was distracted, another man ran into the office at the back of the shop and nabbed her handbag, which contained her money: “I don’t normally keep that amount of money in my handbag, but I had just collected some of the shop’s takings,” she says. “Every two weeks or so, we have people trying to steal solvents, paints and caustic soda, which is used to make drugs.
“There are always people banging on the window, tipping over wheelbarrows and swearing and shouting outside. I thought one woman was going to set herself on fire after she poured kerosene all over herself.”
She has contacted police several times, but claims they only send out a patrol car if it is a life-threatening situation.
The shop’s closure is a sad footnote to a quaint business that had originally been in South Fremantle for more than 60 years. War veteran Norm Ablett ran the business for six decades and shortly before his death in 2010 he handed the business to Ms Sciano, who’d worked for him for 30 years before becoming his carer: “I was bit like a daughter to him, because he had no family,” she says.
Eighteen months ago Ms Sciano moved the shop to Carrington Street after a Dan Murphy’s opened up at the old South Freo site.
She is now the only full-time member at the store, with some help from her son, who works full-time elsewhere, and a couple of part-timers.
“Sales have gone down since we moved here and that has been a factor in our closure,” she says, sadly.
“There’s not much foot traffic up here.
“I think we are the last small hardware shop in Fremantle to shut. It’s pretty sad: there is Mt Pleasant Hardware, but I don’t think there is any left in Freo.”
Ms Sciano says she will have a sale and then pull down the shutters for the last time in four weeks.
by STEPHEN POLLOCK
