Abikhair’s Emporium

Exhibit Design

Wmedia worked with AlburyCity’s Exhibition Curator and Social History Coordinator Bridget Guthrie to create Emporium.

For so long Abikhair’s was a retail institution in Albury, known for old-fashioned customer service and for stocking items you couldn’t find anywhere else. Its growth really exemplified the way people’s attitudes to shopping transformed in Australia after WWII.

The celebrated department store was opened by Syrian immigrant Saad Milham Abikhair and his wife, Shefia, on the corner of Swift and Olive streets in 1928.

It closed its doors in 1996 when the Albury City Council purchased the remaining stock for the Museum and Social History Collection, complete with advertising posters from previous decades, especially the 1950s.

The store was always a source of wonder for many and a place where time seemed to stand still in the later decades.