75,000 books and counting at Berrigan Bookshop

The two Berrigan Shire residents are prolific readers and when the dissatisfaction with their jobs got too much the sisters decided to open a book store, aptly named the Berrigan Bookshop.

The sisters combed through their expansive collections and sorted out which books they wanted themselves and which ones they wanted to sell.

“We decided we had 1600 books, and it was enough, we decided, to open the book store,” Carla said.

Since then, the collection at the store has snowballed to about 75,000 books of all genres.

The store houses both new and pre-owned books, and the sisters had to renovate their building and expand the store to physically cope with the amount of books on offer.

In addition to their bricks and mortar store, the sisters have an online presence.

According to Carla, their online store specialises solely in books that are niche or hard to obtain.

“We only sell things that are hard to find, because there's no point competing on things that everybody has,” she said.

The physical store in Berrigan, however, stocks everything from rare books to popular new releases.

The sisters are in the process of cataloguing their massive collection.

“We’ve got probably another 10,000 or 20,000 books in the wings, waiting to get looked at, on top of the 75,000 already on offer,” Carla said.

The Berrigan Bookshop is one of the few bookshops in the area and caters to Berrigan residents and those coming from further afield, including Cobram, Deliniquin, Finley and Wagga Wagga, as well as tourists, who often make the pilgrimage to the store as part of their holiday plans.

As for why reading is so important, Carla believes that books expose readers to a whole new world.

“To me, books are a happiness and one of the joys in life,” she said.