Well-known Kingscliff business Galileos has re-opened in a bigger location after a six month hiatus but it’s new incarnation makes it part of the town’s history.
The Pizza Cafe, which opened its doors near Paradiso in the centre of town in 2004, closed its doors six months ago, looking for a bigger venue. On Thursday last week, after months and months of planning, they re-emerged in one of the best-known locations in Kingscliff.
Chris Paine and partner Cathy Shanks are now operating out of the iconic “Jack the Slasher” building down opposite the Kingscliff Beach Bowls Club in Marine Parade.
The business has opened almost 50 years after Jack Turnbull started operating a business on the same spot.
“We were there from December 1962 right through to June 30, 2000,” Jack’s son, well-known local milkman Cliff Turnbull said.
“He ran it the whole time with the help of the rest of us,” he laughed.
Jack was 87 when he finally retired, and he passed away seven and a half years later.
“He said it was the hardest seven years of his life,” Cliff said.
“He was used to being busy but he had nothing to do but walk the dogs.”
Even before they opened the shop, the Turnbull’s, who had run a banana farm near Chillingham and a fruit shop in Murwillumbah’s Queen Street, started selling vegetables on the spot.
“We sold fruit and vegetables there from the back of a land-drover before we built the shop,” Cliff, who was 12 when the family moved to Kingscliff, said.
He said with his dad deciding that he was too old to be climbing the hills banana farming, they decided to open the shop.
Jacks was “one of 11 little shops” around Kingscliff when it first opened in ‘62 including Mrs Faulk’s store down near the creek, a shop up near the school in Sutherland Street, a Four Square near where the bookshop is and a Foodland near the ambulance station.
The Turnbulls, who still own the building, operated the shop until 2000 when Grant Peate and Michelle Quirk took over until 2005. The Bevans continued to trade the shop first continuing as a mixed business and then switching to take away, from 2006 until last year.
“It is definitely the longest operating of all those stores (from the 60s),” Cliff said.
“A lot of people have been saying that it is so good to someone in there again and that it’s back open again.
“It’s part of the history of the town. There’s still hope for it yet.”
