Owners of iconic Albany Wombat Lodge prepare to close doors for final time after 50 years

After 50 successful years operating on Albany’s main street, Wombat Lodge will close its doors for the final time later this year. A keen leather-worker and self-described surfie hippie at the time, George Burcher opened the store with the support of wife Helen in February 1974. Opening the store was a natural progression for the Burchers as a place to sell Mr Burcher’s fashionable leather goods. Over the following five decades, it evolved into a vibrant souvenir store. Mr Burcher said the first store was fairly bare, so he was left to improvise when fitting it out. “We had no money so we couldn’t buy shop fittings and the walls were awful in the building,” he said. “We ended up getting rolls of hessian and somehow hung it up to cover the walls. We just improvised in so many ways.” Wombat Lodge spent seven years in its original York Street location before moving when the opportunity came up to buy a building a few doors further up the street. It has been there ever since. The Burchers spent more than a decade doing it up, including adding the store’s well-known front balcony, as the business grew from strength to strength. Such was the success of the Albany store, Wombat Lodge expanded to Geraldton, Busselton and Bunbury, as well as multiple Perth locations. “We were ambitious but we didn’t think we’d ever grow like that,” Mr Burcher said. Ms Burcher said it was her role to keep her husband’s feet on the ground as she acted as the rudder while Mr Burcher was at the helm “and 20 years ahead of his time”. Only the Albany and Bunbury stores remain, but both continue to generate strong turnover and have been going as strongly as ever according to Mr Burcher, despite the challenges facing bricks-and-mortar retail. “People like to people say ‘well, everyone can just buy everything online’, but you can’t buy souvenirs online,” he said. “It’s not the sort of thing you go online for, because you also come in for an experience.” Ms Burcher said because the store was often one of the first places tourists visited, it also served as a pseudo-information centre. “If I had a dollar for every question I got asked, ‘where is this?’ or ‘where is that?’, we’d be very wealthy,” she said. The business was put up for sale in mid-2023 when the couple decided they were ready to retire, but no buyers have come forward. Mr Burcher said retirement would allow them to spend more time with family in Perth. “I’ll also be having a few more long lunches with the girlfriends as well,” Ms Burcher said. Ahead of Wombat Lodge opening in 1974, Mr Burcher told the Advertiser: “If Wombat Lodge makes it, I reckon I’ve made it.” Fifty years on, Mr Burcher simply said “we’ve done all right”. “We don’t want to say we’re any better than the next bloke, but we’ve quietly done all right,” he said. “And best of all we’re happy, and still together as best mates.” The store will remain open for the coming months as it sells off stock, and there are already interested parties looking to lease the building once Wombat Lodge officially closes its doors. The Burchers said they would miss the variety of “lovely people” coming through their doors every day. “It’s been good fun and just something to do for the past 50 years,” Mr Burcher said.