Last Saturday, I sat down with to have a coffee with my wife at Westfield Chermside (I believe it's the 4th largest shopping centre in the country)while we were doing some shopping. I commented to her that there seemed to be lots of people moving around, but the great majority of bypassers either had no shopping bags in their hand, or maybe just one. Most shop windows had 20/30/40/50% off adds in their windows (granted, it was pre 30 June).
A fortnight or so earlier, I'd caught up with my cousin, who is a builder from Malaney, in the Sunshine Coast hinterland. A few years ago, he said to me that he never had to travel "off the mountain" to get a building job. Now, he's travelling to the norther end of the Gold Coast to get work.
We were back at Westfield Chermside this morning. We went to Target around 10.00am and, as we passed the checkouts on entry, I mentioned to my wife that the checkouts seemed very quiet (well, much quieter than usual for a Saturday morning). When we went to leave around 20 min later, I was blown away by the fact that there were absolutely NO CUSTOMERS at the checkout!
Maybe these snippets are proof of the two speed ecomomy that the Reserve Bank keeps talking about.
