Let’s sell fresh produce… in a café… that also sells and repairs pushbikes.

Can you imagine running that idea past a bank manager? Can you imagine the look he or she would give you as you tried to exude confidence that it would work?

But the idea did work. In spades. A unique, extraordinary idea that became a much loved local business and an iconic landmark for visitors to Goulburn.

The Greengrocer Café and Cyclery.

On Monday night it was lost to fire and the town is feeling a tangible sense of loss on many levels.

On the most obvious level, it’s left a physical void in the city. It’s now a place that is, but isn’t there.

On another level, it’s left a void in the lives of people who frequented the place.

Café regulars who met for a coffee and a meal, cyclists shopping for bikes and meeting before and after rides to swap stories, and even occasional visitors to Goulburn have fond memories of the Greengrocer.

Average families met there… movers and shakers met there... decisions were made there and deals were done. It was a place where people felt comfortable, felt at ease and enjoyed being.

But as sad as the loss is on those levels, they are superficial compared to the loss being experienced by the employees and owners of the establishment.

Staff left the Greengrocer on Monday afternoon with jobs, with a source of income and a sense of security and woke up on Tuesday with none of those things.

And the owners, the people who came up with this incredible idea which they turned into a thriving reality, where does the loss leave them?

How must they feel?

Where do they go from here?

No doubt it seems very little consolation at this time but the entire city is feeling for them and feeling their loss, while dealing with their own emotional responses to the fire.

We rightly praise the ‘firies’ who worked so hard to minimise the loss.

We’ve lost a few iconic buildings in Goulburn over the years… some by lack of foresight, some to fire and other disasters… and each loss lessens the town.

You can dismiss a building as a bunch of bricks, or so much wood and weatherboard, but they come to mean much more than that to us. It’s a very human trait to anthropomorphise inanimate objects, places and things and give them a personality, feel a fondness for them and give them a significance beyond their simple physical presence.

The Greengrocer Café and Cyclery was much-loved.

Goulburn is a lesser place without the Greengrocer and many lives will be different for its loss.