Business: Peter and Martha Shear, Greengrocers

Business Address

Story

Having started life in Australia in Victoria, Peter Shear and his wife, Martha moved first to Beaudesert and then in about 1914 to South Brisbane where they bought property in Melbourne Street. Over the next decade, they acquired more property. When the South Brisbane Council resumed parts of Melbourne Street in 1925, they owned three properties on that Street. One included two shops and a house; another was a shop leased to Paling & Co; and the third was a ‘seven-roomed house’. The Shears operated their greengrocer business from one of these Melbourne Street shops.

After receiving compensation for their property, the family moved to Roma and opened a business there. Partly due to the depression, it was, in his daughter’s words, ‘a flop’. The family then moved to Dalby where they opened another business. In 1936, they moved to Toowoomba where they opened a drapery store. This business was a success and in the 1940s the Shears  were drapers in Toowoomba and Oakey.

References

Adele and Josephine Shear, interview with Anne Monsour, Toowoomba, 1993.

Daily Standard (Brisbane), 16 September 1926, p. 5, viewed 23 August 2021, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article185177136.

Queensland Post Office Directories to 1949.