QBD stands for Queensland Book Depot, and not surprisingly, started in Queensland. South Australia…read morecurrently has three locations and I have had the odd and unsatisfying browse in the Tea Tree Plaza store. Why is this place thriving when Borders and Angus and Robertson struggled? This chain store looks like a doctor's waiting room and the reading material is somewhat similar. QBD has very little in the way of quality new releases, and the staff look bored and don't seem to know much about the books they're selling. Seems to me that QBD are buying whatever the wholesalers have a lot of, ergo: whatever vampire teen novels are being flat packed that day. QBD don't actually even have a literature section, they just have a small 'classics' shelf with a random collection of authors from Joanne Harris to Marcus Zusack. I get why people like it, you can grab discounted cook books and teen novels very cheap for gifts. But this fluoro ode to discounts leaves me cold.

Super friendly staff that will search the store and the far corners of the Internet to find you…read morethat book you're looking for. They also have a good range of hard to find pop culture books like 'goodnight iPad' & 'go the f*** to sleep' They are also faster than amazon by an average of 3 weeks. Viva the return of the bookshop! Death to the Internet stores!

This is an independent op shop that supports community charities which makes it a little different…read morefrom your Salvos, Vinnies etc. It's a smallish store divided into three sections; the main one is clothes and books, then shoes, bags, bric-a-brac, electrical goods and home wares and then fabric, sewing supplies, toys and kids clothes. I have found a lot of nice items in here; clothes, shoes, some vintage glomesh bag action, brand new kids clothes, retro Tupperware and some unique and cool jewellery. There are often some good labels tucked in amongst the maturer lady items and their front cabinet is well worth a look.