Wodonga’s Toole family has decided to sell the High Street icon, which their father, Pat, founded 70 years ago.

Manager Bill Toole, his brothers Pat, Jim and Frank, and sister Mary Casey, have decided collectively to dispose of the building at the Stanley Street corner at auction.

They will then hold a massive clearing sale.

But that won’t happen until November.

Meanwhile, the Tooles have plenty of time to reminisce.

They may not have any skeletons in the cupboard.

But they can laugh today about how they once sold real skeletons of young Indian women, as were used by medical practitioners in Australia.

“We also sold skeletons from the Mayday Hills hospital at Beechworth, but they were plastic and came with a lot of plastic body parts the hospital used for training people,” Bill Toole said.

Tooles have also sold coffins from time to time, not that there’s much of a second-hand market in that line.

Pat Toole — who ran another part of the family business, North Eastern Truck Wreckers — said the family were getting older, the market for disposals was changing and the business generally was getting tougher.

Bill Toole, who has worked in the shop for 43 years, said there were few old-fashioned disposals shops left in Australia.

“Some have gone into the camping equipment business, and the ones that are under pressure from the camping shops and the mega-stores selling camping equipment,” he said.

The Wodonga store is still well-stocked with new and second-hand clothing, mostly military in origin, footwear and all kinds of army equipment from socks and hats to cutlery and binoculars.

Bushfires have boosted business this year.

“We’ve had ladies coming in to buy firemen’s jackets and wool blankets, and we’ve sold a lot of tubs for water storage,” Bill Toole said.

A more bizarre buy came from AusAid’s disaster relief stock.

“It was polytarp body bags they had for the tsunami, but people are buying them for camping,” Bill Toole said.