A familiar Albury name in the early twentieth century was Frederick Landells Vines. He advertised as "Fruiterer, Greengrocer and Confectioner" and established a popular Dean Street restaurant.
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Born in Geelong, one of 15 children, he grew up in Echuca, leaving school at age 10 to start work delivering newspapers. As a teenager, he was managing a drapery store at Rochester, Victoria, before moving to Albury in 1894 to manage Maloney's clothing store in Dean Street next to the Albion Hotel.
In 1900, Vines began a business career of incredible variety. His first venture was a mixed business south of Dean Street on the eastern side of Kiewa Street. He became agent for a Sydney tailoring establishment and could offer customers groceries, vegetables, fruit, and insurance.
Interviewed by the Border Morning Mail at age 74 in 1946, Vines told the journalist that as business expanded, he purchased two wagons to supply fruit and vegetables in Albury and district. He described rising early to feed the horses, and while his wife attended the shop, he went out delivering. The rounds completed, he worked in the shop, among other jobs making ice-cream and tomato sauce, closing his doors at midnight. This, he said, was his routine for some 40 years, and he was satisfied that hard work has harmed no man.
Looking for larger premises, Vines rented premises on the eastern corner of AMP Lane on Dean Street, the site later becoming the T&G building. Fruit and vegetables had been supplied by local market gardeners, so Vines leased 16 acres where Albury High School now stands, where he laid out his own market garden, grew grain and kept cows to supply milk for ice cream.
Vines added millinery and footwear to the store and next door opened a fish shop. In the basement of his store, he established a popular refreshment room that he called "Jenolan Caves", decorator Werne Dunstan producing the atmosphere of a cave with stalactites and stalagmites. He also opened shops in Wodonga and Wangaratta.
Continuing to expand, Vines started a seed, plant and florist business, importing seeds directly from Europe, and opened the Melbourne Cash Grocery, with his brother as manager. He laid out a nursery in Guinea Street where he also leased stabling to racehorse owners and trainers. Next venture was a 13-acre orchard on the old Sydney Road (now Borella Road), where he also fattened pigs and ran poultry.
Vines died in April 1949 and is buried in the Waugh Road cemetery.
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