Welcome to Ours!

Words by Em Walker

Hi I’m Em.

I’m the owner of The Village Hub Capricorn Coast, and the woman who apparently looked at motherhood, small business, community connection, coffee, secondhand clothes, kids underfoot and the general lack of a village and thought…

Yep. I should put all of that in one building.

So I did.

The Village Hub is a little community space in Emu Park built around a pretty simple belief:

“People were never meant to do life this alone.”

It’s a shop, but it’s also not really a shop.

There’s coffee.

Preloved and locally made goodies.

Little businesses renting shelves and racks.

A space for kids to exist without you apologising for them existing.

Places to sit.

Community events.

A Dear Mama station.

Pay it forward coffees.

And, hopefully, over time, a whole lot more.

I’m a mum of three, a local business owner and the founder of The Mama Brunch Club, and so much of this has grown from seeing how desperately people, particularly mums, need somewhere they can just land.

Somewhere you can come on maternity leave when the walls of your house are closing in.

Somewhere you can work from while your baby plays beside you.

Somewhere you can meet someone when your family lives hundreds of kilometres away.

Somewhere you can contribute when you have a little extra capacity, and be carried a bit when you don’t.

And somewhere you’re still completely welcome if you don’t have children at all.

Because the village was always supposed to be intergenerational.

It needs the mums and the babies, yes. But it also needs the grandparents, the aunties, the students, the business owners, the retirees, the people who’ve lived here forever and the people who’ve just arrived.

I don’t really know exactly what The Village Hub will become yet.

That’s kind of the point.

I’ve built the container.

Now I want the community to help fill it.

So if you’ve been wondering what on earth is happening inside that little shop in Emu Park…

Come in.

Have a coffee. Have a stickybeak. Tell me your idea. Sit for five minutes. Bring the kids. Bring your mum. Come by yourself.

You don’t need a reason.

You’re allowed to just need a village.

Em x

To see what’s happening at The Village Hub & to keep up to date, be sure to follow along on the socials Facebook or Instagram

The Village Hub is open Monday – Friday 9am 1pm

Editor’s note: The Village Hub is also home to a satellite shelf of The Wellbeing Library, where community members can browse and borrow a selection of wellbeing books and resources. Donations can also be accepted here too, just pop them in the donations box.