Thanks for your comments, all.

However, I must say that many of us moved to the country to get away from the rat race of the Big City or the souless suburban sprawl and its ugly shopping complexes - WHY, Martin, should WE have to keep moving???!! It's not as if these things aren't already available to us , LESS than a half-hour drive away!! Why is it necessary to reduce beauty and serenity and uniquness to the lowest common denominator, so that everywhere is filled with the same crap?? (Once inside most shopping centres and large supermarkets, you could be anywhere in the Western world - they're all manufactured to the same formula ...)

Our town is already well serviced by many small shops AND a really GREAT supermarket, all owned and operated by people who live in the area and whose children go to the various schools in the district and who are a part of THIS Community - not some faceless Board residing down in Sydney or Melbourne! Woollies are NOT responding to a need by the population, but are just staking their claim (i.e. OUR town) for the future, against the other retail giants ...

DougR says : " If the savings from dealing with the large chains over the Mom and Pop stores means nothing to you, then I can understand why you feel as you do "
Well, I definitely don't have money to burn, but I can't believe that it should all come down to money and "cheaper goods" - quality of life and sense of Community, people having time for each other, peace and quiet, less crime and less traffic congestion, beautiful natural surroundings, proximity to wildlife, clean air : far, far, less pollution (atmospheric AND noise AND visual), a sense of space, land to grow healthy produce, - all these are important : all these AND MORE!!! And these are but some of the reasons why people give up, often high-paying, jobs in the city to move to the country.

So WHY must the city be shoved on our doorstep yet again??!!
WHY do we have to have our unique towns of great beauty homogenised into the enervating, ugly, blots of elsewhere???

(sad) Cheers!
R-J