And our message is to head as local as you can. 

With greater competition for local businesses than ever before, it’s been great to see how busy it seems to be getting around town – and we hope the tills in local shops are feeling it too. 

With hard times in the past few months, we need to work together to make Christmas a gift for the whole community. 

The increasing prevalence of online shopping has created challenges for local businesses that they wouldn’t have ever thought about a few years ago. 

No longer is the shop next door the main competitor for a business operating in the Dubbo central business district, nor even stores in Bathurst, Orange and Sydney.

Now a Dubbo business can easily face stiff competition from a retailer based on the other side of the world, operating under different tax conditions and maybe without the overheads of a shopfront of any kind.

And as we have seen this year regional businesses are also vulnerable to the vagaries of climate and changing seasons. A good year on the land can translate to a good year in the shop.

And it hasn’t been a good year. 

So as you consider your purchases to put under the tree, please also consider shopping locally.

Small businesses provide a culture and diversity to a regional city such as Dubbo that is much harder to find in major centres.

They are the backbone of our economy, employ thousands of locals and support countless sporting and community clubs.

So every dollar you can put across the counter at a local store will return a valuable dividend for the whole region.

We can’t turn back the clock on our global village that makes shopping on Macquarie Street no easier than shopping on Fifth Avenue but we can make a conscious effort to support the business that supports our region.

There is a benefit for all of us in keeping our shopping dollars local, where possible, and never moreso than at Christmas.

Online shopping has been the greatest retail revolution we have seen in recent years but there’s still a lot to be said for the old way of doing things.

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