Maz and Baz Bargwanna made the trek to Dubbo from Cobar this week to buy a new stove and plenty of essentials.
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For them, hitting the road is a necessity but they're not the only ones forking out for goods and services at the moments.
"There's only one shop in Cobar so we can't buy a lot there. We come to Dubbo for big shopping," Ms Bargwanna said.
Harvey Norman's white goods manager Adam Beale said sales for fridges, washers, and TV spiked in recent months with many customers saying "they need to update household essentials."
"Coming out of COVID it seems they've had a lot of money saved up, I know I did, so it's more like they're sitting at home and realised they needed to update essentials, and its easy to see that if you're at home for a long time," Mr Beale said.
"Since the start of the year, it's been pretty steady we're seeing a spike of people coming in so lots of our stock's moving around these days."
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics report on household spending for April this year, shopping, dining and entertainment spending rose 7.6 percent compared to the same time last year.
ABS' head of macroeconomic statistics Andrew Tomadini said, "the largest increases in spending were on furniture and household equipment at 14.9 per cent, hotels, cafes and restaurants at 14.3 per cent and transport at 12.4 per cent."
"As COVID-19 restrictions eased, household spending increased in eight of the nine spending categories in April 2022 compared to April 2021.
"Spending in recreation, hospitality and retail continued to rise. Spending on health was the only category to decrease in April 2022, down 1.4 per cent."
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The purchases were clothing and footwear up 25.9 per cent, alcoholic beverages and tobacco up 21.6 per cent, and health up 14.5 per cent.
Household spending on hotels, cafes and restaurants recovered to 3.3 per cent above pre-pandemic levels. Transport remains the only spending category below pre-pandemic levels, down 4.6 per cent.
The big spenders are Queenslanders spent 11.4 per cent, South Australians 9.5 per cent, and Western Australians 8.1 per cent.
Before the pandemic, total household spending was nine per cent higher, the ABS report said.
Elizabeth Frias
I began my news reporting days in western and inner west Sydney before joining the Daily Liberal's Dubbo NSW newsroom. Telling all sorts of stories about people, places and events is my daily preoccupation so email me at elizabeth.frias@austcommunitymedia.com.au and I'll be in touch!
I began my news reporting days in western and inner west Sydney before joining the Daily Liberal's Dubbo NSW newsroom. Telling all sorts of stories about people, places and events is my daily preoccupation so email me at elizabeth.frias@austcommunitymedia.com.au and I'll be in touch!
