That seems so long ago and, in some ways irrelevant given what we have lived through of late. The deeper "recovery" process will still take more time, but so many of us now know so much better than we ever did, that we live in a community that helps us, cares for us and supports us.

In addition to being directly impacted by fires in some instances, most, if not all, local businesses have experienced significant cuts in sales since the beginning of December, due to bushfires causing road closures and our crucial travelling summer customers not be able to access us for many, many weeks.

Thankfully, social media campaigns inspired by locals and news coverage by ABC and WIN television alerted people to our plight and the Australia Day long weekend again delivered a much needed boost.

Plus, various car clubs and other groups took the initiative to organise trips to Braidwood to shop. And a BIG THANK YOU to all our local customers for shopping with us during this very tough period.

Now we have the QPRC team investing in and about to launch a long-term marketing campaign to encourage people to travel to Braidwood and other local destinations, to visit and spend time and money to contribute to our long term commercial recovery.

QPRC will soon be explaining the campaign to Braidwood businesses via the Business Chamber, as well as outline how to be involved. A great opportunity for retailers!

And, please, to help support your local businesses and help their long term recovery from what has been a truly terrible "holiday season", try to shop local as much as you possibly can!