Here is History Pennys/Coles

Pennys is an English department store and its history in Gladstone goes back to 1951. At this time, both Woolworths and Pennys opened their doors in the harbour town, within a couple of months of one another. Woolworths started in about the middle of 1951, while Pennys called for staff in November of the same year. Before this Friends and Moore’s were the only big department stores in Gladstone and these were locally owned and managed. Woolworths bought the Lincoln Theatre, then non-operational, and they had this demolished, and George Young built them a new modern building. Next the Pennys bought land between the Newsagency and the Butcher Shop just a few doors down from Woolworths and they also had George Young build their new up-to-date departmental chain store. Arnold Galloway was the first manager and two ladies who answered these early job applications were Doreen Cant (McKeon) and Val Wright (Neville/Jones).

By the end of 1952 Arnold Galloway was replaced as manager by Ken Marshman. Dave Gill and Fred Lowe were the next managers. By November 1957, Pennys were bought out by Coles and all stores were made over to become Coles Departmental Stores. Coles then had a manager and sub-manager (or assistant manager) and these initial positions were filled by Rod Stebbins (manager) and Mark Wench (sub-manager).