General News
11 July, 2025
Ten years since Majorca blaze
All that remains a decade on is all that was left a decade ago — a pile of rubble left by the fire that destroyed the historic Majorca Store.
The building represented many things: a relic of a prosperous town, the nostalgic memory of a local generation, and a loved home.
They all went up in flames, gone in a plume of smoke visible from Maryborough, on May 27, 2015.
Reportedly due to an electrical fault at the back of the home firefighting efforts were complicated, due to the historic buildings instability which threatened collapse.
The incident controller, then Carisbrook fire brigade’s First Lieutenant Jamie Herd, told The Advertiser their efforts focused on containing the blaze.
“When we got there the building was fully involved and straight away we could see we weren’t going to be able to do much to save it,” he said.
Built in 1866, the store has hosted numerous businesses selling hardware, clothing, food and fuel — alongside becoming a post office and local library.
Although the store had become Adrianna Visser’s private home for more than a decade — after years of her running it as a business — Mr Herd said the old stock added to the blaze’s intensity.
“I’m very mindful [the owner] lost everything she had. It’s gone,” Mr Herd said.
A decade on, Ms Visser is dwarfed by the rubble that remains — a constant reminder of her homes loss.
What once was shelves full of fabric, whatever goods she could find after an early start down in Melbourne, is now replaced by curated greenery.
Ms Visser prefers to focus on her sheep, her orchard, the prickly pears, and the upcoming season of vegetables.
“I’m happy, that’s all. I’m settled,” she said.
The store’s facade, captured on a plaque across the street, now feels like a distant memory. The piles of rubble, bricks and bluestone, are a distant image from the eclectic goods that make up so many local memories.
Allison O’Connell never knew what she’d find, or what might fall on her, when she visited the store in the mid 1990s.
“It was a treasure trove of buttons, ribbons and material of all sorts,” she said.
“I remember seeing photos of it on fire and thinking it would be an absolute tinder box just that there was so much stuff crammed in there.”
It’s that chaos that created the adventures Daryl Gibbs treasured as a young boy in the 1960s and 70s
“For a 10 minute walk you’d be gone for two hours,” he said.
“I was lucky because a lot of kids didn’t get to see these old style shops. It was pretty unique in its day.”
The loss of the store, where you could buy a bit of everything while rubbing shoulders with other locals, was a disappointing outcome for Mr Gibbs.
“It’s indicative of the way a lot of these small towns have gone,” he said.
“It’s taken a lot away from the culture of what Australia was then and what country life was then. You don’t have that now.”
When the Majorca Store stood it was a reminder of another era, one where the town was bustling with expansion, now the rubble is a reminder of an era that feels like a distant memory — one remembered only in fragments.