By Tania Phillips
Stanthorpe’s Cameron Giddings was born to fly and for the past 17 years he has travelled the world but when Covid clipped the wings of the travel sector, he knew he wasn’t going to be able to sit and do nothing.
Instead, Cam who admits to getting “very bored” if he’s not travelling and around people having fun, has taken inspiration from his travels and turned it into a highly successful local business – Little Larder, which now has 24 employees.
Fully vaccinated, he’s still finding time to fly though and is involved in the repatriation flights and is about to head to Alaska and Indian.
“I have spent the past five years with Qantas International based out of Brisbane as an on-board manager and then with Covid I actually operated the very first Australian repatriation flight into Wuhan China,” he said.
“The condition became a lot worse for the tourism industry, so I thought I’d just have some time off and go back to Stanthorpe and spend some time with my family until Covid went away – maybe in two or three months. But it got progressively worse as the pandemic grew and I was spending a lot of time in Stanthorpe. I thought there was nowhere to go that has a nice big outdoor space, that’s central in town, that has a liquor license, a beautiful café and a fun metro vibe.
“So, I spoke to my mum, she retired from nursing after 53 years, and on her 70th birthday we officially opened at 19 Railway Street.”
His time in New York – a place very dear to his heart – was the inspiration behind the interior fit-out of Little Larder. If he couldn’t go, there he would bring a touch of New York to his hometown.
“The colour palette, the subway tiles, the design of the cabinets, the retail space, basically everything we have inside now is kind of based on a New York loft – it’s beautiful, we get so many compliments everyday from people,” Cameron said.
“I’ve fallen in love with it. I still work for Qantas International – I’m going flying to Alaska and India on the 3 August to continue working with the operation of repatriation flights. But we’ve grown to have a team of 24. Josh Read is our general manager; in my absence he steps up and can run the business exactly how would when I’m not here.
“It’s amazing we’ve got four supervisors; every shift has its own supervisor, and we have some really wonderful crew who are still at school.
“Being able to create 24 job opportunities in a small town during Covid is something very proud of particularly within hospitality it is great!”
After living away for the best part of 18 years, he is justifiably proud to be able to come back and to help out at a time when the town had been coming out of droughts and fires and had now been hit by the effects of the pandemic.
“It was really nice to come back and reconnect with some locals and have all of their support from day one,” he said.
“My mum is happy to have me home. She loves it. Mum comes in in the morning for a couple of hours and potters around and has croissants and all of our beautiful sandwiches and hangs out with the crew, then she goes home and does whatever she wants for the day.
“It’s such a fun vibe here and a big focus for us is equality and inclusion so we really amplify that within the business. All of our crew are so supportive of every different culture and community that we celebrate.”
He has gone for good quality unpretentious food, with as much as possible sourced locally to further support the community.
And he’s still getting to fly.
“It’s my passion as well,” he admits, “flying and travelling and feeling those two massive Rolls Royce engines pulling up into the sky at 400km an hour.”
“I’ve been very fortunate to have done the travel I’ve done.”
