Your old stories about this Wollongong suburb are now in demand

One hundred years ago there was one store, the local co-op, part of a string of Woonona Industrial Co-operative Society stores which served the northern coal-mining villages.

It sold everything you might imagine an old-timey general store would have - hardware, clothing, bread, blocks of ice, milk from the vat.

On that site is now the cafe and store Earth Walker & Co, where the menu is decidedly more modern and gourmet but with an emphasis on hand-made and locally produced fare.

Renovations are planned which will boost the restaurant and general store personality of the cafe, and owner Ciara Kulmar, who grows much of the produce herself, wants to double down on the local heritage.

Whereas the newsagent and store which occupied the site for many years before Earth Walker's time sold tinned and boxed goods, the vision for this general store is more along the lines of hand-cut bacon and butter churned onsite - the old ways.

Restaurant stylist Eliza Woodward, who is working with Ms Kulmar on the design, said she's after stories and pictures that can be used in the design of the new fit-out.

"I want stories," she said.

"We are retelling the story of the past years through pictures, through the design. We want we want to recreate the nostalgia of what life was like in the old days.

"There's going to be no QR codes or anything like that. This is about an old school business with real people, real service, real food."

Ms Woodward said her husband is "fifth-generation Coledale" and before his centenarian grandfather died, she was able to hear stories about when he worked at the co-op, delivering goods to nearby homes on the back of a donkey.

"There was no prepackaging anything," she said.

"That's what Earth Walker is about to go back to: a shop for convenience, but also one that you know has a very light footprint where you can buy just your necessities, like butter, bread, fruit, simple things."

The restaurant and bar will add a night-time destination for the growing population of the once-sleepy Coledale.

The suburb has welcomed many new residents over the past decade, and experienced some of the area's greatest increases in property prices in that time, so it's clearly a different market than just an old mining town.

People live in Coledale because they choose it over anywhere else, and they want to enjoy its setting for a type of going out that feels like home.

"In the afternoon, come and have a drink," Ms Woodward said.

"Or sit and lounge around and then maybe stay for some dinner. "It's about slowing down."

She asked people with stories or pictures of old Coledale to contact Earth Walker & Co on Instagram.