Lois Gaskin: bookworm, business- woman, small town angel.

Every town needs a Lois, someone to hold everything together. 

There are books on the shelves, piled on tables and stacked around the counter. Their colourful spines pleading to be picked up. The sun is streaming through the front windows and I feel at home as I settle into the large reading chair and wait for Lois.

I’ve visited this shop many times and always seeing it bustling with people has made me wonder, who is the lady behind the counter? 

Lois Gaskin is the owner of Turn the Page bookshop in the tourist town of Cowes, Phillip Island. Despite the growth in online shopping and audio books, Lois’s bookshop has become a “community hub”.

So how does she do it?

By getting involved in the local community and creating a “connection with people”, she says. 

Lois grew up in a family of six in the Melbourne suburb of Bentleigh. Lois was bought up on a diet of words and stories and she grew to love the world you could find in a book.

“My mother was a reader and I learnt that from her I guess,” she said.  

Lois’s journey to Phillip Island was a long one. Lois always had a connection to the Island, coming down with her family when she was young. Her parents had bought a block of land which they planned to retire to but died before they got the chance.

Lois has lived in London, New Zealand and many Australian cities but the pull of the Island was just too strong. Lois ended up back on Phillip Island working at the nature parks where she eventually met her husband Paul.

Lois and Paul moved to Melbourne and bought a bookshop that was part of a franchise on Swanston Street in the city centre.

“Rent was huge, long staff hours, you can’t sell enough books, so I just woke up one day and I said to him ‘well I’m going back to the Island’,” Lois says with a nostalgic smile.

At this time Lois was working in the La Trobe University book shop, so she left her job and moved back to Phillip Island with her husband. They took out a two -year lease on a brand- new building and opened Turn the Page, which is still going strong ten years later.

Lois laughs when I ask her what a typical day looks like for her and tells me there is no such thing however, the one thing that never changes is straightening the books.

As she says this she reaches out and gently straightens the books in front of us. She touches the books as if they alive, her gentle hands coaxing them back to their positions ready for a busy day ahead.

Then there’s the till, the computer, ordering, returns, cleaning and of course talking to customers about books.

“Talking to people about books, that really just spurs you on but it’s also that liking of people.

And very different people,” she adds. 

Lois loves other people so much that she spends most of her time doing all she can to help them.

“You’re involved in a lot of different community groups and events” I say to Lois,

“I am, I don’t say no, but I need to,” Lois says chuckling and shaking her head.

One of Lois’s major passion projects is the Phillip Island Festival of Stories, run by the Island Story Gathers.

When a friend came into Turn the Page just over three years ago, “whacked her fist against the counter” and demanded that Phillip Island have a literary festival Lois told her,

“yeah, I am free at 3am in the morning.”

But in true Lois style she got together a group of people and the first festival was put on in 2017. This year marked their third one.

The festival promotes people sharing their stories, in a variety of forms, to increase understanding and acceptance of all kinds of people. Last year’s festival had a focus on Indigenous storytelling and Lois recalls one participant said it changed his life.

 “That is my motivation. If we can do that every year at least for some people I think we have achieved what we set out to achieve,” she explains. 

Lois is a people person. You can see it not just in her efforts to involve herself in the community but also in the cheerful way she tells the young girl who walks into our interview that the shop isn’t quite opened yet but she would love to see her in about ten minutes.

“One of the things I feel is that every- body who comes into the shop is as important and equal to everyone who has been before and everyone who will come after,” Lois says very matter-of-factly.

Our conversation then shifts to a more serious tone as we begin to discuss how Lois supports the Change for Sam initiative. This is an anti-domestic violence initiative that was started after a mother of three was allegedly murdered by her husband in the town of Cowes.

“It effected the community in such a big way,” she sighs.

Lois hopes that the initiative can highlight the vulnerability of people suffering domestic violence and change the attitudes that bring about the violence.

Although Lois is involved in so much it’s her bookshop that she always comes back to.

For Lois “a book is a place” and she hopes that when people buy a book from her that it

“provides them with a world they can go to and enjoy.”

I am in awe of Lois, but she insists that she is no super woman.

“Some days I would just like to pull the quilt over my head,” she admits

“but most days I just love it.”

As I am leaving, she invites me to speak at next year’s festival of stories about a new age of journalism. I smile. That woman never stops, I think, as I close the door behind me.