Australian Shopping Centres are a mixed bag of variety. At a time when Australia’s rural and regional economy has been drought affected for an extended period of time and worse hit by petrol price increases, you would not expect regional shopping centres to be travelling too well. However it seems that those located in the larger regional cities that have a strong population growth can still perform well.

Orana Mall Centre East Dubbo is a medium sized shopping centre which houses around 40 specialty retailers, discount department stores as well as Big W, Franklins and Woolworths. Dubbo is a larger regional City in mid west NSW. It is the last country city before you get to the real outback. Even so it has a current growth rate of 250 new homes per year.

So Orana Mall Centre has been resilient to the drought and has had its best year ever, with a turnover of $170 million for the year to the end of January 2008 from around 4 million shopper visits pa. This shopping centre ranks fifth in Australia for total sales per square metre. Giftware, Clothing and jewellery retailers are doing well there as are major department stores.

Another example would be Park Beach Plaza Coffs Harbour which accounts for 30 per cent of all retail turnover in the city. With around $260 million in sales last year, Park Beach Plaza Coffs Harbour is ranked number two in the state and seven nationally for sales.

Park Beach Plaza is just 2 kilometres north of the Coffs Harbour CBD with five big name stores – Big W, Woolworths, Target, Aldi and Ritchies Supa IGA as well as 120 specialty shops covering fashion, music and electrical appliances.  Chain & franchise groups include; Go Vita Health, Sportsgirl, Strandbags, and gifts and homewares stores such as Xtreem Cards & Gifts, Bath, Body & Soul, Lily & Sapphire, Xtreem Cards & Gifts, Homeart, Howards Storage World, My House, Park Beach Interiors and Your Kitchenshop .