Hundreds of people have gathered on Bourke Street to help Melbourne’s oldest bookshop, Hill of Content, relocate to its new home.
Inspired by a similar initiative in the US earlier this year, Hill of Content placed a call-out for volunteers one week ago, seeking to attract 150 people to help form a human chain and move its collection of 17,000 books. Instead, around 300 people showed up, including long-standing customers and booklovers, while others from the bookshop’s surrounds simply saw the chain and joined to help, regardless of whether they’d stepped foot in the store before.