Bowral is embarrassed. Shopkeepers will not talk on the record and residents are ashamed about the charge of snobbery. And the vacant shop denied to St Vincent de Paul stares out from underneath a Chinese restaurant.
''It makes me embarrassed to be mayor of a shire who - I won't say the word tarnished - but [is damaged] by the actions of a group of people I just have to disagree with,'' Duncan Gair, a Wingecarribee Shire councillor for 15 years, says of the petition that stopped the charity renting a shopfront on Bong Bong Street.
''I would suggest that those against it have a rethink and be very grateful that they don't have to use St Vincent de Paul and that they have a lifestyle that doesn't need that.''
It is a month yesterday since a letter was sent to the councillors, retailers and residents of Bowral damning the charity's attempt to lease a property on the town's main street. The lease was on the cusp of being signed but was immediately withdrawn by the owner.
''We do not have a problem with StVincent de Paul or any other charitable organisation,'' the letter said. ''They do a fantastic job. We just feel they need to be in a side street …''
But Bowral is not the hamlet it was in 1910, when a block of land there cost as much as one in central Sydney. The state's one great attempt at setting up a landed gentry, granted to the explorer John Oxley in 1823, has a median household income below that of both the state and the nation.
''There's a little sect here that's very snobbish,'' says Maxine Lynn, who moved there a few years ago for the lifestyle. ''You have these few people who think they own the town - they probably do - and that's the problem.''
But after a week of criticism from newspaper letters pages and talkback radio, the critics were not interested in talking.
The woman who wrote the petition did not return calls from Fairfax Media.
Off the record, shop owners said they did not want to do any more damage to their reputations. The agent leasing the property said the petition had no effect on the owner. Then he hung up.
''It's not the people; it's the bloody stupid shops,'' president of the charity's Southern Highlands Regional Council, Joe Buhagiar, said of the opposition. ''Bowral is like any other place where people need help. A lot of people need help. Don't believe the business that we're affluent.''
Sitting in the worn-out office at the back of St Vincent de Paul's present location in Bowral, a curtain of grey hair pulled across his forehead, Buhagiar looks more like a priest than a retired Qantas accountant.
He wants to move premises so there will be room to sell furniture. He reckons it would increase revenue 50 per cent and says the shops opposing the move are worried about competition. ''We are the only shop in the Southern Highlands that doesn't sell furniture.''
The opposition was described by townspeople as ''appalling'' and ''bullshit'', and the issue seemed no closer to resolution at at week's end.
The St Vincent de Paul shop sat at the other end of the town with a lemon suit in its window and a rack of school uniforms for $2.50. The vacant shop sat with its for-lease sign peering out at an empty pavement.
''It's unfortunate that it's escalated to this,'' Mr Gair says. ''It's a minority that's affecting the name of Bowral. I would like to see the issue resolved.''
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