Toys & Children's

Tucked into the arches beneath Flinders Street Station, Hearns Hobbies stocks the kind of inventory that rewards patience: Zoukei Mura's 1/32 Messerschmitt Bf 109 kits, Kato N-gauge Shinkansen sets, Gopher Models' NSW XPT locomotives in half a dozen era-specific liveries. The sort of place where the question isn't whether they have it, but which version.

Trading since 1969, Kidstuff stocks toys sorted by age, from newborn and baby through to twelve and over. The range runs to wooden play kitchens and ride-on toys, soft-bodied dolls and plush, jigsaws with oversized pieces for small hands, art and craft kits, and outdoor gear such as soccer trainers and gardening sets. Multiple brands sit alongside lines made exclusively for the shops. The ACT store is at 148 Bunda Street.

Opened in 2022 in the heart of Yungaburra village, this small shop is given over entirely to jigsaw puzzles, board games and card games, an analogue proposition in a rainforest town more often visited for platypus and waterfalls. The stock runs from children's games to co-operative and strategy titles and single-player brain teasers, with a stated preference for well-made, sustainable puzzles over throwaway plastic. It trades online as well as over the counter, and hosts monthly social gaming nights that draw in locals and long-stay visitors alike. For a family passing through on a wet Tablelands afternoon, or anyone assembling a rainy-day kit for a lake-house stay, it is a genuinely useful and unusually specialised independent, the sort of single-idea shop that survives by knowing its niche and stocking it properly.