Perth

Western Australia's leading rare and antiquarian bookshop, in a restored 1890s horse stable in Northbridge, a short walk from the State Library, the Art Gallery and the WA Museum. Some fifty thousand books fill the building, alongside maps, manuscripts, prints, globes and scientific instruments, with the shop's depth in Australiana, Antarctica, exploration and voyages. Robert and Helen Muir opened it in 1973; their son Rob and his wife Janet — a Commonwealth-approved valuer and past vice-president of the antiquarian booksellers' association — run it now, with Tara Surry cataloguing. They buy, sell and value, and run a free worldwide search for books you can't otherwise find.

Since 1983 this family-run store on William Street has stocked Perth's Asian community with groceries most supermarkets don't carry, and its liquor counter has become a destination in its own right. The shelves run to baijiu, soju and umeshu alongside beer and spirits sourced specifically from producers across Asia — bottles that are genuinely difficult to find anywhere else in the city. It sits at the grocery end of a bottle shop rather than the wine-bar end, but the depth of the Asian liquor range is the drawcard, built up over four decades of direct relationships rather than a distributor's standard list. Open seven days, closed only on Christmas Day. For anyone cooking Asian food at home, or chasing a spirit they can't find at the big chains, it's worth the stop on William Street before heading into the city or Northbridge.