The only place in town for everyone Jimmy and Shirley Aldridge and Liddy and Ossie Stewart. Part of the exhibition at Price's Cafe. Picture: Courtesy of Shirley Aldridge Source: Supplied SOMETIMES you hear a story you instantly see in your mind, like a film. That was the case when I was first told about the heyday of Price's Welcome Cafe in the 1950s and 60s. I could hear the jukebox, imagine the colours, clothes and hairstyles, see the Holdens cruising along the main street of Moruya on the NSW south coast. Listening to locals reminisce about Price's cafe, the theme to their talk is nostalgia. It was a happy, family-run place where you could also buy lollies or fruit and veg and, as the name implied, everyone was welcome. The nostalgia is social and personal. It wasn't a thing where you'd say: 'I'll meet you at Price's.' I'd say 'I'll see you in town' and Price's was town," says Ossie Stewart, who met his wife in Moruya. It's a time that I will never forget. If this is all sounding a little like a version of Happy Days, there the parallels end. This was the White Australia of the 1950s and 60s. For Aborigines, harsh government controls and discrimination coloured every aspect of their lives. Price's Cafe was one of the few places in town where Aborigines could openly socialise, dance to the latest rock 'n' roll hits, have a burger and a milkshake like anyone else. That wasn't exactly the norm, as local Auntie Doris Moore recalls: "If you were in the street, the police would come and move you on. So that's why we all went down to Price's Cafe. For 40 years from 1953 the cafe was run by the Price family: Thomas and Phyllis Price and their daughters, Pauline and Ella, who eventually took over from their parents. The family lived in four bedrooms and a small lounge room at the back of the shop and the cafe was open seven days a week. Friendships continue today between Ella, Pauline and customers. They liked the same music -- sometimes Jimmy Little came into the cafe with his guitar -- they loved to dance and went to the same movies: "The kids used to go to the pictures on a Friday night, and used to come down here for a milkshake at half time," says Ella Cameron (nee Price). When they returned after interval to the Fiesta Theatre, they returned to a barricaded divide, where Aborigines sat down the front, whites more comfortably up the back. The site of Price's Cafe is now a Nepalese restaurant, but a short walk away, at the Moruya Mechanics Institute, the role that Price's Cafe played in Moruya's social history and in the hearts of many around the region is being celebrated in an installation conceived by south coast artist Cheryl Davison. Until Sunday, visitors can walk through a reproduction of the cafe, animated by music from the period, interviews with Aboriginal community members for whom Price's Cafe was such a haven, contextualised in panels written by Mark McKenna, the author of Looking for Blackfellas' Point. The exhibition is presented by South East Arts. "For too long we've focused on what our differences have been," says Iris White, co-chair of the local Gulaga and Biamanga Board of Management. The Price family were unique in that they did open their doors to anyone, and Aboriginal people gravitated there because they were welcome there. For many non-indigenous locals, such as former Eurobodalla mayor Fergus Thomson, the exhibition is a "wake-up call" to hear such personal accounts of the exclusion Aborigines felt at the time. Cameron and Pauline Grant are now seniors with matching, perfectly styled hairstyles and big smiles. Their lifetime together is evident in the way they finish each other's sentences and they're rightly proud of their family's cafe. "Everyone tells us that they miss it," Cameron says. Lindy Hume is chairwoman of South East Arts.