Sixty-year-old cobbler John Lucchi has been crossing the floors of Joe’s Shoe Repairs on Eva Street in Coorparoo since he was a kid. Credit: Tammy Law
John Lucchi is tearing into the layers of a black high-heeled shoe.
“There’s steel plates in there, so we’ve got to take this back bit apart,” he says, ripping the sole further from the stitching.
“Some people get upset when they see their shoes in pieces. I tell them, it’ll be fine. It won’t feel anything.”
In truth, there’s no safer set of hands in Brisbane for a beloved pair of shoes than John Lucchi’s. He’s among the last of a dying trade, one of the few true cobblers left in the city.
“It’s funny how things change, because 25 years ago, there were lots of shoe repairers around,” John says.
“Since COVID, I reckon we’ve lost 12 shoe repairers in south-east Queensland between the Gold Coast and Ipswich.”
John’s father Joe Lucchi opened the store on Eva Street in Coorparoo in 1970. Credit: Tammy Law
John’s shop, a compact weatherboard in a quiet Coorparoo backstreet, is a relic of the past. The brass coloured tools and heavy machinery lining the narrow workroom have laboured over shoes since the early ’60s.
Above a corrugated iron awning, block green letters spell ‘Joe’s Shoe Repairs’ – Joe being the original owner of the shop and John’s father.
“People still come in asking for Joe,” John says, pointing to a black and white photo of a man with tan skin.
“We had a great relationship. I miss him, I miss him to bits. You know, his spirit still lives in this shop.”
John took over Joe’s Shoe Repairs after his father got sick. “I miss him to bits,” he says. “His spirit still lives in the shop.” Credit: Tammy Law
You can’t tell John’s story without telling Joe’s (after all, his name is still on the sign).
Guiseppe Lucchi was born in Gradoli, a small town north-west of Rome. He started learning his trade at just eight years old, apprenticed to a man called Bruno.
“Bruno was a pretty famous shoe repairer. During the [Second World] War, he made a pair of boots for Mussolini,” John says.
Joe worked alongside Bruno for 10 years before moving to Australia in 1952, aged 22. “[It was supposed] to be a two-year adventure, but he never went back.”
His story is emblematic of an era of working-class migrants who travelled to Australia and forged livelihoods in regional towns and cities. In those early years, Joe worked as a tree lopper in Greenbank, a cane cutter in North Queensland and a cook hand at the Currumbin Hotel.
John Lucchi (left) and his late father Joe (right). Credit: John Lucchi @joesshoerepairs
He met his wife, Ennis, while working at a shoe factory in Brisbane, before they opened their own repair shop on Given Terrace in Paddington in 1956.
That shop burnt down in 1964, the year John was born. Six years later, his parents opened Joe’s Shoe Repairs on Eva Street in Coorparoo. “Our first official trading day in the shop was October 14, 1970.”
John has grown up in this building, playing between rows of dismantled shoes as a kid, and working for his dad as a teenager.
“Even as school kids, we used to come in here and muck around. It was like a playground.”
As an adult, he resisted his father’s vocation at first. “My first trade is a motor mechanic. I worked for 14 years in the Brisbane City Council,” he says.
“I hated this,” he adds, gesturing to the shoe repair equipment.
He relented when his dad was diagnosed with cancer and became too sick to run the shop.
“He couldn’t really work, he wasn’t comfortable,” John says. “So I took six months long service leave from my mechanic job at Brisbane City Council.”
As one of the few remaining true cobblers left in Brisbane, John works with a 5-8 day workload behind him at all times. Credit: Tammy Law
Joe eventually offered the shop to his son. “He said, ‘I’ve had enough. You can have it, if you want.’”
For the next 10 years, the Lucchis worked side-by-side, with Joe unable to give up the trade altogether.
“You know the story of the shoemaker and the elf? It’s a fairy tale.
“Well, he was like my elf. When he was alive and still working at his best, we wouldn’t have any backlog with the two of us.”
A man with a dark moustache bounds through the entryway carrying a shopping bag with R.M. Williams. “My wife told me to come here and see you,” he says.
He’s a fellow Italian, about John’s age, and within minutes the pair are trading stories about the towns their fathers’ were from, the excitement ratcheting their voices louder.
“See, isn’t that what I told you?” John says. “It’s exactly the same.”
Half an hour later, John is rifling through old binders to find the custom orthotics he made for the man’s sons when they were teenagers playing cricket.
“I’ve still got them,” he says, opening the binder to show the outline of an insole.
In a city ruled by R.M. Williams, there’s no shortage of demand for John’s expertise.Credit: Tammy Law
These days, John runs the shop alone, the demand for his expertise creating a constant backlog of work.
His children, now adults with their own careers, are not guaranteed successors – but there’s always a chance one will do what John did and take over the business.
“I had this young kid say to me, ‘I want to learn this.’ I go, ‘OK, but I’ve got to ask you a question: will you dedicate 10 years of your life to this industry?’
“Because if I train you, I’ll take five years of your life to teach you.
“But then after I teach you, you’re mine for five years. You can’t go work for anyone else. I’m contracting you for 10 years, like we did in the old days.”
He says about 12 SEQ shoe repairers have closed since COVID.Credit: Tammy Law
Who knows, the generous Eva Street block might succumb to the developers who have come knocking over the years. “I tell them it’s not mine to sell,” John says wryly.
And anyway, he has no plans to give up the shop. The store his father opened over 50 years ago will continue to trade as long as John is able to work.
“He was happy when he passed away that I was here working,” he says, tapping the glass countertop. “And I’m glad I did what I did.”