Lane Cove Toy Library was established in September 1980 in a small room in a house a couple of streets away from our current location.

I took over the business in July 1987 at which time there were less than 100 families using the service. Over 12,000 families have since used our service.

Having two children only fourteen months apart made me totally aware of how much support and nurturing one needed at this stage in their life with small children. My dream was to help contribute in some small way to making the road a little easier for the families using our services.

I rapidly increased the stock levels and introduced a fabulous range of toys that had only just started being exported to Australia — Little Tikes. How fortunate that this new range of toys was available. I put myself in the shoes of the members and realised it was the larger toys, that were beyond the reach of most budgets, that would be popular amongst our little folk. This was when I launched our larger toys for party hire.

As an add-on service, Cake Tin hire commenced to help our families create fabulous cakes for that special celebration. This proved a very popular service and we have now extended this service to cover selling colourings and decorations for cakes as well.

With themed parties becoming popular, an extensive range of dressups were added to help frazzled parents not have to feel they had to sew a garment for the next day or Book Week.

I could also see a major gap in our local Libraries' resources relating to family issues, entertaining toddlers, women's health & relationships in general. So our "Book Nook" was introduced.

Because of our excellent location and easy parking, it made sense to bring to our customers the opportunity to purchase new toys and trinkets and so our Lane Cove Toy Library Retail division began.

The aim of our service is to bring into your home toys that your child may not otherwise have had access to.

We look forward to your visit and helping you the parent or carer learn through play.