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Newcastle Herald
Newcastle Herald
National

Overnight shopping no more as Kmart closes doors at midnight

Picture: Marina Neil

The city's favourite - and only - overnight shopping destination is no longer.

Kmart at Waratah has stopped trading 24 hours, seven days a week.

The store's hours were recently wound back to midnight.

It now opens at 7am.

Fellow Australian Community Media journalist Ellie-Marie Watts, of the Port Stephens Examiner, "broke" the news after a visit to the store on Monday.

"Under the cover of burning midday sun, Kmart Waratah, our beacon of 1am shopping fun, had its 24 hour sticker ripped from the roof signally the death of a Newcastle institution," she said in a post on Twitter accompanied by a photo of the store.

"No more 24h Kmart.

"She now closes at midnight #RIP."

LOSS: The Kmart store at Waratah on Monday without its "24 hours" sign.

Ms Watts might have taken the change a little harder than most, but Topics is yet to discover what prompted it.

One hour spent waiting for Kmart's customer service centre to answer our phone call was all we could spare.

Emails went unanswered as well.

Perhaps not many people visited after midnight? Plenty do after sunset.

Who knows.

Will you mourn the loss of the ability to shop at all hours? Topics won't.

VOICES TO PUT YOU TO SLEEP 

Meditation and sleep-help apps on mobile devices are pretty popular nowadays.

Plenty of people listen to music, podcasts and audiobooks to help fall asleep too.

One app, Calm, features famous voices reading bedtime stories.

An English website, TheDozyOwl.co.uk - which is basically one man's search to achieve the perfect sleep, complete with mattress reviews and blogs about sleeping - recently ran a survey to discover which celebrity voice is the most soothing.

TheDozyOwl asked 3488 people to nominate a celebrity, and then complied a list of the most referenced for a vote.

Topping the list was English broadcaster Sir David Attenborough. Remarkably, American rapper Snoop Dogg came in second. Topics' first-pick of American actor Morgan Freeman was third. Here's the top 20:

  • Sir David Attenborough
  • Snoop Dog
  • Morgan Freeman
  • Seth Rogen
  • Julie Andrews
  • Harry Styles
  • Gillian Anderson
  • Emily Blunt
  • Tom Hardy
  • Meryl Streep
  • Benedict Cumberbatch
  • Louis Theroux
  • Idris Elba
  • Stephen Fry
  • Trevor McDonald
  • Matthew McConaughey
  • Samuel L. Jackson
  • Barack Obama
  • Leonardo DiCaprio
  • Emilia Clarke

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