Of course, the decision to close Masters on December 11 is much more than a Bathurst decision. The whole Masters exercise has proven a disaster for parent company Woolworths and the closure of the Kelso store will be repeated across the country.

Masters seems to have been the victim of a policy of getting too big too quickly and everything from paint, timber, barbecues, vacuum cleaners and all other Masters stock - worth between $600 million and $700 million nationally - will be sold off in a fire sale which is expected to start this week.

Then Masters staff across the country will be faced with the sobering reality of losing their jobs just weeks before Christmas.

Locally, though, there always had to be questions about the viability of another major hardware store.

Mitre 10 had the Bathurst hardware market pretty much to itself for many years before the arrival of Bunnings created new competition.

Bunnings was bigger, brighter, newer and, in most cases, cheaper and the sheer size of the Bathurst warehouse naturally attracted interest from the local do-it-yourself market.

But Bunnings’ arrival did not mean the end for Mitre 10 because it continued to attract much of the local trades business while its location in the central business district gave it another edge.

In fact, Mitre 10’s response to the arrival of Bunnings was to relocate and expand to take on the competitor.

And for several years the two hardware giants were able to happily co-exist before news broke that Masters was also coming.

Masters’ business pitch was that it was a one-stop shop for building and fitting out your new home.

The massive Kelso warehouse stocked everything from nails and screws through to garden equipment and even whitegoods so, in theory, homeowners had to visit just one store on the weekend.

But the local store was always hampered by its location – most people in Bathurst had to drive past Bunnings to get to Masters – and ongoing highway work at Kelso cannot have helped its bottom line.

And while the national demise of the Masters brand meant those local challenges were purely academic in the end, it will still be terribly sad to see the store go.