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Yep very sad news . The shop I remember fondly though was Amateur Astronomers Supply Co when Eric Whitcombe ran it. Like others I use to haunt it a bit before I could afford to buy anything much . One came in the front door and walked past a long row of Unitron scopes on the left which ended in a massive 4" equatorial at the front counter . I well remember buying my first mirror grinding kit in 1973 with a mass of copper and silver coins from my money saving tin. There was always the smell of pitch abrasives and polishing compound wafting from the back where mirrors were being ground and the smell of hammertone enamel on the telescope tubes. The popularity of Celestrons probably started to be the death nell of the equatorial mounted newtonians. I bought an Orange C8 myself there in 1979 with the proceeds of my first summer job.I can remember the black tube C8's when sold on the Celestron branded Super Polaris mount was an affordable package , and the Vixen Flourite refractors with their much shorter tubes pretty much killed Unitron within a few short years- the hsop never felt the same without that row of classic Unitron refractors !
It was rebadged Astro Optical in later seventies as part of a spruce up prior to putting it on the market . It was sold to Monte Ash in 1978 if I remember correctly . In the mid eighties it moved to Huime st just around the corner. To Monte's credit he kept the local manufacture of Newtonians going and improved the Samson mount as time went on. . I worked there mysolf from 1985 to 1988. We also sold a Dobsonian kit for 8 and 10" newts which was quite successful selling over 100 in my last year . This cut many hundreds of dollars off ownership of a newtonian. From memory a 10" tube assembly in 1988 was around $1600 with Dobsonian mount- not cheap but consider that all you could get wasa 6" Vixen on super polaris mount in those days for similar money.
The current owner killed the manufacturing side when he bought the business in 1993 and the shop became another cardboard box pedler and the shop was no longer a haven for budding amateur astronomers who were budding telescope makers . How it survived another 22 years is beyond me -though I guess you have to credit the owner for that - there mustalso have been some goodwill in the name of the shop and being in Crows Nest all those years . I 'm sure the beginning of the end was when the shop moved to an industrial estate in Artarmon relying more on web sales.
I still have a little momento from that very early history - a Dall Null testor used by Eric Whitcombe to test the mirrors in the mid - sixties before they moved to using a collimated light source as used by Celestron . It may well have been rifled for bits though !
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