BREAKING: Shire Man’s 3-Hour Quest for Cash Exposes Grim Truth — Cash Is King, But the Kingdom’s Gone

Brock Ledger | Economics Correspondent | Sutherland Shire Gazette

5 November 2025

What began as a simple attempt to pay a tradie in cash turned into a three-hour existential journey across every quadrant of the Shire this week - revealing a modern truth no one wants to admit: we’ve built a world where “cash is king,” but the kingdom has quietly closed down.

Local resident Daniel Miller set out late morning to withdraw $200 - a simple errand that quickly escalated into a suburban odyssey. 

“I used to know where all the ATMs were,” he said. “Now they’re either boarded up, out of order, out of cash, or pretending to be juice bars.”

One machine had “temporarily suspended withdrawals,” another had simply vanished. “It used to be next to Bakers Delight,” Dan said. “Now it’s just a sad rectangle on the wall, like a missing person.”

Even when he found a working ATM, there was a new obstacle - he couldn’t find his physical card.

“Everything’s tap and go now. My card lives inside my phone, and my phone doesn’t fit in an ATM.”

After hours of driving between Miranda, Gymea, and Sutherland - each stop met with an apologetic error message or the faint smell of obsolescence - Dan finally found cash, five minutes from home, at the local post office.

“It felt almost ceremonial,” he said. “Like meeting an endangered species in the wild.”

Economists say his experience captures the quiet contradiction of the digital age: a society that still demands cash in moments of trust, but has made it almost impossible to access. 

“We still say ‘cash is king,’” said one analyst, “but these days, it’s more like a distant monarchy - symbolic, irrelevant, and mostly seen on special occasions.”