21/07/2026
Celebrating 80 Years of Priest Jewellers 💎🥂
This month marks 80 years since Priest Jewellers first began.
Our story started in 1946, when my grandfather, Alexander John Priest, returned home from the Second World War. Pop had served as a Gun Sergeant with the 2/18th Battalion, was captured during the fall of Singapore, and endured more than three years as a prisoner of war in Changi.
After his return, my grandmother finally said, “You’ve got to get out of the house, Alec.”
So he did.
Taking the skills he had developed as a watchmaker, he began serving the people of Gunnedah, New South Wales, and Priest Jewellers was born shortly thereafter.
My parents, Charles and Ingrid Priest, took over the business in 1977. They later became founding members of Showcase Jewellers, now one of Australia’s most respected jewellery buying groups, helping independent family jewellers strengthen their buying power, industry standards and connection with trusted suppliers.
In 1995, with the encouragement of Terry Hook, who developed the original Noosa Villa Hotel and Noosa Homemaker Centre, our family moved Priest Jewellers to Noosa.
More than 30 years later, we are proud to be among Noosa’s longest-standing family jewellers.
Priest Jewellers has also been a member of the Jewellers Association of Australia for more than 25 years and is proud to hold Platinum Member status, reflecting our longstanding commitment to professional standards, trust and service within the Australian jewellery industry.
Across those years, our family has been honoured to support the community that supported us, through Rotary, Tewantin State School, the Salvation Army, Thursday Girls, the Noosa Classic Car Club, Katie Rose Cottage Hospice and many other local causes, organisations and families.
Jewellery is rarely only about jewellery.
It marks engagements, marriages, births, anniversaries, achievements, farewells and the people we carry with us. We have had the privilege of being entrusted with those moments for three generations.
As the third generation of our family to lead Priest Jewellers, I would simply like to say thank you.
Thank you to every client who has walked through our doors, trusted us with a repair, commissioned a special piece, chosen a gift, shared a family story or recommended us to someone they love.
To celebrate our 80th year, we invite you to visit us throughout the next few months.
We are offering complimentary jewellery cleaning and safety checks for our longstanding clients, special anniversary rates on selected repairs, and exceptional pricing across a carefully chosen range of jewellery.
And yes, while we celebrate, you are very welcome to come in, have a conversation and ask us what we can do for you. Some of the best relationships in jewellery have always begun across the counter.
Eighty years is not something a family business achieves alone.
It belongs to the generations who built it, the amazing people who worked within it, and our communities who kept choosing to support it.
With sincere gratitude,
Eliahi Priest
Third Generation Jeweller
Priest Jewellers
Noosa Civic
About the photograph:
Alexander John Priest pictured on his return following liberation from Changi. From that return home, a watchmaker’s skill, a family’s resilience and one simple instruction from Nan , “You’ve got to get out of the house, Alec” began the story of Priest Jewellers in 1946.
