Kim Sun Young provides Strathfield with its hair, beauty and wedding needs, but the dirty alley behind the shop gives us a history lesson.
I’m guessing it was a shoe shop. Why you would advertise in any way in such a dingy back alley escapes me, but I imagine that they chose to put up a Dunlops sign to discourage thieves who were perhaps expecting Nikes. That said, for all I know it could have been a golf ball shop and the sign’s there to discourage thieves expecting Titleists. And if you think I made a baseless comment just now about varying quality of golf balls, don’t think I didn’t do my homework.
UPDATE: Turns out I didn’t do my homework. Dunlop’s was actually a clothing and haberdashery store, and existed until at least 1980. Before that it was Reynolds’ Drapery. Mine was a pretty good guess though, right? Big thanks to Cathy Jones and her Strathfield History Images blog!
Past/Lives of the Near Future 
Dunlop’s was owned by my grandparents and had been owned by my great grandparents before that. It was indeed a clothing and haberdashery store (many local kids would have been fitted for school uniforms and shoes there) and was open until the mid eighties, when my grandparents retired and sold the building. They tried to sell the business as a going concern but that sort of shop had almost had its day by then. It was quite a large shop and divided up after it was sold. I remember sitting up in the mezzanine office and playing with the ‘fancy’ calculator that printed out on a little roll of paper, watching all the goings-on in the shop below. I also remember that there was an awesome chocolate shop ‘Treasure Island’ across the road. As for the signage at the back, it was probably more visible back in the day before the Plaza opened and that would also have been the entrance for deliveries. There was a large tea room at the back for staff.