Pizza Hut/Exciting New Development Coming Soon – Woonona, NSW
Why Pizza Hut, I didn’t recognise you without your signature red (or green) roof and 70s decor. What were you going for here?
Woonona is notable for being the site of the first attempted landing on Australian soil by Captain James Cook in 1770. Rough seas prevented that landing, and he was forced to sail on to Botany Bay.
Pizza Hut don’t appear to have faced such conditions. Woonona’s original Pizza Hut was apparently only ever a take-away affair, with locals missing out on the eat-in experience. This meant that locals also missed out on sneezed-on salad bars, cold pizzas sitting out all day and a wide variety of leftovers fused to poorly washed plates. You’ve really gotta feel for the Woononians.
What’s interesting about this Pizza Hut is how even back in the day, when the Hut was building its trademarked eat-in restaurants all over Australia, they didn’t deem this area – between Wollongong and the Sutherland Shire – a viable enough zone to bother, instead taking over whatever this building was (possibly a panelbeater by the look of it?) and decking it out Hut-style. Why does Hut-style involve such indelible signage? A mystery for the ages…
Now, I’d like to stop proceedings right here to draw a valid comparison. I just can’t keep it bottled up inside any longer. I’ve always felt that the original, superior Pizza Hut logo:
reminded me of another glorious former logo:
…while the Hut’s new branding:
is to me highly reminiscent of that other organisation’s new standard:
Am I wrong? Is it mere coincidence, or is there some larger conspiracy at work? You bloody well decide, I’m not here to do your thinking for you!
The Hut had moved on by 2008 at the latest, and after a long time on the market, the building is now in the capable hands of the guys who were inside renovating and giving me funny looks the day I took the above photo. What, you’ve never seen a dude taking a photo of an old Pizza Hut before?
Corner Shop/Residential – Merrylands, NSW
Once upon a time, on the corner of Henson Street and Chetwynd Road, Merrylands, there existed a corner shop.
All the locals would journey to the shop whenever they were out of the Big Three: bread, milk, cigarettes. For those who couldn’t make the trip, perhaps those too elderly to easily leave their houses, the shop provided free delivery.
In the summertime, on their way to or from the local pool, or maybe just in the midst of riding around the streets on their BMX bikes, kids would stop in for ice cream, or drinks of the icy cold variety. 
In the 80s specifically, their choice would have been that of the new generation.
None of that “Good on ya, Mum” nonsense here – strictly Buttercup Bread. Today, the name seems to have disappeared, but it lives on through the ‘Mighty Soft’ brand for those of you interested.
Those shelves, once fully stocked to provide a community with the essentials, are now empty. If you imagine it as a metaphor for the emptiness of the concept of community in the modern age, you’ll probably wind up feeling pretty bummed out, so don’t do it.
This shop may be confined to Merrylands, but the underlying themes apply to just about every has-been corner shop in any suburb. They’re relics from another era, and one that can never be again.
From the archives…
I’m proud to announce that Past Lives of the Near Future has been selected by the National Library of Australia for inclusion in their Pandora internet archive!
Since 1996, the NLA has selected sites deemed culturally or historically significant to the Australian community and archived them for posterity, and it’s rewarding to learn that Past Lives fits that criteria!
The NLA plans to archive the site annually, which at the current rate is more often than I update.
I’ve added a link to the archived Past Lives on the sidebar. A big thank you to the NLA for their hard work archiving the many images on the site (not an easy feat), and for you, the readers, for making this site what it’s become after two (!) years. I appreciate it immensely.
The Family Hotel/The Duck’s Nuts/The Silk – Newcastle, NSW
It’s 1999. Hunter Street, Newcastle. Pubs aplenty. Peter Wansey has just bought one, the Family Hotel.
“NEWCASTLE rock stalwarts THE SLOTS have been familiar faces at the Family Hotel for the past 15 years.
While the Slots, which play the Family on Saturday, are likely to remain on the hotel’s books, a new range of bands will be introduced by the new owner.
PETER WANSEY, who recently bought the hotel from GARY WATSON, is planning to bring in a new style of music to the pub.
Currently renovating the venue, Wansey said he would be changing the hotel’s entertainment to attract the surfie/rugby union crowd.
The revamped hotel is rumoured to undergo a name change as well.
Calling your pub band The Slots is only slightly less genius than calling it The Pokies. Anyway, Wansey believed that the pub’s new name should attract a new, younger demographic, and what better way to do that than with a 1930s colloquialism.
Low and lazy – the Duck’s Nuts Hotel, 2004. Image courtesy Jon G/gdaypubs.com.au.
After 10 nutty years, the hotel’s name was changed again to the Silk Hotel. Yawn.
Nutted out. The Silk Hotel, 2013.
I’m wondering what demographic they were trying to capture with this name change, and all I can think of is haberdashers.
Like most of Hunter Street, the Silk is a pretty quiet place these days. I’d suspect most of its clientele wander in on a sense of ballsy nostalgia, or maybe because of the outrageous name still visible from certain angles outside.
For best results, be lying on your back in the gutter if you’re not already.
Staying in the Silk may sound like a luxuriously comfortable notion, but think again:
Courtesy tripadvisor.com.au
Ooh, that ain’t too silky! How about a second opinion?
Courtesy tripadvisor.com.au
Ouch, that’s a kick right in the duck’s! If this wasn’t bad enough, Newcastle police had the cojones to close the Silk for 72 hours last October after a spate of violent incidents at the pub. In the wake of such misfortune, maybe it’s time for another name change, something maybe a bit less deceptive? Might I suggest the Plastered Bastard?
Pizza Haven/Eagle Boys/For Lease – Newtown, NSW
It’s obvious to anyone passing through that Newtown has very…exclusive tastes when it comes to restaurants. It may surprise you to learn that once upon a time, the famously trendy and bohemian suburb was home to its very own McDonald’s, which opened in 1983. Just 15 years later, Ronald and friends were run out of ‘town by the area’s changing demographic, which rebelled against the Golden Arches’ high-fat, low-cleanliness approach by voting with their livers…but that’s another story.
Who’s paying the electricity?
But some fast food vendors didn’t learn from Mickey D’s drubbing. Case in point: the hot pink, pizza-tossing also-rans Eagle Boys, who evidently thought that Newtown’s absence of junk food was a void waiting to be filled. If they’d just taken the time to walk about five seconds up the road to discover the ‘vegetarian butcher‘ they might have gotten the hint early. Instead, they stood their ground, took the risk, and last January, paid the price.
Pizza Haven, a safe haven for pizza, 1988. Image courtesy sydneyarchives.info/Robert Parkinson
Now, in fairness, this location had a long history dispensing trashy food; it was for years a Pizza Haven, a pizza chain so innocuous that even the bloodthirsty firebombers of Newtown didn’t see it as a threat. It wasn’t until Eagle Boys bought out the chain in 2008 and added that obnoxious day-glo colouring to the otherwise handsome corner building that drastic action was home-delivered.
I’m still not clear what Eagle Boys is meant to mean.
Despite a statement from Eagle Boys teasing the outlet’s return, no such move has yet been made. And while the Boys sit in their hot pink nest wondering what went so horribly wrong, it might now dawn on them just why the Colonel and Pizza Hut gave King Street and its residents such a wide berth. Fittingly, all that remains of Eagle Boys’ unwanted, doughy legacy is a kind of hot pink neon halo above the door.
Past/Lives of the Near Future 