Pizza Hut/Network Video – Petersham, NSW
Image by Andrew Martyn.
Don’t let the graffiti, overgrown weeds and the video shop sign fool you – this location is still in operation as a video shop. But it’s a video shop…WITH A SECRET.
Image by Andrew Martyn.
Despite being bright purple, you don’t look too out of place, Network Video. You’ve got a disabled ramp there, a big carpark…strange roof you’ve got there, though. Looks like you, uh, added on the part of the building to the right of this picture much later. You know, the part without that…funny looking roof… Anyway, you mind if I have a look around the back?
Image by Andrew Martyn.
Gee, that’s a hell of a thing. Your wall there, Network Video…it’s taller than your roof. Now why would you design it like that? And you don’t look so purple back there. It’s brick… Ah, it’s probably nothing. Just my mind playing tricks. Maybe you were a house once, that wouldn’t be so special. Okay, thanks for your time, I’ll get outta your hair. Take it easy.
…
Oh, just one more thing. Can I have a look around the other side, between the building and the fence?
Image by Andrew Martyn.
Aha.
Tulloch’s Phoenix Iron Works/Rhodes Corporate Park – Rhodes, NSW
Let’s return to Rhodes one more time…
In 1913, Robert Tulloch relocated the Phoenix Iron Works from Pyrmont to Rhodes, cementing, along with the Hoskins cast iron foundry and Timbrol Chemicals, the suburb’s reputation as an industrial area.
Tulloch’s Phoenix Iron Works stood on what is now the HP building at Rhodes Corporate Park. During the Second World War, Phoenix produced a number of ships, and in the 1960s, manufactured CityRail’s rolling stock of train cars. RailCorp’s modern-day tendency to keep crusty old trains servicing high volume areas can be seen as a tribute to Tulloch’s work.
A tribute of another kind exists opposite the Corporate Park:
Yes, what better way to honour a man who’d spent his life in Iron Works than to erect an Iron Work in his memory.
Aeroplane Press, September 1974.
The Phoenix Iron Works closed in 1974, but other reminders remain in the area, including Phoenix Ave, seen above, and Tulloch Ave:
The Chinese restaurant in the nearby Rhodes shopping centre is also named Phoenix. It’s a fitting metaphor for Rhodes, rising as it did from the ashes of industrial abuse to become a vibrant suburb in the 21st century.
Niche Menswear/Scandals Direct – Dulwich Hill, NSW
The failure of Niche Menswear proves that targeting a niche never works out financially. Scandals Direct have chosen to ignore that lesson, catering to the 1% of the public who demanded the middleman be cut out of their scandals. Niche work if you can get it.
SCANDALOUS UPDATE: According to eagle-eyed and fashion conscious reader Vanessa, it was actually called NICHOLAS Menswear once upon a time. Luckily, if you read my writeup and imagine it says Nicholas instead of Niche, it still works. In this case though, shouldn’t they have called it Manswear?
Thanks, Vanessa!
Strathfield Burwood Evening College/Junk Shop – Homebush, NSW
Another relic sitting along Parramatta Road (where would I be without it), this…I don’t really know what this is.
The building itself doesn’t help, with all its allusions to great deals and hard to obtain articles. The place is full of strange old junk…
It might have sold office supplies once, before the owner went mad and decided to hoard everything instead of selling it. Some people collect vinyl records, others collect filing cabinets. At one stage, the building also appears to have housed the Strathfield Burwood Evening College:
Not…entirely sure what you could learn in a place like this, but I bet they had a damn good filing system. Still, a closer inspection of the windows proves they weren’t kidding about those hard to obtain articles:
That’s wisdom.
BARREN UPDATE: According to reader Claire, this place – that was absolutely stuffed with goods – was suddenly mysteriously empty when she passed it a few months back. This I had to see.
Not only was it for auction, but it sold, unlike 100% of the merch that once filled the room. But what of that merch? Let’s zoom in.
The boasts of discount prices and the eye-catching stained glass windows were still there, and surely added to the value of the property at auction.
Now those articles really are hard to obtain. Thanks, Claire!
For more on the history of this peculiar building, including a picture from when it was still Homebush Newsagency, check out Strathfield Heritage.
Kiwi International Airlines/DJ School – Sydney, NSW
Someone get that annoying track-like structure in the foreground out of the way.
Ewan Wilson was just an ordinary guy when he founded Kiwi International Airlines in 1994. By April 1995, he was just an ordinary CEO of an ordinary small budget airline, providing cheap airfares for trans-Tasman flights and battling with rival Freedom Air. In late 1995, Wilson was just an ordinary moronic fraudster, making false claims about his personal financial situation as he applied for a loan for Kiwi Air. This led to Wilson becoming an ordinary stupid prisoner for the next three months for having acted ‘without moral regard’. Funnily enough, Kiwi Air never got that loan, and in September 1996 became just another airline going into voluntary liquidation, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded on either side of the Tasman. Around the same time, this building ceased to be Kiwi Airlines’ Sydney office, but didn’t cease to look like it.
These days, Ewan Wilson is just your ordinary disgraced former businessman, current Hamilton city councillor, and cancer patient.
Meanwhile, DJ School and DJ Gear have gone into business as liquidators. I had no idea the DJ game was so tough.
Past/Lives of the Near Future 