Westpac/85°C Bakery Cafe – Hurstville, NSW
As everyone knows, there’s nothing more tragic than the closure of a bank branch. Get your tissues ready.
Here, Hurstville’s obnoxiously named ‘The Spot’ proves that at some point, the heat became too much for Westpac to stand, and even after they got out of the kitchen the temperature continued to rise until the 85°C Bakery Cafe burst into existence. What The Spot was before the heatwave began remains a hot topic.
UPDATE:
Forest Road, 1937. Image courtesy Hurstville Council.
Here’s an old picture of The Spot in 1937, when it was the Coo-ee Clothing store. Pretty exciting, I know, but given how many views this particular entry gets (LOTS), someone’s been hanging out for it.
State Bank/Vinnies – Hurstville, NSW
State Bank, Hurstville, 1986. Image from Hurstville Council.
The State Bank of NSW started life in 1933 as the Rural Bank of NSW. In 1982 its name was changed to the State Bank, and in 1994 was sold to Colonial. The Colonial State Bank carried on until 2000, when it was taken over by the Commonwealth Bank. For the unenlightened, CommBank love money to the point where they’d take it from a posse of old women hawking old Burt Bacharach cassettes and Queen Elizabeth II memorial coaster sets…
Former State Bank, 2012. The clock wasn't working.
The building still sports a safe, and one of these:
For midnight deliveries of bulk lots of X-Files VHS tapes.
Vinnies are pretty thorough with their signage, but there’s always something to give it away. Observe:
Dot your i's, Vinnies.
If by Hurstville you mean a building appropriated for at least the second time hawking things nobody wants on a one-way street then yes, this truly is Hurstville.
Advance Bank/Interflora/For Lease – Kingsgrove, NSW
The Advance Bank brand lasted only ten years, from 1985-1995, at which point it was rebranded the Bank of South Australia. This fascinating tidbit aside, we can see that after the Advance Bank went south (haw haw), the shop became an Interflora florist, but above all this post exists to prove that not every shop in Kingsgrove has ‘King’ in their name.
Past/Lives of the Near Future 