Out of the Blue Seafood Restaurant/Hertz – Bankstown, NSW
Your name is Bob Murphy, and the year is 1988.
You work an office job, you’re in sales. You do alright – enough to put food on the table for your wife and kids. And what delicious food it is, the wife’s always telling you. Especially your seafood. Let’s not be modest, Bob, you’ve had a way with prawns ever since your dad taught you how to peel a prawn by hand, even if it was just so he wouldn’t have to do it for you anymore. You picked it up straight away, and sure, you might get a cut or two every now and then, but they’re prickly little buggers at the best of times.
No one ever winds up spitting out bones when they eat your whiting, do they Bob? Not like that Mother’s Day at Doyles when your mum almost choked to death. Remember, you screamed for the manager, and your face went red! Your wife was a little bit scared that day, although she never told you. You have to learn to keep your temper in check, Bob. It’ll be the end of you.
Sales is a boring job when you’re the best. You’re so good that you wound up convincing HR to let you work from home, and your figures were too valuable to the company for them to say no. So you spend all your days fishing and cooking while occasionally stopping to rack up another few grand. How does it make you feel? Do you ever compare yourself to anyone bigger, or can’t you think of anyone? Remember that time you were bragging to your mates about it during that Saturday arvo barbecue, and Trev, the one who isn’t doing so well, went home sick? Did your wife ever tell you that Trev’s wife called to say he’d tried to top himself that night, or do you still think you gave him food poisoning? Not with your oysters, Bob. They’re too good.
You’ve always had that dream, though. You never let yourself really consider it until now, but every now and then you’d entertain the thought of running your own restaurant…just to see. Just to put the hard word on Doyles and the like, to say ‘we in the west can do it better than you’. Be a shame if you stuffed it up, though. You’d fall flat on your face. And they’re not as refined in the west, are they? Don’t appreciate a good lobster mornay as much as they do on the coast or down south? There are a lot of things to consider, Bob. If you’re gonna picture yourself in the chef’s hat, just make sure you take the time to think it all through.
Still got your eye on that spot on Canterbury Road? It’s not the most perfect location, is it? You drive past it whenever you’ve gotta go into the office or do a face to face with a client. It’s nice that you still give them a fish from time to time. Cute calling card. The Canterbury Road spot though…it’s risky. If you open too early, no one’ll be able to get a park because of all the trucks, and if you stay open too late you’ll attract the hookers and the tricks. Don’t you want it to be family friendly? Maybe if you do it up right, get the right colour…
1989
Cute name, Bob: ‘Out of the Blue’ Seafood Restaurant. And ‘into the red’ not long after, I’ll bet? Sorry, Bob, couldn’t resist…you’re really serious about this, aren’t you? Oh no, you shouldn’t quit your day job. You really shouldn’t. But if you’re going to make a proper go of this cooking thing, you might need the time. It’s called work from home, not work from work. ‘Out of the Blue’…you’re going to paint it blue?That shade of blue? Christ, it’ll look like a theme restaurant! This location really isn’t very good, you know. I hope it was cheap enough. Oh…that much, huh? You might make that back…give it a few years. No restaurant makes megabucks from the start, Bob, you must have known that. Did you do any research? That burger place that sold dog food was just up the road there, people might think it’s your place. Mud sticks…
Wow, you really went the whole hog, didn’t you Bob? A total nautical theme! You know how silly that thing looks, right? Yeah, yeah, it’s all a part of the gimmick. Are you gonna be wearing a sailor’s hat and a peg leg while you cook, too? I’m guessing you anchored this thing deep, what if it blows over? Hurricane-proof, huh? Nice.
I’ll be honest, Bob: that paint looks way less garish now that it’s actually on. You want to make sure it’ll last a while too, nothing worse than a half-assed job. You’ve spent all this money so far, you have to make sure you leave your mark on this place. Get the most out of that paint too, put it everywhere. You bought too much! You’ll never be out of this blue, so go nuts and slap it on everywhere. Don’t let ’em forget where they are.
Well, good luck with it mate. I’m allergic, so I won’t be eating there, but I’m sure you’ll do fine. All the guys at work miss you, even though you were never in the office. They miss having that hard target to match. Dudley’s the top dog now, and he’s nowhere. This place…it’s a little rough isn’t it? Good thing you got so much of that paint left, this graffiti’ll be easy to cover over. You know, now that that Dunlop factory up the road’s gone you might have a harder time getting people in here… Okay, okay! No need to raise your voice! I’m sure you’ll be fine, once they hear about how good your food is, you’ll be fine. You open soon, right? What’s left to do? Just the licence? Okay Bob, all the best. Let me know how it goes.
Route 66/Hadla Ice Confectionery – Revesby, NSW
Image courtesy Bradley Torr
Let’s go back to the early 1990s, when someone had a bright idea: ‘How about a series of 50s-style Americana-filled burger restaurants…in Sydney!’ If that sounds stupid, that’s because it is. Hungry Jacks had been trying for years to evoke thatHappy Days flavour, but it just wasn’t washing with the Whopper-eating public. HJ has quietly phased out the Americana over the last ten years, but it’s not uncommon to walk in and find pictures of Elvis and Marilyn adorning the walls, a jukebox in the corner and fries so stale they could only be from 1958. The mastermind behind Route 66 had clearly decided that HJ wasn’t going far enough, and launched the above restaurant at Revesby around 1994. It wasn’t some Mickey Mouse venture, either – there were TV ads imploring hungry viewers to ‘get their kicks’. Within the impressively chromed exterior, girls in miniskirts served up grilled burgers, fries and shakes to patrons amid 50s tunes and checkered floors, while outside the owners hoped to recreate the burger joint atmosphere by providing plenty of parking and a drive-thru service. By all accounts the burgers weren’t bad, but one of the many mistakes the owners made was setting up shop across the road from an infinitely more accessible McDonald’s. Route 66 sits along Canterbury Road, with customers forced to enter and exit via the busy thoroughfare. The customers didn’t take long to work out that it was easier to get into the McDonald’s, and by 2000 the Route 66 dream was over. There were a few Route 66 locations beside this one, but I’m not sure whether they were all part of the same franchise or not. Prestons featured a notorious Route 66 for many years, where hoons really did congregate en masse, much to residents’ discontent.
After Route 66 bit the dust, the site played host to a variety of Lebanese restaurants, all forced to wear the chrome. Today, the chrome is as shiny as ever outside Hadla Ice Confectionery. All of the post-Route 66 ventures to inhabit the place tried and failed to disguise the 50s decor (Hadla’s come the closest), but if you didn’t remember what it was, you probably wouldn’t question it. The only real evidence that Route 66 was ever here is the drive-thru…
…which is now closed off, and has been cleverly converted into an outdoorish seating area for Hadla customers. It’s still chromed up to the max, and gives you a clear idea of what Route 66’s drive-thru customers must have endured in the restaurant’s tireless efforts to send you back to 1955 (maybe they should have had an 88mph speed limit for the drive-thru?). Seeing places like this always makes me wonder about the people who would have worked there – young girls and guys paying their way through uni or getting some extra cash to save up for a car while in high school. I wonder if they look back on their days at Route 66 fondly, or whether those few months or years have been wiped from the resume. I wonder what the owners are doing now, how they must have felt when the writing was on the wall, and if they ever drive past and think about the happy days. The quest to inspire nostalgia in others has become nostalgia in itself.
If you have any stories to share about this place, I’d be fascinated to hear them.
Enfield Laundry/Mixed Business/Residential – Enfield, NSW
Yes, I know it’s another laundry, but shops like these need their due. Besides, this one put more effort into its appearance than did the last one, so its failure and eventual closure is that much more tragic.
Going by the font it’d have to be 60s-70s, and it seems to have had a seven digit phone number so it lasted awhile. Even more interesting is that underneath the colourful Enfield Laundry paint job, you can see that the site was once a produce and firewood store.
The Strathfield Council seems to have given up hope that the shop will ever be used again, and has put this bench across the door as a barricade. Presumably, this took place after council gave every single household in the vicinity their own washing machine.
I love that ‘ice cold’ font. It’s so effective. I can get a strong visual sense of just how ice cold those drinks will be, and how refreshing that temperature would be to me on a hot summer’s day. But you have to consider, the logic of the ice cold drinks font dictates that that fancy font for ‘continental’ was intended by the designer to be somehow indicative of the continental experience. Strangely, it works. Deli meat seems so much more worldly when it’s preceded by that font.
It appears that what happened here is during the mixed business boom of the late 80s-early 90s, what was once a sole deli saw in the ailing laundromat an opportunity to branch out, and seized it. The laundry was absorbed and the deli offered a literal mixed business experience to the people of Enfield. It probably even had a Street Fighter II machine. But when the boom died and Burwood Westfield was renovated, the only customers were those getting off the bus of an afternoon, and you can’t pay the rent with profits from a few ice cold cans and packets of chips. Strange that they didn’t remove the Enfield Laundry sign on the front window, though.
Incidentally, this shop sits along Coronation Parade, Enfield, which we’ll look at in the near future…
Wisdom Toothbrushes/Addis Toothbrushes/Derelict – Meadowbank, NSW
This factory was the home of Wisdom Toothbrushes for most of its life, and then Addis Toothbrushes towards the very end. For a factory so dedicated to hygiene, it’s not very clean.
They made toothbrushes here
If you’re thinking it’s a little too perfect that one toothbrush manufacturer followed another in occupying this factory, here’s the Finkle and Einhorn moment: Wisdom is Addis. The history is actually way more interesting than I could have fathomed the history of a toothbrush company to be: William Addis, who actually invented the toothbrush, founded the Wisdom company in 1780(!), with the first prototype toothbrush made of bone and horsehair. Whose bone? The horse’s? Maybe it’s best that we don’t know. They were still making the bone toothbrushes until 1947, when something must have happened in the world of decency to stop the practice.
Wisdom/Addis struck Australia in the 1930s, establishing a factory in Glebe. When that factory proved to be lacking in security:
SMH, 12 Sep 1930
Addis moved here, to a factory by the bank of the Parramatta River.
But the crime didn’t stop – it turned out that people just liked stealing Addis brand toothbrushes:
Central Qld Herald, 6 Jul 1944
By the 1970s Wisdom was flush with cash, taking out boastful ads in magazines and adding the company’s logo and a giant toothbrush to the side of the factory, which is a practice that really needs to come back in fashion.
When I get that, uh, fisdom, I need…
Market research apparently showed that by the 1990s, prospective toothbrush purchasers had lost faith in the Wisdom brand, and were instead more willing to buy from Addis. The factory complied, changing its name.
The toothbrush business moved to greener pastures (Lane Cove) around 2000, and as always happens, they left some stuff behind in the move.
They’ve probably been looking for those bricks
Oddly, there’s a Roni’s Discounts sign plastered to the back of the factory:
Could Roni’s have once used this factory to house their inventory of cheap junk? Even if they had, I doubt we could tell the difference. For about the last 10 or so years, the factory has sat here, derelict, constantly amassing more and more graffiti and grime. The doors are wide open so anyone can get in there. It’s become something of a pilgrimage for graffiti artists and, going by the bra suspended above the front door, drunk young people looking for an edgy-yet-risk free place to have sex. OOH AN ABANDONED FACTORY! ANYONE COULD WALK IN!
In 2007, the building caught fire, which seems to have improved its condition. As industrial Meadowbank is slowly but steadily decommissioned and gentrified around it, (Sexual) Wisdom patiently awaits its certain fate with a pearly white smile on its face.
SUPER UPD8: Thanks to reader Lawrence, we now have footage of the interior of the old Wisdom Toothbrush factory! Shot on Super 8, there’s a mega-creepy ‘found footage’ element to the video. Thanks Lawrence…I think…
Sussex Street Public School/Flying Angel Seafarers Centre/For Sale – Sydney, NSW
Old school: Sussex Street Public School in the 1880s. Image courtesy NSW Dept of Education
Between 1878 and 1913, Sussex Street Public School was one of the ‘most important’ schools in Sydney. Here’s a former student’s testimonial:
SMH, 10 Jun 1908
And it goes on like that. Some people are whingers, aren’t they?
A notable former pupil was the late NSW Labor politician Frank Hill, who was implicated in a Communist Party infiltration of the ALP in the early 1940s. The reds were pushing a ‘Hands off Russia campaign” following the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which would have meant Australian neutrality in the Second World War. Former NSW Premier Jack Lang was so opposed to everything about that that he withdrew from the ALP and started a new party called the ‘Australian Labor Party (Non-Communist)’. These goings-on led to the disintegration of NSW Labor in the 40s, prompting the Federal ALP to intervene and sort things out, and of course during all this nonsense the Russians became our allies anyway. Hill died in 1945, widely regarded as a dupe during the scandal. Imagine if he’d gone to an unimportant school.
Also in 1945, Hill’s old school was acquired by the Sydney Technical College and used in that capacity until 1990, when it was sold to the Sydney Bethel Union. They turned it into the Flying Angel Seafarers House, run by the Mission to Seafarers. Incidentally, the Mission to Seafarers was unfortunately known as the Mission to Seamen until 2000, when they changed their name “in recognition of the changes that had occurred in merchant services and in the world of seafaring”. Sure.
The Flying Angels decided in 2011 that they could help more seafarers down by the sea, and later this year plan to move to Walsh Bay. The building was subsequently put back on the market, and recently sold. It’s said that the Chinese Government was very close to buying the property at one stage…maybe Hill was more red than we thought?
Past/Lives of the Near Future 