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…
Laundry/Derelict – Concord, NSW
It’s just a guess, but maybe this laundry failed because the signage was perhaps a bit too garish and overbearing. Another victim of tall poppy syndrome, you know?
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 