Abattoir Trade Meats/True Blue Meats & Spit Roast – Homebush, NSW
Here’s one just in time for the Royal Easter Show. Back when the Olympic Park was still the city’s abattoir, butchers, tanneries and cold storage companies cleaned up by establishing themselves on the outskirts of the area. This one, located on Underwood Road, which used to run along the abattoir site, was then known as Abattoir Trade Meats. When the abattoir closed in 1988, the butcher lived on, keeping the name until at least 2000.
When you stop and think about it, it’s strange to see a butcher standing alone in the suburbs like this without knowing the story. It looks old, and that sign is probably covering up an embossed name on the building, but the biggest tip-off was this sticker in the window:
Sure you do.
Sydney Dance School/Chinois Cuisine/Pure Platinum – Sydney, NSW
The Pure Platinum strip joint isn’t exactly known for virgin talent, and the signage is no exception:
I really hope that’s not a euphemism. Anyway, the most notable previous tenant of this location was another kind of dance studio, opened by Irene Vera Young in 1937. Young had won gold in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games for dancing, and was the only non-German to do so. When establishing her Sydney studio, she claimed her goal was to make it ‘a centre of dance culture’. 75 years later, mission accomplished.
Movietek/Blockbuster Video/For Lease – Surry Hills, NSW
Yet another dead video shop, this ex-Blockbuster has the distinction of having taken over the location from another video shop before running it into the ground. Are Blockbuster stickers and signs really hard to get off or something? Did they foolishly build them to last?
Ah, neon. This is the first and only instance of a Movietek outlet I’ve come across, so it must have been one of the independents back in the golden era of video shops. Also of interest at this location is the second floor, which until around 2007 was a costume shop (imaginatively named The Costume Shop). Pardon the pun, but it’s fitting, given that Movietek put on a Blockbuster costume to try and swim in the deep end.
Denny’s Travel Centre/Nothing – Dulwich Hill, NSW
As you can see, Denny’s Travel Centre at Dulwich Hill looked after ‘all your traveling needs’. Evidently, one of those needs was Denny’s own need to travel to Earlwood, where the business currently resides. This building dates back to at least 1929, and seems to have once featured the same arch window as the building beside it. Whether Denny was the one to brick it up isn’t known, but he did take advantage of more wallspace to apply his indelible mural, without which his legacy would not live on in the area today.
Rhodes Public School/Rhodes Community Centre – Rhodes, NSW
This building served the community of Rhodes from 1922, when the suburb was only mildly polluted, to 1993, when it glowed in the dark. Continuing in its tradition of making smart choices for the Rhodes area, the NSW Government sold the school to the Canada Bay Council, which has used it as a community centre ever since. Amusingly and unsurprisingly, most of the school amenities are still in place, including the loudspeaker under the roof.
It’s strange to see a school without the Building Education Revolution scheme’s signature flimsy, tacked on buildings. The problem the Rhodes community now faces is where their three-headed children will go to school. All the local schools have filled up rapidly since the area became residential, forcing parents to send their children further away from Rhodes for their education. Given what we know, is that really such a bad thing?
Past/Lives of the Near Future 