Tea rooms/Springwood Thai Kitchen – Springwood, NSW
There comes a time in the life of every history blog when one must write about tea rooms.
Up in the Blue Mountains, anyone with a thirst for high tea is spoiled for choice; between the Hydro Majestic’s Afternoon High Tea, the Lilianfels High Tea and the Katoomba Carrington’s Grand High Tea, it’s no wonder the Mountains are a place tea leaves and scones fear to tread.
And it’s also no wonder that the tea rooms of Springwood, a picturesque town sadly bypassed by most on their way up the Mountains, threw in the tea towel in the face of such stiff competition. That said, it’s not like you can’t get tea in Springwood – cake shops and cafes pepper the main street, and I’m pretty sure even the public toilets provide a cuppa while you spend a penny.
These days (and for the last few years), the former tea rooms have made way for one of Springwood’s two Thai restaurants, the Springwood Thai Kitchen. According to reviews, this place and the Thai Square are locked in an evenly matched reviewel to the death (yeah, that’s a word now). I’ve only eaten at this one and that was years ago, so I won’t dare to compare in this instance (although, you could take that as a review in itself).
It’s a tiny building – a skinny Thai, if you will (you’re fired – ed) – to try and cram all the requisite Thai accoutrements into, but it certainly conjures up images of how it would have been back in the day: refined folk coming in with a thirst only tea could quench, hanging up their bowler hats and settling down for an earl grey and lamingtons while chatting about their English country gardens. Today, all that remains of that era is the faint lettering above the shop and whatever hot beverages are on the menu. Perhaps a Thai latte.
Bottom line, I think naming the restaurant ‘Thai Rooms’ was a missed opportunity.
Old Book & Comic Emporium/First Choice Family Lawyers – Beverly Hills, NSW
We specialize in selling American, British and Australian Comics and Pocket Libraries, Story Papers, Science Fiction/Fantasy Books and Pulp Magazines, First Edition and Out of Print Books, Vintage Paperbacks, Vintage Magazines, Records, Children’s Books
“Tell me this,” says Tony as he reclines in a chair that’s more like a throne. Fittingly, he’s surrounded by plastic subjects that dedicate all five points of articulation to the whims of their king. Tony is the proprietor of the Old Book & Comic Emporium in Beverly Hills, which specialises in books, toys…and comics.
“In the first one, you had Lex Luthor running a real estate scheme. In this new one, you’ve got Lex Luthor running a real estate scheme. You’re telling me that there wasn’t another plot they could have used from the nearly 70 years’ worth of stories?” He snorts as he dismissively turns the page of the newspaper he’s absently reading. “For that reason alone, I’m not going to bother.”
On the subject of dodgy Superman movies he is, of course, completely right. And he should know; he must have well over a third of those stories in his collection.
At the counter, familiar faces from decades of pop culture stare back. On the far wall, Freddy Krueger dares you to go to sleep. The Joker laughs eternally from behind Tony’s desk, while perched atop his cash register (no EFTPOS) is the withered visage of Emperor Palpatine. They feel as much a part of the place as gruff old Tony. He’s made this shop his own.
I first became aware of Tony’s Old Book & Comic Emporium in about 1999, when I was on a serious nostalgia trip. It’s a familiar story: disposable income, an age that’s at once responsible and irresponsible, a firm grip on the past and a tenuous one on the present. In the shop window was a factory sealed box of Topps trading cards (with gum) from 1989’s Batman, a movie I’d originally seen just down the road. I’d never gotten the whole set as a kid, so I had to have them.
But the cards were the gateway drug. Once inside, I marvelled at just how many blasts from my past the owner had accrued. Monsters in My Pocket. Fangoria. The Inspector Gadget doll with the telescoping Go-Go-Gadget neck. Among these, the past-blaster was set to stun: Hardy Boys books. Monkees lunchboxes. Old Playboys below a sign marked ‘Adults ONLY’. Nice try, Tony.
During the short time I lived in the area, I became a regular. I’d hang out in the shop on Saturday afternoons shooting the shit with Tony about movies, his new arrivals and our favourite topic, the past. Never the future. Tony liked my writing style, and one afternoon wrote down the contact details of the editor of a pulp sci-fi magazine called Andromeda Spaceways for which he thought my work would be a perfect fit. I didn’t see it myself, so I never followed it up.
Thinking back now, it’s gobsmacking to imagine a two-storey modern-age antiques shop in a suburb like Beverly Hills.
Fate must have noticed the oversight. Long after I’d moved away, I swung by one afternoon only to find the shop empty. All that remained was the sign on the side of the awning and the piece of paper with the Andromeda Spaceways details still sitting in my wallet.
If you’re reading this, Tony, I hope your bold and much appreciated experiment didn’t meet too painful an end. You added a bit of colour to an otherwise boring area, and no-one’s ever going to fill your shoes. I mean, I’m sure the world needed another family law centre (especially the long-awaited first choice), but I’m sorry: you ain’t no Tony.
Beverly Hills Squash Courts/Leisuredome Gym – Beverly Hills, NSW
Nestled in amongst the melting pot of businesses at Beverly Hills, the Leisuredome Gym has become a local institution since it opened in 1985.
The Leisuredome prides itself on being “one of the very few real gyms Sydney has to offer”, and I’d believe it. The exterior is unpretentious, lacking all the condescending trappings of the modern influx of gyms. What’s interesting is that the gym’s opening times – 6am-9:30pm Mon-Thur, 6am-9pm Fri, 9am-2pm Sat and 4pm-7pm Sun – seem to be frowned upon by a world of gym junkies spoiled by the new 24 hour centres. I can’t help but wonder if the more specific hours would translate into a more focused workout? But I digress…
The Pleasure Dome also prides itself on being able to “transform” bodies (presumably only for those who found enough keys), but it’s not just the beefcakes who underwent a transformation here…
If you go around the back (and why would you?) you’ll find a dirty little secret beyond Thunderdome:
That’s right, sometime before 1985, Beverly Hills’ squash courts felt the burn and pumped iron, turning from zero to hero in just six weeks or its money back. Meanwhile, anyone in need of a game of squash (I’m…almost certain they’re still out there) had to rack off to Roselands.
Can I just say, is there a more 70s sport than squash? It’s hard to know exactly when this squash court was built (but if you do, get in touch), but it’s safe to say it was around for the 1970s, an age when fashion at times took lessons from the squash scene, and squash itself was a fitness fad not unlike planking or zumba. Would this particular court have been a major player on the Sydney circuit? Were tournaments held here? Did hoop dreams live and die at this very location? It’s easy to imagine any number of marriages driven to the brink over a spirited game of doubles squash. Perhaps there are still bitter exes in the neighbourhood who still seethe when they spot the Leisuredome logo that disguised the secret location of their heartbreak…until now.
When the large, mysterious building next door was built, the sign was hidden from the world, and wasted away into its deplorable current state. To have a sign here at all suggests that once upon a time, this wall faced the world and attracted squash fans passing via either King Georges Road or the East Hills train line.
The ‘dome may have been flexing here for 30 years, but it may soon have some competition. Someone’s finally decided to put Large Mysterious Building to use, and I don’t think the location is a coincidence…
Dick Smith Electronics/Vacant – Chullora, NSW
It’s on a main road. Hundreds, if not thousands, of cars pass it every day. They pass it. They don’t stop. Would you?
I did, because there was something about this building…something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
It wears its former tenants like bad tattoos all over its festering body. On the eastern side, the Japanese Car Centre dares car shoppers to compare their prices.
A quick glance across wild grass to the neighbouring site almost has you thinking that was possible, but the cars on the lot were peppered with P plates and those flag boxing gloves, the 21st century fluffy dice. A quick inquiry in the Toyota dealership revealed that the Japanese Car Centre had been abandoned for years, and was now used as Toyota staff parking. As I left the slightly confused receptionist to her absent Facebooking, I thought about the reality of what she’d said: staff parking. Hell of a lot of staff.
On the western side, trees had worked to cover this once-prominent advertising canvas. The lights were long dead, whatever the sign had said was lost to the ages.
Buildings like this have a way of opening up to you after awhile. In this case, it was the abundance of electronic doodads covering its face like piercings that gave it away. From this former sign…
…to the downlights above the doorway…
…to the Secur-A-Posts preventing Smash-N-Grabs, gadgets had this place covered. But who had done the covering?
The glass door didn’t reveal many secrets, except for a distinctly retail feel inside…
…a notion backed up by their generous acceptance of TeleChecks. Now, the kiddies in the audience might be wondering what the hell a cheque is, and even if I told you you’d probably doze off halfway through. Let’s just say that this TeleCheck company – which I’d certainly never heard of – claims to have been around for 50 years. This must have been an early adopter.
And then it struck me: the colour scheme. Look at the building for a moment. It’s canary yellow. What kind of madman would have it this way?
Yes, the truth is revealed at last. For years, this was a Dick Smith Electronics outlet, back when Dick Smith Electronics emphasised the electronics side of the business rather than the dicksmithing. When Dick sold out to Woolworths in 1980, they (for a time) stuck with his main street store approach. This would have been one of the last, dying out sometime in the mid 1990s.
From the look of things, a furniture factory outlet took charge of the prominent location and eye-grabbing paint job before (in a cruel parody of the corporate 80s) it was absorbed by the Japanese Car Centre. And now that’s been gone for years, so who’s here now?
The Japanese Car Centre traded up to become Five Dock-smiths (You’re fired. -Ed) while this building has been left to rot, and that’s where the story should end. But you’re my readers, and I love you, so I want you to know I tried to go the extra mile. I know that you love photos of docking bays around the back of places like this…I know that. But when I went around to the abused little alleyway that ran behind the site, I, for the second time in Past/Lives’ history, interrupted a drug deal. So I’m very sorry, docking bay lovers – I just couldn’t get that shot.
Epilogue: Don’t cry for Dick Smith. His NSW warehouse is situated just a bit further up the Hume, where Homebush Bay Drive intersects, with a small retail outlet tacked on for good measure. He ain’t hurtin’. The Japanese Car Centre’s doing just fine too, joining a thriving indie car dealership strip on Parramatta Road, and abandoning the big boys who dominate this section of Chullora. In fact, the only loser in this story is me, because I had to spend so much time across from Fairfax’ offensive billboard of “journalist” and apparent buccaneer Peter FitzSimons while I took these photos. What’s that doo-rag all about, Peter?
Surgery/Residential – Kingsgrove, NSW
Beware: no in-depth, lengthy history lessons today, no no. Today, we’re talking about leftovers.
Kingsgrove: a short distance from the eternal struggle between gridlock and bustle that is Stoney Creek Road lies the Kingsway. Or is it just Kingsway?
Breathe that in and savour it for a moment. It’s the Kingsway, as if once upon a time the tiny street in the middle of suburban nowheresville was intended as a way for a king. Not too far away is the majestic King Georges Road itself, so it’s not a stretch.
Sometime prior to 1948, powers that be (though I’m assuming not a king) decided that the Kingsway was suitably epic to receive a strip of shops, with the prime side facing Stoney Creek Road. The occupants have varied over the years, but are invariably interesting: a dodgy pizza place, a spy shop, the mysterious Rassan Trading, that damn doll hospital. But around the back, along the Kingsway, the shops aren’t as commercial…although they’re just as interesting.
A place specialising in large print books. An antique glass shop. I’m gonna say that one more time: an antique glass shop. And further along, this.
When I was a kid, these surgery signs instilled a feeling of dread. Surgery happened at these places, I thought. Surgery, a word that to this five-year-old’s mind meant that seedy doctor’s surgery in Batman where Jack Nicholson asks for the mirror. In any of these otherwise nondescript buildings, bad dudes could be having bullets pulled from their faces by shady GPs.
But the reality was a lot less interesting. British English dictates that the workplace of a doctor is a surgery (or a practice, but if the streets were peppered with little red boxes bearing the word practice, society would never get anything done), and since British English also dictated what we Australians did for a long time, surgery it was.
Whoever the current tenants are, I’d like to thank you. Thank you for leaving this little sign up in what passes for your front yard, either through laziness or a twisted sense of style. As soon as you see it, you’re forced to imagine all the sick people who would have attended this place in its heyday, the relief and sorrow that came with each pronouncement from the GP. The lives that ended, and the foretelling of new life.
I personally wouldn’t want to live there (too creepy), but it’s nice to know that the experience is possible.
Past/Lives of the Near Future 