Gateway Travel and Richardson & Wrench/Korean BBQ Restaurants – Strathfield, NSW
Strathfield’s The Boulevarde is now the scene of intense rivalry. Two culinary entrepreneurs were struck by idea lightning at the same time, and via a series of doubtlessly hilarious coincidences, have ended up with their Korean BBQ restaurants side by side. Fortunately, they were also both lazy enough to leave some traces of the buildings’ former occupants up for us to find.
Gateway Travel and ‘estate agents’ are both scintillating hints, but what if we could actually go back in time and see how they looked? Well, thanks to the outdated technology of Google Street View, that’s exactly what we’re going to do. Buckle up, Marty:
And so we emerge in the distant past of 2009, a time when Gateway Travel and Richardson & Wrench ruled. Gateway looks like it had been there a long time, given the seven digit phone number at the top. The Zix & Co Real Estate sign suggests a time when two estate agents stood side by side, locked in bitter rivalry…not unlike today’s BBQ brothers. History is doomed to repeat itself.
One last curious feature of the Gateway building that gives us an insight into a past beyond even Google’s reach is this gargoyle:
Perhaps its fate as a BBQ restaurant was in the cards all along.
Pizza Hut/Network Video – Petersham, NSW
Image by Andrew Martyn.
Don’t let the graffiti, overgrown weeds and the video shop sign fool you – this location is still in operation as a video shop. But it’s a video shop…WITH A SECRET.
Image by Andrew Martyn.
Despite being bright purple, you don’t look too out of place, Network Video. You’ve got a disabled ramp there, a big carpark…strange roof you’ve got there, though. Looks like you, uh, added on the part of the building to the right of this picture much later. You know, the part without that…funny looking roof… Anyway, you mind if I have a look around the back?
Image by Andrew Martyn.
Gee, that’s a hell of a thing. Your wall there, Network Video…it’s taller than your roof. Now why would you design it like that? And you don’t look so purple back there. It’s brick… Ah, it’s probably nothing. Just my mind playing tricks. Maybe you were a house once, that wouldn’t be so special. Okay, thanks for your time, I’ll get outta your hair. Take it easy.
…
Oh, just one more thing. Can I have a look around the other side, between the building and the fence?
Image by Andrew Martyn.
Aha.
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.
The Hartee’s Saga, Part IV: The Shocking Conclusion – Bankstown, NSW
Continued from Part III…
In mid-1975, Willesee, a current affairs program on Channel 7, received a tip-off from Bankstown Council garbagemen that a hamburger restaurant at Bankstown had, on a regular basis, some very odd items in its dumpsters out the back. When reporters from the program went down to the Bankstown Hartee’s to investigate, they found that the bins outside were full of dog food cans. Further investigation revealed that the dog food was in fact being sliced into patties and used on the burgers at this particular location:
The Hartee’s at Bankstown, now a BottleMart, sits opposite Bob Jane T-Mart, and beside a KFC.
The devastating report went to air, cripping the Hartee’s brand in the public eye. Despite there being no evidence that such a practice went on in other Hartee’s locations, Kelloggs quickly and quietly abandoned its fast food venture. No official comment was given other than a generic ‘the venture was no longer profitable’ statement.
The scene of the crime.
Almost overnight, all Hartee’s locations were closed and sold. Today, almost nothing remains of the Hartee’s legacy except the stores documented in this series. The Bankstown location subsequently became a Chinese restaurant and a variety of bottle shops. Other locations, such as Hartee’s Liverpool, Manly Vale and Kogarah, have since been demolished.
Hartee’s Kogarah, November 1973. Now part of the St. George Hospital car park. Image by Jack Hickson/State Library of NSW.
As previously mentioned, Kelloggs planned to open more than 100 locations around the country, but only 17 were ever opened. It wasn’t until Red Rooster, and even more successfully, Oporto, that an Australian-owned fast food brand managed to establish itself.
Had the scandal not occurred, Hartee’s may have emerged as the primary fast food outlet in Australia today instead of fading into obscurity, but thanks to the actions of some goofballs on minimum wage, it’s a world we’ll never know.
HEARTY UPDATE: There’s more. Always can do one more.
Pizza Hut/Curves Gym – Bankstown, NSW
There’s a sick sense of humour lurking behind the decision to turn an old Pizza Hut into a gym. It used to be that you’d walk out of the Bankstown Hoyts 8 cinema and straight over to Pizza Hut for all you could eat, but now you’re faced with a reminder that if you have that plan, you more than likely also have a few curves.
Sadly, for those hoping to undo the damage of years of pizza abuse at Curves, you’re out of luck. The building appears to be empty now, further adding to the wasteland feel of this part of Bankstown, and with his ad-hoc adjustment of the number of years he’s been in Bankstown, Frank isn’t helping.
UPDATE: The Curves gym is still in operation, functioning as a kind of Masonic secret gym society for women only. It’s rumoured that an angry husband of one of the members caused a fuss inside the gym once upon a time, and ever since, men have not been admitted…maybe the guy was just peeved that Pizza Hut was gone. Whatever the story, this sign awaits anyone with the balls the enter (so to speak):
Image courtesy Irmgard Heap.
Imagine a Pizza Hut toilet, and then imagine how many times that manager must have been notified. Thanks for the tip, Irmgard!
Past/Lives of the Near Future 