Civic Court/cic cort – Newcastle, NSW
No one street encapsulates the concept of faded glory than Hunter Street, Newcastle, on the NSW Central Coast. Yes that’s right, we’re going on a road trip.
I won’t use this post to get up on my soapbox about the advanced state of rigor mortis poor Hunter Street finds itself in; there’s little to say that the street (and locals) doesn’t say itself. I also won’t go into the history of this building beyond what it tells us at the outset…and boy, doesn’t it have a lot to say.
The touch-too-dark brickwork, six digit phone numbers and lower case name date the building somewhere in the 60s-70s, and by imagining the Civic Court (or “cic cort” as it’s known these days) in that era it’s possible to see it as a place people actually visited. Laden with bags from David Jones, The Store and Winn’s, you might make a last minute stop at the Civic Court to grab some…mouthguards? Of the three shops that comprise the now-derelict Civic Court, the first is nigh incomprehensible, the last was a no-name, no-frills sandwich bar, and in the middle was Signature Mouthguards.
Think about what that means: there was a time, presumably before cluster boms had cause to be banned, when Hunter Street was so prosperous it could afford to host a mouthguard shop. Shockingly, Signature Mouthguards are still around, and still have the same logo.
Anyway, just to prove I’m not the only one who couldn’t work out what that first shop is (and oh how I tried), check out this nifty bit of artwork by Trevor Dickinson.
Byers Meats/Awaiting Demolition – Rozelle, NSW
First of all, dear readers, Happy New Year and all that. For Past/Lives, all this means is that the glory days of our subjects are buried under yet another year. There’s plenty coming up, including something fun for the blog’s first anniversary in March (where did the time go?), but for now…
Byers beware! At least, anyone with the intention of buying meat from this long-defunct butchery along Darling Street, Rozelle. What started life as a bootmaker’s shop came into possession of butcher Hugh Byers in 1918, who hawked dead animals from this location while leasing out the shop next door, which he also owned. This tradition carried on for the next 87 years, until the Byers family sold up to Balmain Leagues in 2005. Balmain Leagues…doesn’t that ring a bell?
Anyone familiar with the surrounding area and an interest in this sort of thing (all three of you) would have noticed the decaying Balmain Leagues Club on Victoria Road. If you don’t know it, don’t worry – we’ll take a closer look soon. The impending development of that site will include the Byers building as well as a fair few others along Darling Street when they finally get around to it. Unless of course it turns into another CBD Metro debacle, which left Rozelle with some mighty blue balls.
Darrell Lea Chocolates/Newsagent – Roselands, NSW
No doubt you’ve heard about the financial struggles faced by Darrell Lea over the past few months, and if you haven’t, you might want to rethink buying Mum and Dad a Rocklea Road for Christmas. It’s a sad thing when suddenly chocolate isn’t financially viable enough. What, did everyone just decide it was terrible after 85 years? Enough terrible puns were made by the papers at the time of Darrell Lea’s collapse, so I’ll spare us all that nightmare as today we look at the Roselands outlet of the chocolate maker.
Roselands Shopping Centre is up for an entry itself in the future, so watch this space (at the rate I’ve been going lately, it should only take another six years), but the part of Roselands Darrell Lea ended up in is one of its older areas. Located almost at the bottom of a downward escalator, you’d think maximum exposure + delicious chocolate would = maximum delicious profits. Well…
Plans for the empty shop involve an expansion by the neighbouring newsagent, which is so cramped and old it wouldn’t surprise me if they’d built the entire shopping centre around it. Hopefully, the doubling of their floorspace will allow much more room for their diligent army of plain-clothed guards to continue their campaign of death-staring at anyone they think might be shoplifting.
According to this article on the store’s closure, Darrell Lea admin chose to close Roselands (looks like I’ve met my assonance quota for the day), yet kept the Bankstown Centro store open. But commenter Brad Edwards reveals the truth:
More like…Darrell LIE! Oh, sorry.
Burwood Fruit Bowl/Chen Guang Variety Shop – Burwood, NSW
Even as the cranes of development encroach upon Burwood Road, the clogged vein that runs between the Hume and Parramatta arteries, it’s still possible to find hints of the past. For example, here we have the Burwood Fruit Bowl, run by the Giuffre brothers.
According to the can’t-believe-it-exists Sydney’s Italian Fruit Shops dot com, a Carlo Giuffre managed a fruit shop on Burwood Road from 1910-1916 before leaving the country in 1918. Repeat: that was his reaction in 1918! Imagine if he saw Burwood Road now! Sands directories from 1908-1912 mention a Giuffre Bros fruiterer in the Newtown area, but no word on whether they employed their clever-once shop name a second time. Whether his brother stuck around and kept the shop going is also unknown, but it certainly requires a hefty suspension of disbelief to imagine this was the 1916 shopfront.
The font used in today’s vintage shopfront signage to me seems very 20s, and certainly striking enough to keep around…at least until the bulldozers get to work. Until that time, the Chen Guang Variety Shop provides Burwegians (c’mon, give me that one) with all the junk they’ll ever need, while the neighbouring Burwood Fruit Market fills the street’s Giuffre-shaped void with fruit as blandly efficient as the shop’s name.
Commonwealth Bank/Beverly Chinese Restaurant – Beverly Hills, NSW
In an incredibly novel move, the old Commonwealth Bank along King Georges Road at Beverly Hills was transformed into a Chinese restaurant by true visionaries. They noticed B-Hills’ dearth of Chinese restaurants and were brave enough to step up and take a chance on something radical. Has it paid off? Well, they’re still standing today where so many other Beverly Hills restaurants have fallen by the wayside, so I’d say that’s a big yes.
As for the Commonwealth, there first existed a dark age between the branch’s closure and the 2005 installation of a Commonwealth ATM further up the road during which ‘Which Bank?’ became more of a valid question than a slogan. The ATM has since been removed. I’d like to imagine that the proprietors of the Beverly Chinese went to this specific Commonwealth branch in order to get their loan for the restaurant. Wouldn’t that be funny? Don’t answer that.
Past/Lives of the Near Future 