Newsagent/residential – St Peters, NSW
What’s clear is that this now-residential address on Princes Highway at St Peters was once a newsagent. What isn’t clear (but will be shortly) is that in 1950, this newagent sold the first-prize winning lotto ticket for Lottery No. 2154.
Image from Barrier Miner, 11 Oct 1950.
Homestead Golden Fried Chicken/Kentucky Fried Chicken/Hire One – Hurstville, NSW
Homestead Golden Fried Chicken, 1986. Image by Hurstville Council.
It’s hard to tell, but the above picture is the only photograph I could find of West Hurstville’s Homestead Chicken restaurant on the corner of Forest Road and Gloucester Road.
WATERMARKED UPDATE: Thanks to readers Chris and Jade, a photo of Hurstville Homestead in its glory days has been located via Hurstville Library! And you know what that means…watermarks. Enjoy:
Homestead Chicken, Hurstville, 1987. Image courtesy Hurstville Library (in case you weren’t sure).
Homestead sold a variety of KFC-esque chicken products, and had a number of locations around south Sydney. This one seems to have been custom built in 1986 (it does not appear in a 1985 overhead photo), closed around 1990, and was replaced and refitted by…
KFC, West Hurstville, 2009. Image by museumofinanity, Flickr.
The Kentucky Fried Chicken (are we still calling it that?) stood here until 2009, when this happened. The problems must have been bad enough to dissuade all potential buyers hoping to use the site as a restaurant, which brings us to today.
Hire One, 2012.
This must be Sydney’s third equpiment hire place with drive thru facilities, after the Kennards at Padstow and Complete Hire at Canterbury. Homestead Chicken was unique for its particularly odd drive thru mechanism, which is still in place:
This served as a kind of dumbwaiter, with the customer putting their payment in a tray that was then lifted up and into the restaurant. The food would be delivered the same way. Perhaps ironically, this relatively hands-free system was intended to be more hygienic.
Delta Money Lent/Anna Loan Office & John B. Stewart Jeweller/Chemist – Hurstville, NSW
On the left, we have the former Delta Money Lent office, cleverly converted by Anna into her own Loan Office. Get your awning fixed, Anna.
On the right is a far more tragic story. According to various old newspapers, 312 Forest Road, Hurstville was a jeweller during the 1920s, run by a man named John B. Stewart. The clock above the awning is presumably a leftover from those days. In February 1933, Stewart filed for bankruptcy, but remained at the address through until Boxing Day, 1936, when he died. By 1941, the address had become a shoe shop. Prior to becoming the chemist, the shop was a Sushi Train restaurant.
Not bankrupt enough to drop out of Lodge, though. Image from SMH, 26 Dec 1936.
John Fretus Auctioneer/Sun Ming Chinese Restaurant – Hurstville, NSW
19 years before John Fretus opened his auctioneering business on Forest Road, Hurstville, misfortune struck:
From SMH, Monday 8 December 1902.
Past/Lives of the Near Future 
