Past/Lives Flashback #5: The Hartee’s Saga, Part V: Hartee’s Revenge – Manly Vale, NSW
Original articles: The Hartee’s Saga Parts I, II, III and IV
Sometimes it’s hard to keep a good burger down. For those who haven’t followed the long, sad story of the Hartee’s hamburger franchise, here’s a quick recap.
Hartee’s Earlwood
With the advent of American fast food franchises in Australia in the late 60s and early 70s, Kelloggs teamed with the US-based Hardees burger chain to start Hartee’s, the first Australian fast food restaurant (despite its very red white and blue beginnings).
Hartee’s Canterbury.
It was a near-instant success. Whether it was down to underlying xenophobia towards overseas brand names, smart management or just plain delicious burgers, by 1973 Hartee’s was king of the fast food hill in Australia.
Hartee’s Punchbowl.
Complacency became the daily special from then on, with a series of extravagant HQ upgrades and new outlets sprouting like weeds all over Sydney. Despite this, the chain was beginning to haemorrhage cash at a pretty severe rate, and McDonald’s was aggressively making major headway into the Australian scene. Something had to give.
Hartee’s Bankstown. Not pictured: the Pal delivery truck.
And give it did, here at the Bankstown Hartee’s in 1975, when a current affairs program, acting on a tip-off, exposed the outlet as having served dog food in burgers. Overnight, Hartee’s packed up and disappeared, leaving only husks behind, and that’s where the story seems to end.
Except thanks to reader Phil, there’s a final piece of the puzzle to be put in place. I’d previously written that only the four former Hartee’s above still existed in any form around Sydney… Well, we all make mistakes. Just ask Bankstown Hartee’s.
Behold, the Manly Vale Hartee’s still stands. It’s currently Gilmour’s Comfort Shoes, but it pretty obviously fits in with the Hartee design.
In fact, this may be the most well-preserved Hartee’s still in existence. The Gilmour’s sign appears to be stuck on over the red roof, so it’s possible the Hartee’s logo remains underneath.
The original lights are still in place, designed to illuminate the Hartee’s name. Also still in place, as per Phil’s advice…
The original outdoor seating area! Now it’s presumably the shoe shop manager’s car park (c’mon, look at the prestige offered by that strange piece of land). Inside are just shoes, but really, they’ve served worse and called it burgers.
It’s not really a happy ending, or an ending at all, but it is (I’m guessing) the final footnote on what by now must be the most definitive account of the Hartee’s affair out there. There are still many mysteries surrounding the story (truly, more questions are raised than answered), but maybe one day one of those faceless, guilt-ridden Hartee’s executives will come out of hiding and reveal more. Hell, I’d even settle for the guy who served the dog food. As ever, if you know more, please let Past/Lives know. And RIP Hartee’s – we hartlee knew ye.
In the meantime, let’s take a minute to remember those four powerful words that watered more mouths than Mount Franklin, that were a city’s guilty pleasure in a time before Big Macs and Whoppers…in a time when a nation could feed itself.
Hartee’s Kogarah, November 1973. Image courtesy State Library of NSW.
Corner shop/Mortgage Industry Association of Australia/Residential – Earlwood, NSW
Unlike a lot of places featured here on Past/Lives, this corner shop has had some real effort put into it to try to disguise its past. Reader Jill believes that her parents ran a corner shop along Riverview Road, Earlwood in 1956, and given a lack of extant corner shops, this could be it. Of course, it’s undergone a few changes: the shopfront facing the main road has been noticeably bricked up, and the colour scheme makes it look like the Joker’s hideout, but it’s still easily recognisable as a corner shop.
Also noteworthy: this address was once home to the jokers of the Mortgage Industry Association of Australia, which is apparently now defunct. These days, it’s clearly just someone’s house, a house on which they probably have a mortgage. Unless it really is the Joker’s house. He wouldn’t have a mortgage, that guy’s rich.
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.
The Hartee’s Saga, Part I – Earlwood, NSW
Australia’s experiences with American-style fast food started during the Second World War. Visiting American GIs helped the relatively young nation get a taste for hamburgers with cheese and fried chicken, while the influx of immigrants to the country introduced exotic food such as the souvlaki, pizza and kebabs. The major fast food franchises of today had all originated in the USA in the 1940s and 50s, and while Australia had been content thus far to survive on meat pies, milk bars and Chinese restaurants for take away treats, the 1960s ushered in a new wave. The fast food empires saw Australia as prime territory. Kentucky Fried Chicken was first to move in, establishing its first Australian store at Guildford in Sydney’s west in 1968. Pizza Hut opened its first store in Belfield in April, 1970. In that same year, amid the American invasion, the first major Australian-owned fast food franchise opened its store in Earlwood, NSW.
The first Hartees, now The Chicken Coop, Earlwood.
Seizing on the absence of hamburger franchises thus far in Australia (McDonalds would open their first location in 1971), Kellogg Food Products Pty. Ltd. had made an agreement with the American Hardee’s chain of hamburger restaurants to create ‘Hartee’s’, an American-style burgers-‘n-fries restaurant franchise. The first Hartee’s opened here, on the corner of Homer Street and Joy Ave in Earlwood, with the take-away shop below and the head office above. Unlike many other Australian attempts to emulate the American fast food experience, Hartee’s was a success – TV and radio carried the jingle “Hurry on down to Hartee’s, where the burgers are barbecued!”. Kelloggs planned for over 100 Hartee’s locations in Australia and New Zealand, but it didn’t quite work out that way…
Corner shop/nothing – Earlwood, NSW
On a surprisingly busy intersection in the backstreets of Earlwood sits this former corner shop.
It’s impossible to say why it closed, but the fact that I was shouted at by passing motorists twice while I took these photos suggests that the proprietor may have decided that the rude residents didn’t deserve a convenience mart.
Peters Ice Cream seems to have had an iron grip on this place in its heyday – closer inspection reveals even older Peters signage beneath what’s visible. Peters used ‘The health food of a nation’ as a slogan from 1923 through to the 1970s, after which time health food shops stopped carrying Drumsticks. Ice cream companies couldn’t get away with a slogan like that these days, that’s for sure.
The signage the shop sports today doesn’t exactly scream ‘C’mon in and get your bread and milk.’ The back of the shop appeared to be a residence, so the shopfront is as good a deterrent as any for burglars or Streets fans.
Past/Lives of the Near Future 