Tag Archives: fruit and vegetables

Past/Lives Flashback #10: Butchery No. 1 – Hurstville, NSW

By Michael Wayne on March 27, 2013 | 1 Comment

As promised, here’s the first in a series of articles taking a look back at the top ten most popular Past/Lives posts of the last year. If I was smart, I would have picked the ten least popular posts so as to boost their views, but there’s a good reason the Belfield denture clinic never found its audience.

With that in mind, it’s to my complete amazement that I present the tenth most popular entry, Hurstville’s No. 1 Butchery.

Original article: Food Fair/ANZ Bank/The Base Store/No1 Butchery – Hurstville, NSW

First things first: there are no obvious changes. Given the building’s colourful history, it’s almost a surprise there’s been no activity over the last 12 months, but there you have it…NO changes whatsoever (perhaps with the exception of the chemist next door having become “Australia’s cheapest chemist”. Yeah, right). It’s as ugly a shopfront as ever, and that demonic pig in the logo is just as disturbing. I’d be willing to bet those people walking past are the same as last year, too.

What’s really interesting to me about this place is that just over the last few weeks, it’s exploded in terms of page views. Why? The whole point of this series was to show you how things have changed over a year, and to find something new to add, so this is a great start. What’s so special about this place? Then again, that’s probably what you were saying when I published the original article a year ago. Wait! Do you feel that? It’s moments like these that bring us closer, dear reader.

Don’t worry, they won’t all be like this.

Posted in: banks, residual signage, shopfronts, special feature | Tagged: Anata Awning, anatomy of a shopfront, ANZ, bank, banks, branch closure, Butchery No. 1, dead brand names, evolution, flashback, Food Fair, Forest Road, fruit and vegetables, history, Hurstville, Knapp's Butchery, Lowes, name change, No1 Butchery, NSW, one year anniversary, party supplies, residual signage, shopfronts, Super Centre, Sydney, The Base Store, Westfield

Shoe Store/Newsagent – Enfield, NSW

By Michael Wayne on August 9, 2012 | Leave a comment

You may be shocked, as I was, to learn that this address has been a newsagent since at least 1951, when a Mr. C. G. Sternbeck was appointed a ‘new newsagent’ for the Burwood area. To put this into perspective, his phone number had a letter in it. In 1947, this place was vacated by a fruit and vegetable store, so I’d put its period as a shoe store between 1947 and 1951, unless it predates the greengrocer and that’s the world’s hardiest paint. Jury’s out until the sample comes back from the lab, it seems.

Posted in: name change, residual signage, shopfronts | Tagged: Burwood Heights, C. G. Sternbeck, Enfield, fruit and vegetables, Liverpool Road, Newsagent, shoe store, shopfront

Food Fair/ANZ Bank/The Base Store/No1 Butchery – Hurstville, NSW

By Michael Wayne on July 28, 2012 | 1 Comment

Food Fair, Forest Road, 1951. Image courtesy State Library of NSW.

Sometimes it can be fun to take a look at the evolution of a shop over time. It reveals a lot about the changing face of the suburb, shoppers’ tastes and the sensibilities of the time, among many other things. In this case, we’re looking at 274 Forest Road, Hurstville. In 1951, it was Food Fair, an extremely 50s looking fruit and vegetable shop. Now, take a good look at this picture. You’d never get away with parking a car on Forest Road like that these days, and you certainly wouldn’t ever see your bike again if you just left it unattended and unchained like that. Before the advent of the Westfield, or the Super Centre above the Hurstville train station, these shops were the lifeblood of the suburb that coursed through the vein that is Forest Road.

Hurstville, circa 1986. Image courtesy Ty Manning, clearly.

This one’s a stretch, but use your enthusiasm to zero in on the barely visible ANZ logo next to the Lowes, which is still there 30 years later. It makes sense that by the 80s, the banks had staked out territory amongst the little shops along the street. Food Fair would have had nowhere else to go but bust even if it had survived the 1978 opening of Westfield (which I’m guessing it didn’t).

Hurstville, 2002.

Here we are again, in the new millennium. Now the shop is home to The Base Store, a $2 shop/party goods outlet. How shops like these were able to flourish in the 90s/00s is beyond me, but think back – they were everywhere. It all started with the novelty of the Reject Shop, and then things got out of hand. We only have ourselves to blame. By this point the bank is long gone, a victim of the online revolution and branch closures. Firing workers is the best way to save money, you know.

Which brings us to today. Oh, how things have changed (except Lowes, which appears to be the foundation Hurstville was built around). The former Knapps Butchery has become a Chemist Warehouse, and the party’s over for the Base Store. It’s now Butchery No. 1, or No1 Butchery as Google likes to call it, and fittingly too – it’s anonymous as hell. There’s the Rav 4 parked in the same place as the car in 1951, and they both have the spare tyre on the back. The custom facade of the Food Fair has long since been covered up by the dirty venetian look of ANZ, which itself has left an ugly stain (what a visual metaphor). The ubiquitous-yet-defunct Anata Awning has ensured that Food Fair’s legacy is lost to the world, but I can’t help but think if you tore that facade down, the Food Fair shopfront would be waiting patiently behind it for one more day in the sun. It sounds fair to me.