Coles/Delphi Bank & HSBC – Burwood, NSW
In further evidence that the world is an evil place, I present to you Exhibit ZZY. Once a quaint, harmless little art-deco Coles supermarket and variety store, this Burwood Road location now offers only a variety of soulless banking institutions, neither of which could afford decent paint:
While we’re on the topic, remember when Coles was just a supermarket? Now, each Coles pretty much functions as a bank: you can withdraw, deposit, you wait in a long line to get treated like dirt, and they assault you with painful television ads in your own home. In a further chilling parallel, Coles is even attempting an insurance service now, which by all accounts seems to be going over as well as those Status Quo ads.
Coles Variety/Fossey’s/Bag A Bargain/Stokland – Hurstville, NSW
The Hurstville building currently featuring Stokland Furniture Depot is a bit like your old fridge covered in magnets that vary wildly in their level of ancientness. The site has put up with a variety of variety shops (sorry) since 1914.
While it’s currently Stokland Furniture Depot (at last, furniture shopping without the c—s), in a previous life the building played host to…
…Bag A Bargain, and that Escher-esque door to nowhere – a sight so crazy it’s clearly driven the Bag A Bargain mascot downright nutty. Earlier still, the building was…
…Coles Variety store (later Fossey’s), which acted as a thoroughfare to Forest Road. I hope the equivalent sign at the front of the building on Forest Road warned thoroughfare users of the doozy of a step waiting for them on the other side of the door.
UPDATE: Thanks to this Leader article from December 1989, we can finally know what caused Coles Variety to pack up and leave. Spoiler: it was Westfield.
The Leader, December 5 1989
Even if we choose to accept K-Mart as the spiritual successor to Coles Variety – which I don’t – can its champions boast that it has an ice cream parlour at the front of the store? I didn’t think so.
Past/Lives of the Near Future 