Kids Clothes/Ladies Clothing/The Shoe Depot – Kingsgrove, NSW
The third time’s a charm for this place. It’s more entertaining if you imagine the history like this:
EXT. KIDS CLOTHES WAREHOUSE – DAY
A bold, shiny new sign gleams from the top corner of the warehouse. The owner stands outside, waiting for the delivery of his first shipment of stock. His assistant emerges from inside.
ASSISTANT: The supplier just called to say the shipment should be here any minute!
OWNER: Great! We’re gonna make a killing!
The truck chugs up the road and pulls in. As the assistant signs for the order, the stock is unloaded. The owner notices it’s nothing but ladies clothing. He holds it up for the assistant to see.
ASSISTANT: Oops…
OWNER: You idiot!
CUT TO:
EXT. LADIES CLOTHES WAREHOUSE – DAY
A bold, shiny NEWER sign gleams above the doorway of the warehouse. The owner finishes tossing the last of the Kids Clothes sign into the skip as the truck drives up the street towards the warehouse. The assistant gingerly emerges from inside, holding an order slip.
ASSISTANT: Uh, boss…the shipment…I’m sorry…
The owner shuts his eyes and sighs.
The truck pulls up. The driver opens the back door, and hundreds of shoes pour out.
CUT TO:
EXT. THE SHOE DEPOT WAREHOUSE – DAY
The biggest, boldest sign yet sits above the doorway. The Ladies Clothing sign has been halfheartedly spraypainted over. A sign sits in the front window – it reads ‘ASSISTANT WANTED’.
Demco Machinery/Mao & More – Surry Hills, NSW
Demco Machinery, 1989. Image courtesy City of Sydney Archives, SRC15993.
The Demco Machinery site, on Cleveland Street in Surry Hills, is made up of two separate buildings. The one in the foreground here is the oldest, first used as a tobacco factory in 1911, and then a tea company until the 1920s. Once Demco moved in around 1930, they patiently waited for the St Margarets Hospital for Women Dispensary next door, built in 1906, to fall on hard times. They didn’t have to wait long:
SMH, April 19, 1938.
Strangely, although the building’s address is currently 267-271 Cleveland Street, advertisements prior to 1953 give Demco’s address, as well as that of the hospital and the tobacco factory, as 243-247 Cleveland Street. There must have been a renumbering of Cleveland Street around that time, as to avoid confusion, from 1948 Demco started advertising their address as ‘corner of Cleveland and Buckingham Streets’.
Demco building, 2012.
Demco packed up its city operations in 1989, moving out to Greenacre as part of the industrial migration to Sydney’s west. Since 2002, the older half has been occupied by Mao & More, a Sinophile’s paradise of kitschy Oriental paraphernalia very at home in the increasingly gentrified area. The showroom half of ‘modern design’ Demco were so proud of currently consists of several businesses, including The Gingerbread Man, a film and web production company located in the basement; and a sportswear manufacturer. The only evidence of Demco’s time here is the art deco Demco sign still sitting atop the building.
Past/Lives of the Near Future 