The old corner shop

Paddington did not start as the arty-farty, well-heeled suburb which now tumbles down the escarpment from Oxford St (the original South Head Road) to Rushcutters Bay. In about 1818 a gin distillery graced the heights, then in the 1830s to 1840s, the army invaded bringing with it an assortment of pubs and brothels and tradies out to make a quick quid or six.


I have collected together images of typical inner-city corner blocks on which sprang up corner shops(from the 1850s to the 1950s). Graham Spindler, Education Officer at State Parliament in Macquarie Street, and an avid Sydney street walker (of the nicest kind), maintains these corner shops were the lifeblood of the inner city, averaging one every 45 houses. Nowadays, they are cafes, or surgeries, or art galleries. The general corner shop, with it roll-top hessian sacks of flour, and onions and spuds, is no more, being replaced by larger supermarkets which are no way nestled among the residents.

Virtual or literal

These two stores are close enough to being opposite to each other in George St, Sydney's main drag (named after George III of England). And today I wanted to buy my grand-daughter a donkey, so I can delight her once again with its sound. You see the one she has at home (well, from the toy library) looks like a Japanese anime donkey.

But I digress ... I went into Dymocks and the bloody donkey cost me 84 bucks - together with 'Gruffalo', 'Madeleine', 'Tender is the night', and 'The Great Gatsby' (this latter 'cause it's too hard to read a book now only made up of single pages!)

So ... when I came out I though to myself, I thought: I really should investigate the economics of an e-reader. I suspect they are convenient. I suspect they are economic. But ... do they SMELL like a book?

Ici et là - The butcher shop

'Here & There' is a Wednesday series dedicated to shops. The 'here' is the area around Paddington. The 'there' is generally La Rive Gauche de Paris, especially the single-digit arrondissements. I am interested in how people live, not in retailing per se.

Bellevue Road, Bellevue Hill

Are you a harker? Do you look back to some of your childhood and wish it had not disappeared? I do – I wistfully hark back. It is as much in the language that swirls around my head (butcher, baker, greengrocer, corner-store, milk-bar), as it is in the types of places I look for examples of these shops. I search the High Streets and the Main Streets; eschewing the arcades and the shopping malls. I am from the generation who went down the street to buy necessities, not to the mall for a ‘shopping experience’.

Rue Saint-Louis, Ile Saint-Louis

Is it possible to discern a difference between butcher shops in my Parisian haunts and butcher shops here at home? My experience is that super-marchês in Paris are smaller, meaning that the meat sections are also smaller, resulting in the survival of more stand-a-lone butcher shops, la boucherie. In Paris, La Boucherie takes one’s breath away the instant the hearth is crossed.

Left: Rue du Bac Right: Rue de Bourgogne

Finding a stand-a-lone butcher shop in a ribbon development in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney has been a struggle. It seems that butcher shops are now within malls, like Westfield, or within major grocery supermarkets, like Woollies and Coles. In my mind whirls a faded memory of blue-striped aprons, smoothed and hollowed chopping blocks, massive hooks, sawdust, and missing fingers, or fingers swathed in band-aids (cloth not plastic).

Oxford Street, Paddington

Just as the cuts of meat from assorted animals have altered over the years, so has the ratio of cut to packaged meat. Windows are now replete with a myriad of spiced sausages, seasoned rissoles, and marinaded kebabs. Gone is the tray of wavering tripe, the aerated liver, and the poops of kidney. ‘Offal is awful’ seems to have consigned these ‘cuts’ to the dustbin of history.

Left: Rue Caulaincourt, Montmartre, 18eme Right: Hampden Road, Artarmon

However, there is one distinct similarity between a butcher shop in Paris and its equivalent in Sydney - and this could be in the eye of the beholder, especially should that beholder be a 'harker'. Butchers are proud individuals who really care about the image of solidity that they present to their customers, to the service that they provide for their customers, and the image of their shop in their neighbourhood. Butchers are pillars of their community.

Bellevue Road, Bellevue Hill

Ici et là - The bottle shop

'Here & There' is a Wednesday series dedicated to shops. The 'here' is the area around Paddington. The 'there' is generally La Rive Gauche de Paris, especially the single-digit arrondissements. I am interested in how people live, not in retailing per se.

Oxford Street, East Sydney (Adult shop next door is a clue to this location)

In Sydney, bottled alcohol is sold in stand-alone bottle shops, bottle sections within large supermarkets, or bottle shops attached to hotels. Our hotels are similar to English pubs.

Cellar, Rue Bourgogne, 7eme, Paris

In Paris, bottled alcohol is sold through bottle shops called 'caves' which translates as 'cellar'. I think their equivalent of our pub/hotel, is the neighbourhood bar/cafe, although I do not think many bottles are sold through bars for take home consumption. Yeah, yeah, the car is what is known in the trade as 'an added bonus'.

Ocean Street, Woollahra

Nomenclature is interesting here. We call them bottle shops. We call them grog shops. And we also call them a bottle-o. There are a few chains of very large warehouse-size bottle shops, but these are usually owned by either of the two large supermarket chains.

Oxford Street, East Sydney

Windows of opportunity

The Family Jewels, Oxford St, Paddington

I frequent the Verona Cinema on Oxford Street. My friend walks up from Redfern, and I mosey on down just a couple of blocks from my place. It is a vibrant area. One the way home, I totally meander, and look in windows. Do you know the expression 'tyre kicker'? That is what I do.

Ariel Booksellers, Oxford St, Paddington

However, taking a cue from my daugher, I am becoming addicted to shopping on-line. It gets delivered. Knock, knock. 'Parcel, missus'. How exciting is that?

This evening she bought a 'lite-scoop'. Last week I bought a pair of reef shoes.

Shag, Oxford St, Paddington

I did not realise that 'tyre kicker' was an Australian expression. People wander around used-car lots, and one of the actions they perform is to kick the tyre of the car. There is nothing to be gained from this action. And frequently, the action is done by someone with absolutely no intention to purchase. They are 'just looking'. Hence, a 'tyre-kicker' is someone with no intention of 'buying'.

Shoot-out at the OK Corral

When I was a kid aged about 10, say (1958, but who's counting!) my father bought Kellogg's Corn Flakes by the carton of 144 boxes. At that time, on the back, they had cardboard cut-outs of buildings to collect and make your own western frontier town. You know the drill: a saloon; a sheriff's office; a general store; and, a blacksmith's. My brothers and I would gobble down our cornies, cut out the building, joining all the tabs carefully, and add it to our 'town'. Into which we introduced our plastic characters from within the inevitably 'settled' flakes. Our imagination did the rest.

This top photo is so like the frontier towns of my imagination - minus the traffic lights, but who among you is so literal? The shop that is for sale, was erected in 1884 for "A. Kinnane, General Grocer'. It is on the corner of Liverpool Street and Womerah Avenue, Darlinghurst.

PS - To this day, I cannot stand Corn Flakes.

Corner store

Corner of Roslyn Street & Ward Avenue, Kings Cross.

Following a comment from Andrew, I thought I would revisit this image and walk it through with you.

Kings Cross is a very mixed area. This is one street back from the 'nightclub' sleaze of Macleay StreetDarlinghurst Road. It is charming rather than lovely. But look closely at this corner store. It is branded in that creeping americana of 'convenience store' rather than the old corner shoppe, which it essentially is. On the right, is a camera to record street 'violence'. Then we have an old fashioned bubble-gum machine, and on the wall a telephone. This is not to contact a taxi, as Andrew surmised, but to contact a locksmith. The area is replete with backpackers and other 'tourists' who don't always have their wits about them. It is a Western Union outlet and an airport bus pickup. It has internet cubicles, and a 'money-tree' (ATM). Everything a traveller could need. Next door you can sit out and have coffee to recover from the previous night, and next to that is a used-clothing shop, should you, in your ardour, forget where you left your clothes the previous evening.

Go ahead and click on the image to enlarge. Then click again. The perfect neighbourhood ... a microcosm of urbanity.

Antons on Oxford

This patch of shops, at the top of the Victoria Barracks rise, opposite the Paddington Town Hall, has a restraint of style that oozes moderne-street, in a laid-back gritty-minor-key.


Close to the CBD, on major public transport routes, and within cooee of pubs and cinemas, it is a delight in which to live and to play.

A haven for foodies

Glebe Point Road runs the full length of the spur, from near the intersection of Broadway, Parramatta Road and City Road, the 2kms down to a dead end at the water's edge that is Johnson Bay/Black Wattle Bay. The first 500m of this is awash with ethnic eateries: sprouting up to cater for the massive influx of international students to the two universities in close proximity - The University of Technology and The University of Sydney - and to the experimentation of the general student population.

Glebe Point Road is a prime example of the geographer's term "ribbon development".

Silence born of boredom

Only a married couple can ignore each other this totally ...

Switching to autopilot whilst I galivant around southern Tasmania for 10 days, returning Monday 5th October.

Coffee dean

What is a coffee "dean"?

I know a coffee bean. I know a coffee den.

But what is a coffee "dean"?

Switching to autopilot whilst I galivant around southern Tasmania for 10 days, returning Monday 5th October.