Latest backlog of ghost signs from around Melbourne

Here are the latest photographic fruits of my travels around Melbourne.

Firstly to Victoria Street, Collingwood, where a fab Indian Root Pills sign was once rendered in the same  large and loud fashion seen in some recent Indian Root Pills uncoverings. You can still see remnants of the cobalt blue background:

And around the corner, a reminder of the old industrial Collingwood:

And from a drive to Greensborough, incorporating a bike ride along the Plenty River:

In the back blocks behind the Plenty River - some ghost signs on ghost vehicles:

West Melbourne railway bridge. Bowens Hardware in North Melbourne used to be client of mine in my first job - writing and producing telephone 'on hold' messages:

...and around the corner, a glimpse of an uncovering:

Now to North Melbourne and Flemington: Briquettes ads:

Plume Motor Spirit (Vacuum Oil Company). Have passed this many times before, but this time the light was just right to see it:

Penfolds ad:

Tuxan shoe polish. Not technically a ghost sign though, since the shop is still going.

This one's also still going, but the sign is nice:

Greys is better!

Have snapped this milk bar sign before, but unfortunately the other side has now been smashed:

A few from the former McCabe factory in....McCabe Street:

And now to North Carlton and Brunswick:

Stood in next door's front yard for this one (there was no fence). The resident saw me but was very gracious :)

Now a cafe, but the exquisite sign's been kept

Was an engineering workshop, is now apartments

One from Fitzroy:

From Mark H, one from the city:

...and another in the CBD - the famous 60s modernist statement, with old tram signs:

This blog's first Japanese ghost sign (thanks Willsy)

Our intrepid traveller in Osaka has just sent this over:

An old friend has left the building...

....actually it's the entire building that's left the building, including the wall that was home to one of my favourite ghost signs in Melbourne.

I've been passing this Bushell's Tea sign for years. It's opposite my kids' primary school in Reynard Street, Coburg.

As it looked in 2012

Reynard Street used to have one of the best collections of local grocery ghost signs in Melbourne, and this was the best of those. I've written about the Tea Wars of Reynard Street on this blog before, but now the Bushell's sign and the Robur sign have both gone.

A couple of days ago: going...

And today: gone.

 

The Bushell's sign was a local feature and highlight, large and at eye level when walking (as would have been intended by the painters): a venerable senior citizen. The sign told you in its own quiet and charming way that Reynard Street had a young life as a bustling local shopping hub, its parade of 1920s-1940s single-storey shopfronts full of activity. In fact the sign has had a series of lives - the Bushell's sign is not one, but at least three signs, painted on top of one another over years. It was Sam Roberts from ghostsigns.co.uk who first appreciated these layers when I took him to see it on a scorching hot February day in 2013. Obviously this was a prime spot because Bushell's chose to keep paying for the space and the signwriting.

Now, most of the old shops are dwellings - that is, until they're knocked down and replaced with fugly 'brick down the bottom, plasterboard above' units. You can't blame the owners - the shops were small and dark and the now-desirable locale of central Coburg have put a premium value on space. But still I do wish that the humbler remnants of a community's everyday history could be given a better chance of survival, even if this means enacting regulations or incentives to encourage the reassembling of walls or working them into new building designs. Somewhere, this stuff does matter. The market is not always the arbiter of what is wisest in the long run.

So I'll say goodbye to a reliable friend, a presence that was always able to brighten my morning  drop-offs. I'll miss you. I do have a piece of you though - actually 14. Because this afternoon I backed my car into the driveway next to the demolition site, climbed up on the pile of bricks and picked out a bunch with your yellow, silver, cobalt blue and green paint on the surface. Now a small reminder of you is stacked up at home:

Postscript: I wrote this post last night. This morning, when dropping the kids at school, I drove past the Reynard Street milk bar near the school with the Tarax window sign. A For Sale sign had been erected on the awning.

A few from Kew...and Balwyn and Surrey Hills

A couple of weeks ago, I took the bike for a jaunt around the leafy surrounds of Kew, Balwyn and Surrey Hills. Tomorrow I'm giving a talk on ghost signs at the University of the Third Age in Kew, and I wanted to see what I could find. Also, in June I'm talking to the Surrey Hills Ephemera Society (what a good name) and so I checked out that suburb too - plus Balwyn in between.

As expected, there wasn't a lot to see compared to the parts of town that used to be poorer, and that so saw less repainting. But I did find a few - here they are:

This fomer Briquettes dispensing shed is on the site of the bridge over a former railway line that has since been turned into a linear park:

The coin-operated dispensing system

And the rest in Kew/Balwyn:

Had to take this one from the middle of a busy intersection

Only remaining remnant

Layers of stylists' signs

Largely disused suburban shopping strip (and following).

Saw this dry cleaning firm pop up a couple of times - see below

Pick of the day - layers of signs on Union Road in Mont Albert. The sign superimposed on the Braemar heating sign is a Mobilgas one. Exciting for me since Lewis & Skinner had the contract for much of the Vacuum Oil Company's signs.

Not a ghost sign technically, but a brilliant old-school milk bar in Balwyn.

...and down the road, another milk bar straddling eras.

Union Road, Surrey Hills - it's still there, across the road from the superb Lewis & Skinner uncovering of 2012 (see: http://findingtheradiobook.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/for-limited-time-onlymelbournes-best.html)

This is what the site of the 2012 Surrey Hills ghost sign cluster looks like now: hidden for another few decades.

...and in the same Surrey Hills stretch: adorning the old theatre that's currently being stripped and transformed.

The next lot are from the cute little shopping strip adjoining the railway station in Mont Albert:

The old sign in Chatham, stuck to the window of the still-running milk bar

Fabulous layered sign in Koo Wee Rup's main street

Today I was dropping off furniture to store in a shed on my beloved's family farm near Koo Wee Rup. We went for a walk down the main street, Rossiter Road, and found a brilliant painted palimpsest. It's on the wall of a set of shops...the Wendore milk bar is still there, possibly referred to in the sign layers. The painted letters also hint of fish suppers, fresh milk and lots else besides.

These days, this part of the street is a shadow of its former bustling self as the town's main shopping strip. Even in the recent Google Street View pics, which show the ghost sign clearly, most of the shops have departed: (See: https://www.google.com.au/maps/@38.199261,145.490897,3a,37.5y,13.89h,88.02t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1s8rhzK5_OmZHmjl_N5kwXZg!2e0)

 And just for good measure, here's a fab street sign for the local bowls club in nearby Lang Lang: