I Remember When with Milton Rendell

I remember when the streets of Midland and Guildford were more street shops than shopping centres.

Sadly I am old enough to remember when they built the Guildford Shopping Centre.

My favourite shops to visit were the butcher with mum, butchers in those times were characters, and on a Friday night the fish and chip shop. I might have the names wrong, but Litton’s rings a bell for the name of the butcher shop.

There hasn’t been a butcher shop where it used to be for a long time now.

John Cades was the grocery shop and the Commonwealth bank was the front shop with The Bank of New South Wales next door on the corner of Bank Street, that was when there were plenty of local banks.

Across the road was Alfred’s kitchen which still exists; it used to be an old timber carriage or something like that back then when Alex owned it and he also used to work at the Stirling Arms when Tom Thirsk owned it.

Bingo was on a Thursday night in the old theatre building and next door to that between the theatre and the bank was the funeral directors while on the other side Browns’ bakery and cake shop was there.

It seems a million years ago now.

In Guildford we have seen the development on the corner of Johnson Street and James in recent years and now we are looking at further developments at the Guildford hotel site as well the huge changes opposite the Rose and Crown where my grandfather’s bakery was not that long ago.

It will be interesting to see what evolves in another fifty years.

Midland Gate and Midland Oval is going through more development.

I wonder how much of the old style of shopping will still exist now with the internet and consumer habits changing so rapidly.

Chemists do lotto and everyone seems to want to sell coffee; Jim’s do everything from lawns to fence to window cleaning.

The world of business has changed dramatically and so have our towns in the hope of staying variable in an ever changing world.

If you get the chance, have a look all around your areas to see what has changed and let us know what you think.
To finish off, I was in my car the other day at the lights and I could hear a guy yelling.

Then I realised he was on his mobile in his car and looking around I saw another person talking on their phone in their car.

I wondered if have we over complicated our world, but I’ll leave that one with you.
If you have any memories like mine, email memories@realestateplus.com.au.

– Milton Rendell, chief executive officer