‘A few survivors’: Images of Melbourne’s disappearing small businesses captured in new book

Artist David Wadelton began photographing the small businesses of Melbourne’s suburb of Northcote in the mid-1970s when he was at art school. Nearly 40 years later, sorting through and scanning his black-and-white photos, thinking about what the suburban Melbourne streetscape was like in those days, he “realised there were a few survivors, but not many”.

The high streets were no longer peppered with small, family-run tailors, butchers and milk bars. But there were some outliers.

So, he started documenting what was left of those businesses before they, too, disappeared. He shared the images (old and new) on social media, eventually compiling a selection of them into his latest book Small Business.

In sharing the images, he found that people connected with them, recognising the shops they’d visited or walked or driven past for so many years.

“We’re interested in this shared history, the often unique history of our local areas,” he said.

The book captures the small, family-run businesses of Melbourne’s inner suburbs – with a couple of NSW exceptions – that feel like relics of a time long past.

Alongside Melbourne institutions such as Pellegrini’s Espresso Bar, Hopetoun Tea Rooms, and Stalactites are the hole-in-the-wall cobblers, garages, and barbers, among others. Most of them, Mr Wadelton said, were established in the 1960s and ’70s by post-war European migrants.

About a third of the businesses featured have closed entirely since he started the project in about 2009.

With some, he wishes he could go back and take more or better images, but it’s too late – they no longer exist.

One of those is the Golden Tower American-style diner. “It used to be this little American-style diner; they were all over the place,” he said. “I would’ve loved to have gone back … When I took it, I didn’t know it was going to be in the book.”

Most of the closures aren’t because of last year’s lockdown, Mr Wadelton said, but because that generation of shopkeepers and small business owners was getting older and retiring.

“Sometimes they get ill, the shops close and just stay closed like little time machines,” he said.

“There is a feeling of pathos as you look through the images.”

Relics of another time

“It takes a special breed to set up a small business, and I do notice it’s less likely to happen these days,” Mr Wadelton said. “This generation was able to buy the buildings in inner suburbs relatively cheaply. Now businesses come and go, can’t seem to stick.”

This also reflected a change in the way people shop, Mr Wadelton said.

“These small businesses are relics of something … They’re part of the fabric of our local communities,” he said. “Strip shopping and family businesses have been decimated by these shopping plazas.”

Plus, much of what the businesses specialised in are becoming obsolete: shoe repairs, TV and VCR repairs, newsagencies.

“People don’t buy physical magazines and books … they don’t go to a local butcher,” Mr Wadelton said.

While he asked permission to take all the photographs, he didn’t know they would one day end up in a book. He knows some business owners have had customers take them a copy.

One common reaction from the traders when he asked to photograph their businesses was surprise. “One guy couldn’t understand why I wanted to take a photo of his garage, but he said, ‘go for your life, knock yourself out’ … mostly they’re just content and proud to be there.”