A Quick Look Through Footscray Shopping Centre

My mother wanted her hair cut last week, so I accompanied her on the bus to Footscray, to attend the Vietnamese hairdresser in the Footscray Market. Footscray has changed a lot since I was a kid, so I did a bit of reminiscing whilst I waited for her. Describing Footscray to outsiders might help make …

Footscray Shopping Centre Goes Retro – In A Bad Way

According to one of the historical plaques along Barkly Street, in the 1950s the Footscray Shopping Centre was the second largest shopping district after the Melbourne CBD. As a child in the 1970s, the Nicholson Street Mall (a new experiment then) was a vibrant place. There was Forges of Footscray on the north side, and …

Footscray Football Club Marks 100 Years In The VFL/AFL

For Friday night’s game against Collingwood, my beloved football club temporarily resumed its actual and traditional name, Footscray. The reason for this was to mark 100 years since the Footscray Football Club (Western Bulldogs since 1997) entered the AFL’s predecessor league, the Victorian Football League. At the time, in 1925, the entry of Footscray, the …

Vale Charlie of Charlie’s Pizza

There is very little left of the Footscray that I remember as a child. Growing up on Gordon Street, we were forced to move north when the hospital expanded when I was seven. That side of the street got bulldozed. Years later, the Baptist Church over the street closed down and then got redeveloped as …