This is Canterbury in the inner western suburbs of Sydney. Over to my left, between the hoarding and the trees and park, runs Cook's River.

At one time this entire area was light industrial and similar. Sign manufacturers, joiners and turners, that sort of thing, What you are looking at here was the site of an old Mitre 10 hardware warehouse, which I visited more than once over the years.

You can imagine my surprise when I turned into this street recently and found the Mitre 10 warehouse obliterated, along with many of the other light industrial places. Out of frame to my 7 o'clock position there is a building which looks like a light fabrication plant from the 1960's, complete with receiving dock roller doors on the front. It's now abandoned and will doubtless also be obliterated in the near future.

Why the change? At a guess part of it has to do with the river. In the first 70 years or so of the 20th century it was less a river and more an industrial sewer for industrial plants upstream. And it stank. Bad. Since the mid 80's or so a concerted effort has been made to clean it up so that it only periodically stinks. So now, instead of being a source of rancid odour, it has become a water view. Combine that with seemingly endless demand for housing in Sydney and voila, it has gone from a place where only factories can live to "Vicinity ... a wonderful opportunity to invest in one of Sydney’s heralded property hot spots". (You probably won't be able to read the sign when I shrink this to 1000 pixels, but that's essentially what it says.)

With the transformation of course comes a decrease in affordability, with this once proudly blue collar area seeing its former residents move further and further away from the city proper.

This is of course a pano of three images.

Oh, what was I doing here? Digital Camera Warehouse is just back behind me on Canterbury Road. How many guesses do you need?
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Edit August 2024: As I prepare my images for eventual departure from PBase (or more likely, PBase's departure from them), the 1000 pixel width is no longer "a thing". But then, that WAS originally written in 2014, and things were different then.

Also, in response to the one comment that I got on this shot on PBase... I have no idea whatsoever what I got at the camera store. Oh wait, yes I do! I found the receipt! 1 Hoya Neutral Density 8* filter (62mm), $64 (which will make an appearance in a later shot in this PAD gallery), and 1 Hoya Circular Polarising Pro 1D Filter (which also soon makes an appearance here), $133. These days, 10 years later, you can get them for $70 to $90 probably because (as I was to find) they don't work as well with mirrorless cameras as they did with mirrored ones. Demand therefore presumably fell into a hole, and took prices with it. It has been years since I last used one. And I can't believe that I actually drove from the Illawarra to Canterbury to buy a couple of filters. Post Covid, getting deliveries shipped is the first resort, not the last one. That said, at least it gave me a little time in the Aladdin's cave of a real camera shop, and that's becoming a rare experience these days too. As I said, 2014? They did things differently then.