Olympia Milk Bar

1 review

Provenance

Camera: NIKON D750
Lens: 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8
Settings: 58mm · f/9.0 · 8s · ISO 100
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

A two-storey brick building on Parramatta Road, its render stripped and stained. Ground floor signage reads Olivia Milk Bar and Streets Ice Cream. Upper windows advertise style cutting and Nutri-Tonic perms. Traffic light trails cross the foreground.

Edition

Open edition

Open edition
Printed to order, no fixed quantity. Each print is hand-signed by the photographer.

Limited edition
A fixed number of prints exist. Once sold, the edition closes permanently. Each print is individually numbered and signed.

$100.00 AUD

Colour

Signed, numbered, with COA. Made to order in 10 to 20 business days (framed). Shipped in protective packaging with edition certificate, paper-stock reference and a printed care guide.

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In situ

01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title: Olympia Milk Bar
Series: Parramatta Road
Catalogue: PRO-024
Process: Giclée
Captured: 5 September 2016
Camera: NIKON D750
Lens: 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture: f/9.0
Shutter: 8s s
ISO: 100
Focal length: 58 mm
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm
Paper size: 290 × 200 mm
Location: Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Authenticity: C2PA verified provenance →
Recognised by: National Trust of Australia (NSW), 2016 Heritage Award, Multimedia

03 THE STORY

About this print

The Olympia Milk Bar sits at the Stanmore end of Parramatta Road, its painted signage still legible above the shopfront. The window is darkened from the inside, the curtain that hangs across it grey from light and dust. The faded blue and white paintwork has lifted off the timber boards in long strips. The pavement out front is cracked and patched. Two worn aluminium chairs are propped against the front wall, the way they have been for years. The shopfront has been closed for so long that it has become one of the inner-west's most recognisable landmarks.

The Olympia Milk Bar opened in 1939 and ran for the best part of eight decades under one family. By the 2000s it was already famous for being a working milk bar that had stopped updating itself in the 1950s. Customers remembered warm milkshakes, blackened glass, and an interior frozen in postwar trim. The owner kept the shop open in some form until 2017. Since then, it has sat closed on its corner, the lights off, the contents largely intact behind the window. Heritage groups have been arguing about its future for years. As of 2019, when this photograph was made, nothing had been decided. The shopfront looked the way it always had, just dimmer.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

A two-storey brick facade at 190 Parramatta Road, stripped back to raw brickwork where paint has fallen away in sheets. Streets Ice Cream signs flank the shopfront in blue and white. Above the awning, faded lettering reads "Olympia Milk Bar" and "Snack Bar." The upper floor carries hand-painted window signs for style cutting and Nutri-Tonic perms. A single bulb lights the entrance. Traffic streaks red and blue across the frame at street level. Weeds push through the brickwork near the sills.

Brett Patman

The series

Parramatta Road

2017 · 27 photographs

Parramatta Road follows a much older route, used for thousands of years by the Wangal, Wallumedegal, Burramattagal, and Cadigal peoples before colonial adoption around 1789 to 1791. Today it is one of Sydney's main thoroughfares: 23 km of heavy traffic, with used car dealers at the Parramatta end ("Auto Alley") and a mix of historic shopfronts, new apartment blocks, and WestConnex demolition at the eastern end. The series moves between streetscape and individual buildings - 107 Parramatta Road in Annandale (an 1890s Victorian Filigree shopfront with original living quarters above accessible only by ladder), the Marco Polo Motel at Summer Hill, the Olympia Milk Bar in Stanmore, Mario's Meat Market, and shopfronts whose ground floors have been busy for a century while the rooms above have been empty for fifty years.

View all in this series →

05 SIZE GUIDE

Print sizes

The anatomy view shows what this finish is as a physical object: paper margin, mat band, frame depth, acrylic profile. The comparison strip shows how each size sits relative to the others at true scale. Click a size or a finish to update both.