Trolley

An industrial trolley sits on the concrete floor of the Sundell Holden workshop and service centre at 17 Smith Street, Chatswood East. Its steel frame is thickly rusted, the metal surface broken down across every face. Nothing sits on it. Nothing surrounds it. The floor is bare. The building is quiet. Sundell Motors Pty Ltd operated the Smith Street site as the mechanical and service arm of a multi-branch Holden dealer network on Sydney's North Shore. The company was registered with ASIC on 5 January 1967 under ACN 000 560 770 and held Holden dealer code 610, assigned to Chatswood. The network included at least three distinct operating entities, confirmed by ASIC name records listing separate companies for Chatswood and Pittwater. The Smith Street workshop handled servicing and repairs, distinct from the showroom operation the network ran further along the Pacific Highway. By the time this photograph was made in 2015, the workshop had been standing empty long enough for rust to take firm hold of what was left behind. The trolley in the frame is one of those remnants. It is not remarkable as an object. It is the kind of thing that gets left when a business closes and the useful equipment is moved out first. What remains is what nobody thought worth taking. The wider story of the Holden dealer network closed out years after this photograph. General Motors announced the withdrawal of the Holden brand from Australia on 17 February 2020. The brand ceased trading on 31 December 2020. Sundell Motors Pty Ltd, along with 184 other Holden dealers, absorbed the consequences of a franchise withdrawal the ACCC would later describe as a lesson to franchisors in what not to do. The Smith Street building was demolished around 2021. Woolworths Chatswood East supermarket opened on the site on 26 October 2022. The trolley, and this photograph, are what remains of the workshop.