Weeds

The concrete floor of the Sundell Holden workshop on Smith Street, Chatswood, did not go quietly. By 2015, weeds had found the fault lines and pushed through. Green growth traces the cracks across what was once a working service bay floor, the kind of surface that would have carried the weight of hoists, oil drums, and decades of Holden vehicles waiting on a job. This photograph records that process in its early stages: the concrete still dominant, the weeds insistent. Sundell Motors Pty Ltd was registered on 5 January 1967 and operated as an authorised Holden dealer under dealer code 610, Chatswood, NSW. The Smith Street site functioned as the network's primary workshop and service centre, separate from the showroom operation that had once run along the Pacific Highway until its site was cleared in 1987 for the Zenith Centre office complex. The Smith Street workshop handled the aftersales work: the servicing, the repairs, the steady mechanical rhythm of a franchise dealership. The end came not from any local decision but from one made in Detroit. General Motors announced on 17 February 2020 that the Holden brand would be withdrawn from Australia and New Zealand. Of the 185 Holden dealers operating at that time, Sundell was one. The Holden brand ceased trading in Australia on 31 December 2020. The ACCC subsequently found the withdrawal raised serious concerns about how Holden had treated its dealer network, noting the conduct should serve as a lesson to all franchisors. Willoughby City Council approved a development application for the Smith Street site in March 2021. The building was demolished around 2021 and replaced by a Woolworths supermarket, which opened on 26 October 2022. What the photograph holds is the interstitial period: the floor cracking, the weeds working, the building waiting for whatever came next.