Work Bench

The steel work platform in this photograph is the kind of thing that gets stripped out first when a building changes hands. Floor-level infrastructure, heavy, bolted down, unremarkable to anyone who did not spend a shift standing on it. At Sundell Motors' Smith Street workshop in Chatswood East, it was left where it was. By 2015, when this photograph was made, the platform's fascia and the concrete block walls behind it were covered in layers of graffiti, and debris and a gas cylinder had settled on the floor below. The building had already moved into its second life as an informal canvas. Sundell Motors Pty Ltd operated as an authorised Holden dealer, assigned dealer code 610 for its Chatswood operation. The company was registered with ASIC on 5 January 1967, and ran a multi-branch network across Sydney's North Shore. The Smith Street site functioned as the workshop and service centre, distinct from the showroom operation that had previously occupied the Pacific Highway. The Smith Street building sat on IN2 Light Industrial land within the Willoughby local government area, in a precinct that Willoughby Council had already identified as transitioning from light industrial to commercial and retail use. When General Motors announced the withdrawal of the Holden brand from Australia on 17 February 2020, Sundell was one of 185 Holden dealers across the country left to negotiate an exit. The Holden brand ceased trading in Australia on 31 December 2020. Woolworths had already filed a development application for the Smith Street site in 2017. Council approved DA-2017/182 in March 2021, following a Land and Environment Court challenge and over 700 submissions from the public, the majority opposing. Demolition followed, and Woolworths Chatswood East opened on the site on 26 October 2022. This photograph records the workshop in the years between those two events, when the platform still stood and the walls had found a new purpose.