We’re all excited about the new Powerhouse Parramatta, but I have a better idea

October 24, 2026 — 5:30am

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Sydney’s new Powerhouse Museum opens in a fortnight, with displays of cutting-edge food, design and music. Fair enough, but I thought museums were supposed to be a snapshot of the past.

Herewith, my pitch for a Museum of Forgotten Places. Come, let me be your guide.

First, we enter a barber shop, a replica of the establishment found in every Australian suburb until about 1983. There are two barbers cutting hair, both chain-smoking as they snip. You can hardly see yourself in the mirror for all the smoke.

The radio is tuned to the races and a wide range of reading material is available, but only if you count 20 flyblown copies of The Australasian Post as a “wide range”. Each issue of The Post is missing the Ettamogah Pub cartoon, these having been removed in order to decorate the walls.

The whole place stinks of flammable hair oil, a substance which will occasionally form a dangerous partnership with the cigarette dangling from the barber’s lips. One drop of ash and it’s a conflagration.

The barber rarely confesses his previous life as a shearer, although you may notice the pot of tar, sitting there on the counter, employed whenever he nicks his customer’s ear.

In the next room, we spot a Holden car, dating from the........

© The Age