‘Cool marble, wooden escalators, pure magic’: Remembering the glory days of DJs

November 4, 2026 — 7:30pm

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For many of us of a certain generation and background, it would have been – back in the day – like hearing that two-thirds of Uluru was about to disappear.

For, back then, “DJs” – as we affectionately knew it – was not merely a department store, and not merely the department store. (Others might have gone to Gowings or Myer or Grace Brothers but not us.) By gawd, DJs was an absolute institution, just like the Liberal Party, The Sydney Morning Herald and the ABC. It would always be there, just as it had been for 150 years, since early colonial days. And for those of us from the regions, the visit to DJs flagship store on Elizabeth Street was nothing less than an annual Big Day Out, usually in the early summer when school was over.

Off the farm at Peats Ridge, and scrubbed up for the occasion – does anyone know where I put my shoes last September? – Mum would drive our Holden station wagon, filled with however many of her six kids could fit, to park it at grandpa’s place at Wahroonga, from where we’d catch the train to Town Hall.

From the age of four onwards I’d traipse through the streets holding Mum by the hand, stunned at both the noise and the foetid air of the gritty dusty, dirty city, until........

© The Sydney Morning Herald