There was no other store like David Jones. I’m sorry for my part in its demise

November 5, 2026 — 11:29am

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“Are you going to see the Christmas windows?” Mum always asked if anyone was going into town at any point in December. It was a rhetorical question, of course, because the answer was always “yes”.

My mother grew up in the heyday of Sydney’s past, the child of a World War II veteran who moved his family into a brand-new house in what was then, in the booming post-war 1950s, the suburban fringe of the city.

Every Christmas we would go to what we called “the Christmas house” to spend the season with our grandparents. And every year my grandfather would pack his “girls” – my grandmother, mother, sister and me – off for a day shopping in the city.

The train trip from Wahroonga along the North Shore line seemed to take forever in the summer humidity before we would hop off at St James station and cross Elizabeth........

© The Sydney Morning Herald