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

David Jones, in trouble? Most of its stores likely to soon close?

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 and gritty of the dusty, dirty city, until we’d cross the portal into DJs, and everything changed. Here was calm to my farm, here was glitz, and ritz. Here, was an expanse of cool marble flooring, an amazing set of moving wooden stairs called an “escalator”, and also a lift, which came complete with an old attendant with a peaked cap and crimson uniform. There were no buttons in the lift to denote floors and instead this kindly old fellow had his hand on a dial like the one used on the bridge of a ship – full steam ahead, steady astern, etc. – to get it moving. And as it stopped at each level, he would portentously make announcements.

“Children’s wear, shoes, toys … Dining, kitchen and bridal wear … Women’s designer fashion, men’s formal wear …” And so on.

From section to section, Mum invariably seemed to be attended by elderly ladies dressed in black, always with name tags on their impossibly large bosoms. (Yes, I know, but these are my memories, and I can’t change them.) For hours, we’d go to department after department, focusing on socks and jocks but not frocks, shoes but not booze. It was no small thing to clothe and hoof a family of eight, particularly with the older ones going to boarding school. And you could also buy extraordinary things such as new refrigerators, as we did in 1966, to replace our kerosene-operated one. When said fridge didn’t quite work as promised, DJs replaced it, holus-bolus, no questions asked. I told you – they were an institution, and a totally trusted one at that.

But back to the shopping, always the shopping.

To my astonishment, and this was exclusive to DJs, Mum would not have to hand over either cash or write a cheque to pay for the purchases, but had this little plastic card with her name – Mrs Peter FitzSimons – and the DJs insignia on it! This went back to something called “Your account, Madam,” which apparently she and Dad could pay later, something I knew would be a relief to Dad.

Sometimes – when my whinging would become unbearable – Mum would put me in the hands of two or three of my elder siblings to go and watch one of the endless newsreels at the State Theatrette.

Looking back, rotating us through the newsreels might have been the times she’d get one prize Christmas present for each of us, from Santa. (But I can’t be sure. Once, when I asked her how she and Dad managed the whole Santa thing with six kids in the house, she was appalled at the question and wouldn’t countenance even the possibility that he wasn’t real. It mattered nowt to her that at that point I was already old enough to have been sent from the field against the All Blacks for violence.)

For lunch, Mum would save money by not feeding us in the DJs cafeteria on the bottom floor, and certainly not in the restaurant on the top floor. Instead, we’d be gathered once more to go around the corner to the milk bar opposite St James Station where a nice man with a gold tooth would serve meat pies with ’maty source, and actual spearmint milkshakes with scoops of ice-cream! This, too, could shut me up for a bit, I’m told.

When I was still a baby on such excursions, Mum and many women could avail themselves of the Women’s Amenities Centre and Crèche rooms in Hyde Park, on the corner of Park and Elizabeth streets, where bubs could be breastfed out of the public gaze and even left for a short time while the shopping continued.

But now, of course, I was too big for that and …

And mum, when can we go home??

Finally, the day would be done, and we would leave the store – my vision invariably blocked by Mum’s shopping bags, always covered with those curious black-and-white squiggles that were the signature of the store.

Train. Grandpa. Holden. Home.

And there would be Dad, letting out a ritual groan when he found out how much Mum had spent at DJs this time.

As a young one, it never occurred to me that when I got to be a Dad, my own family would not always have a DJs to go to. And yet, as it is, I’ve been to that flagship store no more than three times in the past three-and-half decades of married life, once to see Santa Claus – I knew it! – and if my wife has gone a lot more often, it is still not frequent.

Online shopping is easier, and in any case DJs is no longer the standout store in a group of four or five that it was, but just an old oak tree in a very thick forest of specialised stores. As I write, it is not certain what’s going to happen to the Elizabeth Street store, but one way or another it feels like the end of an era is nigh.

Get a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up for our Opinion newsletter.