A lot of things happened in 1938 that you'll find in any history book. Howard Hughes set a record for an around the world air flight. 91 hours, a bit longer than Chris Hadfield's 90-odd minutes in the ISS, but let's not quibble. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves had its full commercial release.
But of course the biggest stories of 1938 featured the antics of a psychopathic Austrian corporal and Prime Minister Neville "Oh s**t, I'm out of my depth" Chamberlain and his promise of "Naivety For Our Time".
What you won't find is anything on the creation of a small motor dealership in an obscure suburb in the northern region of Wollongong. And yet this place saw out the departure of the aforementioned corporal, the introduction of the jet age, the space age and the swing from wild enthusiasm for it to almost total apathy about it, Korea, Vietnam, the 60's counter culture, the rise and relative fall of television, the rise and rise of the Internet and computerisation... everything that has transformed the world of 2014 to a state which would be all but unrecognisable to a person teleported here from 1938.
The Pembers management attributed the demise of the business to a decline in sales of cars. Weeelll... yes and no. Vehicle sales increases are not going gangbusters but based on ABS figures they've been trending nicely upwards since 2009, at least in NSW. So what has changed? Ah, the Internet. According to another dealer the margins have been sliced razor thin by people being able to shop around on line. Profit on the sale of a new car could be as little as a few hundred to a thousand and a bit because people no longer need to phone around or cover endless kilometres hunting down a bargain. They just go on line and say "Hey, BigDealer is offering me the same model for only $x." You match it or you lose it, and with it the possible flow on from dealer servicing. However out of the meagre amount you still have to pay rent / council costs / salaries and wages / council rates / power and other utilities. For a small dealership in a relatively obscure location, this can mean death. In July this year, it meant exactly that for Pembers. 76 years saw them see out Hitler, but not Tim Berners-Lee and the Internet.
Of course it's a jungle in the business world, and always has been. But there's always a human cost to this, in this case 11 livelihoods that have disappeared.
The sign at the far end of the yard, which unfortunately you won't be able to read in the 1000 pixel image PBase image, reads "Don't Pass Us Buy". It's partly clever and partly pleading, but not enough to make a difference.
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Addendum from the year 2023: I found a web page with a bit more context about this, from an article originally published in the Corrimal Post newspaper in October 1997. The Corrimal Post only lasted 1 year according to Wikipedia, 1997 to 1998. That was a hell of a time to get into newspapers with the Interwebz just starting to kick in.
Apparently the business was started by Hec Pember, a skilled mechanic who opened a garage at this site though it doesn't say when. By 1961 he was the British Motor Corporation Limited (BMC) dealer for Wollongong; Austin, Healey, MG, etc, since most cars in those days were British or British based. The business passed on to his son when he retired. By 2014 the business was selling Fiat commercial vehicles, as well as cheap Chinese cr@p. The first is fine, the second... probably didn't help matters.
After the site was sold it was turned into a Pacific Furniture and Bedding store, which opened in May 2016.
