We went to Highpoint Shopping Centre, 120-200 Rosamond Road, Maribyrnong, fairly regularly growing up, since it was much bigger and better than our local Werribee Plaza, now Pacific Werribee, ever was. It was always the west’s answer to Chadstone, never quite as big or as fancy, but a lot faster to get to from where we lived. Toys “R” Us, the arcade, the cinemas, the video game stores, that was the real drawcard. I don’t get out to Highpoint nearly as much these days though, Pacific Werribee has picked up a lot of the same stores over a couple of rounds of renovations and expansions, so there’s less reason to make the trip. But Highpoint still holds some great memories from the 90s and early 2000s, the kind of place people from all over Melbourne still look back on fondly, not just people from the west. I’ve already written about my own memories of the place, but once I started digging around online I realised I’d barely scratched the surface. There’s a whole layer of old Highpoint that I either never saw, was too young to remember properly, or just plain forgot about until someone else brought it up.
So I went looking through r/melbourne threads where people had been swapping Highpoint memories for years, and between all of that, a bit of my own digging, and some great old photos people have shared, here’s everything I could piece together about the old Highpoint we all grew up going to.
Highpoint West under construction, crane still up.
The Footscray Advertiser’s front page from 30 July 1975, previewing the $12 million opening.
The History of Highpoint Before It Was a Shopping Centre
Before any of this, the site was a working basalt quarry, operated by the City of Essendon from 1910 until it closed in the late 1960s. An anti-aircraft battery also sat up here during the Second World War, protecting the nearby munitions works at Maribyrnong and Maidstone. The 50-acre site was sold off in 1971 for $1.85 million, and Highpoint West opened on top of it just four years later, well before I was even born. My own memories only really start in the early-to-mid 90s, and that’s where most of the focus of this piece sits, but I’ve included some of this older trivia for anyone reading who’s older than me and remembers this era firsthand, it’s not something I can speak to with much confidence myself.
Myer not long after the 1975 opening.
The original Target store around opening.
What Highpoint Shopping Centre Looked Like in the 1970s
Before any of the specific shops and rides, it’s worth just looking at what the inside of the place looked like. Terrazzo floors, timber panelling, hanging light fittings, and shoppers dressed like they were heading somewhere formal rather than just picking up groceries.
A climbing sculpture near the Commonwealth Bank branch.
Brashes and Edements.
Suzanne and the famous escalators.
Going to Highpoint as a Kid
Once I was old enough to actually remember any of it, going to Highpoint was a proper family outing, usually with my mum, my sister, and my grandmother, and it always felt like a special treat compared to our own local Werribee Plaza. Once Toys “R” Us started running Pokemon League, that became a near-weekly fixture for as long as it lasted. Lunch was almost always in the old food court too, right near the fountain and its statues.
The Old Highpoint Mini-Golf Course and Arcade
The desert and cactus section. The cinema board in the background lists Three Musketeers, Backdraft, and Assassins, putting this in the early-to-mid 90s.
This one comes up in nearly every thread about old Highpoint, and it’s clearly the single most missed thing about the place. There was a proper mini-golf course down in the basement level, roughly where the cinemas are now, and by the sound of it, it was a genuine Saturday night hangout for a lot of people, not just a kids’ thing. One commenter described it as their regular spot for mini-golf, slot cars and pool, with a pub and a TAB opposite it. Someone else mentioned a friend who works on the cooling system at Highpoint had seen bits of the old mini-golf equipment still sitting in storage years later, which is a strangely nice thought.
The tropical section, palm trees and hole 12.
I remember it strongly myself, though mostly from above, I used to look down at the course from the floor upstairs, and the cacti and the mannequin of a man in a golf cart have stuck with me more than the actual golf. I’m honestly not sure if I ever played a proper round down there or not, I must have at some point, but looking down at it is the clearer memory. I don’t remember playing on the pirate ship either, though I can vaguely picture it existing.
The train track in the distance and the iconic golf mannequin.
Down there with it was an arcade, and the one machine I remember clearly myself was the crocodile game, known properly as Crocodile Panic or Gator Panic, the crocodile-whacking cabinet where the croc heads slide out sideways rather than popping straight up like they do in a regular Whac-A-Mole. It was made by Namco and first released in Japan in 1988, so by the time I was playing it at Highpoint it had already been around the arcade circuit for the best part of a decade. My whole family used to gang up on it together, all of us hitting specific crocodiles at once to rack up way more tickets than the machine was ever meant to give out, a proper bit of family teamwork in service of some low-level cheating. Other people remember this arcade as Playtime, which apparently later became a Timezone, and it’s still trading under the Timezone name today.
Not the actual prize, just an example of what a plasma globe looks like. These are cheap and easy to buy online now, though the one pictured is likely smaller than the ones on offer at the time. I want to buy one for my kids….
The real dream prize behind that ticket counter was always the plasma globe, one of those glass spheres with the electric filaments swirling around inside when you touched it. It was priced well out of reach for the amount of tickets I ever managed to rack up. Lava lamps were the other big want at the time, though you didn’t need an arcade’s worth of tickets for one of those, they were also just sitting on the shelves at shops like What’s New.
Running alongside the mini-golf course was a miniature train ride that circled the whole area. A few people in these threads had convinced themselves they’d imagined the little train until someone else confirmed they remembered it too.
I actually managed to track down proof all of this existed, straight from Highpoint’s own website. An archived version of the site from June 2000 advertised something called the Funtastic Fun Pack, six dollars for a ride on the carousel, a ride on the train, half an hour at a kids’ play area called Kidmania, a game of billiards, a ride on Cinemotion at Hoyts, a game of mini-golf, a kids’ video game at a store called Video Game Play, and a kids’ meal at the Pancake Parlour. So the arcade’s official name in that June 2000 archive was Video Game Play, though by a later archive of the site from August 2003 it seems to have been going by Playtime instead, which lines up with what other people remember. Either the name changed at some point, or it went by both depending on who you asked, and Kidmania is a completely new one to me either way, a whole separate kids’ play area I clearly never made it to. People online have since confirmed it, a proper play centre for kids under 12 on the bottom floor, and it was apparently located where the JB Hi-Fi on Level 1 is now.
The Picasso Fountain and Statues at Old Highpoint
The fountain and its Picasso-style face.
I mentioned the food court water feature I remembered, and this is exactly the one, a fountain with what people describe as a funky, almost Picasso-esque sculpture built right into it. Like every fountain of that kind, people used to throw their coins in, and I always had my eye on them, though I’m fairly sure I never actually worked up the nerve to fish any out myself. Some people thought it was the similar looking, but different, statue at Southbank once it was removed during renovations, though that’s not actually the same piece.
There was also a fountain near Target that other people remember fondly, plus a merry-go-round somewhere near the McDonald’s in the food court. Between the golf course train and the merry-go-round, Highpoint in the 90s sounds like it had more rides than some regional showgrounds.
The same fountain and food court, wider view.
A 2003 archive of Highpoint’s own food and dining directory backs up at least one specific memory from earlier, a kebab shop called Ali Baba, which matches what one Reddit commenter remembered too, just with the name spelled slightly differently, and I remember it myself as well, so that one’s properly confirmed. That same 2003 list also includes Finnegan’s Irish Pub, which I’m fairly sure was on the ground floor near the mini-golf course. Finnegan’s was still on the store list as late as 2008, so it clearly had some staying power.
The same spot today, now an indoor playground.
The space the fountain used to occupy has since become the indoor kids’ playground shown above.
The Old Highpoint Drive-In Cinema (1955 to 1990)
Before Hoyts had its own cinemas at Highpoint, there was a proper drive-in just across the road, on Rosamond Road. It opened as the Sunset Drive-In on 28 July 1955, was taken over and renamed the Maribyrnong Hoyts Drive-In in 1967, and finally closed in 1990, a year after Hoyts’ own 10-screen cinema opened inside Highpoint itself in February 1989. The old drive-in site was eventually demolished and is now a Homemaker Centre.
Cinemotion: The Old Motion Simulator Ride at Hoyts Highpoint
An actual voucher ad for Cinemotion at Hoyts Highpoint.
Before Highpoint’s Hoyts had the Director’s Suite, it had something called Cinemotion, a motion simulator ride where the seats moved along with a short film, space battles, dinosaur chases, that sort of thing. People remember the marketing for it running for what felt like forever before it actually opened.
Not Highpoint, just an example of the kind of motion simulator experience Cinemotion would have been.
Reviews of the actual ride itself were mixed, some found it properly thrilling, others thought it started fine and then got a bit much towards the end for something that was over in a few minutes and cost about the same as a real movie ticket. Our own local cinema growing up was Village at Werribee Plaza rather than Hoyts, so the two chains running different promotional tie-ins for the same films was something I noticed even as a kid.
Toys “R” Us at Highpoint: Pokemon League and Childhood Memories
The Highpoint store during its 2018 closing down sale. Screenshot credit to a YouTube video documenting Toys “R” Us stores as they closed down.
Toys “R” Us was the actual main event of most of my trips to Highpoint, not really an aside. My best friend at the time, Anthony, and his little brother would head straight for Pokemon League to earn promo cards, and I’d usually tag along, while our two mums and our little sisters went off for coffee and to buy Beanie Kids at Kenny’s Cardiology. Looking back, we were completely unsupervised for a fair stretch of each visit, and nobody seemed to think twice about it at the time.
I liked the video game section of the store just as much as the card game side of things, and I’ve got a hazy memory of eventually picking up a couple of extra Pokemon League badges from a separate, older video game store down in the basement, after the official Toys “R” Us League events had already stopped running. My best guess is that whoever ran that little store had just been given the leftover promo stock once Toys “R” Us wound the events down, and was quietly handing it out to anyone who asked.
Star Wars figures were a regular purchase there through the mid-90s too, especially once the Special Edition re-releases hit cinemas in 1997 and demand ramped up again ahead of Episode I in 1999. I also picked up a few Nintendo 64 games on clearance at Toys “R” Us, they’d occasionally run some great deals on old stock once newer titles came in. There was also a photo kiosk in store for Pokemon Snap, the N64 game where you photograph Pokemon rather than battle them, that would print your best in-game shots onto little sticker sheets, a clever bit of tie-in merchandising for a game that was really just a glorified photography sim.
Toys “R” Us itself, which was apparently still fully staffed and operating as late as 2012, closed for good on 5 August 2018 when the whole Australian chain wound down following its parent company’s collapse. I’d originally wondered if the Highpoint store might have shut earlier than that on its own, but the closing-down photo above confirms it went under alongside every other Toys “R” Us in the country, not before. I actually stopped going to Highpoint as often once we got our own Toys “R” Us at Pacific Werribee, I’ve never grown out of buying toys, so having one locally meant a lot fewer reasons to make the trip out west.
Toyworld and Zig Zag: Old Highpoint Toy Stores
Before Toys “R” Us properly took over the toy market, there was apparently a toy store near one of the Myer entrances that people remember as either Toyworld or Zig Zag, sitting alongside a small cluster of arcade machines. Considering Toyworld and Zig Zag were both run by the same company at the time, and both chains lost significant ground once Toys “R” Us and World 4 Kids arrived in 1993, it tracks that a store like this would have quietly disappeared from Highpoint not long after.
Jazzies and What’s New: Old Highpoint Shops We Miss
A What’s New storefront, same purple and yellow branding throughout the chain.
A couple of smaller shops keep coming up as background detail to bigger nights out at Highpoint. Jazzies was the definite go-to for lollies before a movie, and it was located right by the cinemas themselves, back when the cinemas didn’t sell much beyond popcorn and drinks. My guess is that once the cinemas started running their own pick n mix lolly counters, that was probably what killed Jazzies off, there’s not much reason to duck out to a separate shop for lollies once you can grab them on the way into the session. What’s New was a gift shop remembered for its Garfield telephones and neon signs, magic 8 balls and fibre optic lamps too, exactly the kind of shop that felt exciting purely because of what was sitting in the window, and it also stocked Beanie Kids alongside Kenny’s Cardiology, so it might have been where my sister actually got some of hers.
The Old Disney Store at Highpoint Shopping Centre
A Disney Store interior, likely not the actual Highpoint store but representative of the vibe.
This one lines up with what I remembered myself. People describe a magical little shop, with a giant pile of plush toys sitting in the middle of the store that you could dig through. It’s a small detail, but it’s the kind of thing that sticks in a kid’s memory more than the actual stock on the shelves.
The ABC Shop at Highpoint: Nickelodeon Merchandise Memories
Not to be confused with the Disney Store, there was also an ABC Shop at Highpoint, the retail arm of the actual national broadcaster, stocking merchandise for ABC and Nickelodeon shows of the era. This is where I used to linger over the Aaahh!! Real Monsters toys without ever quite talking anyone into buying me one. It’s a good reminder that Nickelodeon and ABC merchandise had proper dedicated retail space in shopping centres back then, rather than just being something you found in the toy aisle of a department store. It was still on Highpoint’s own store list as late as 2008, so it clearly stuck around for years after my own visits. That same 2008 list also has a Teach ‘M’ Toys, which sounds like it might have been a later, more educationally-branded successor to Toyworld and Zig Zag in the toy store lineage, Starshots Glamour Photography, a portrait studio that was apparently still going strong that year too, and Australian Geographic, which we’d duck into occasionally, more of a browse-and-leave kind of shop than a regular stop.
The Sand Bottle and Rice Necklace Cart
One of the more oddly specific memories that turned up was a cart, somewhere on the lower level, selling colourful layered sand bottles and glass necklaces filled with fluorescent liquid, with your name hand-written on a single grain of rice inside. If you’ve never seen one of these, they were a genuine novelty item at shopping centres and fairs throughout the 90s, and by the sound of it, more than one person still wishes they’d kept theirs. I do remember it myself, though it was never really my kind of thing at the time. What strikes me more now, looking back, is that you just don’t see those little novelty kiosk carts around shopping centres anymore at all, sand bottles, rice necklaces, or otherwise.
The Old Spiral Ramp and Staircase at Highpoint
A later evolution of the same spot, staircase and glass lift.
The same corner today, now a cafe and seating area.
Before the lifts went in out the front of Myer, there was a burgundy-coloured spiral ramp connecting the car park to the upper level. Multiple people remember it specifically because kids would roll a ball, or occasionally an entire pram, down it. According to Wikipedia, this section of Highpoint dates back to the original 1975 build, so that ramp was there from close to day one.
Centre Stage: Highpoint’s Live Music and Celebrity History
Centre Stage packed out on both levels, the oldest of these three photos.
There was a proper performance stage inside Highpoint at one point, hosting live music and events, and it’s confirmed as a genuine Highpoint fixture rather than something I’d mixed up with another centre. It was officially on Level 1, and also referred to as the Highpoint Stage depending on the event. I honestly don’t think I ever actually watched anything happening on it myself, though I definitely passed by it plenty of times on the escalators heading up or down to Toys “R” Us, which was on the level above. One local described it as the spot for band performances and meet-and-greets with musicians early in their careers, and Santa also used to set up there every Christmas. The stage itself is actually still there today, it’s just been remodelled a few times over the decades, so it looks nothing like it did back then.
Once I started digging through Highpoint’s own archived news pages, it turned out Centre Stage was a massive deal for a good chunk of the early 2000s, on the level of what you’d expect from an actual entertainment venue rather than a shopping centre foyer. In 2001 alone it hosted signing and performance appearances from Bardot, Sugababes, Vanessa Amorosi, Human Nature, Blue, and Nikki Webster, along with Tina Arena, who a Reddit commenter had already told me they remembered seeing there. That same year, Santa arrived by helicopter, was escorted in by Humphrey B Bear, Maisy, and the Maribyrnong Highland Pipe Band, and settled into a purpose-built Christmas Palace for a full stage show called the Highpoint Christmas Starblast, starring Debra Byrne among others. Meet-and-greets with cast members from Home & Away also happened right there on Centre Stage. Former Australian Idol contestant Ricki-Lee made her own appearance in January 2006, not long after her run on the show’s first season.
The following year kept up the pace with Star Search heats running most weekends through winter, plus appearances from Shakaya, TaxiRide, and even a live Kung Fu demonstration from the Shaolin Monks. Not everything happened on the stage itself either, cricketer Mark Waugh did an in-store appearance at Angus & Robertson, world boxing champion Kostya Tszyu turned up at Rebel Sport, and a band called The Hammerheads, probably a local act rather than anyone nationally known, played an actual gig inside the What’s New store. By 2006, Star Search was still running as an annual competition. That same July, there was also a full Barbie “Dreams Come True” live stage show. October that year was especially stacked, with the cast of sketch comedy show The Wedge appearing live on stage on the 20th, radio and TV personality Matt Tilley bringing his Gotcha prank segment in store the next day, and American pop singer Jesse McCartney performing live at Highpoint on the 31st.
A JB Hi-Fi Presents performance, Fox FM branding on the stage skirt, Safeway signage placing this well before the Woolworths rebrand.
By December 2006, the Christmas programming had grown into an almost absurdly packed schedule spread across what was by then being called the L2 Living precinct, a newer part of the centre added at some point after the original Centre Stage era, with evening performances and roving daytime entertainment running most days for the whole month. The following January, Highpoint also ran a nice little community fundraiser called Design-A-Brick, where anyone could donate two dollars to design their own brick at Centre Court in front of Centre Stage, with the money going to Western Health for hospital equipment across Footscray, Sunshine, and Williamstown, and the finished bricks later paved into the L2 Living precinct’s streetscape. It’s the same basic idea as the personalised bricks in the pavement near the Werribee River, or the fence posts at Presidents Park in Werribee with my name and my sister’s name on them, that kind of small-donation, name-on-something fundraiser for public spaces was everywhere at the time.
There was also a giant swimming pool at one point, or at least the illusion of one. In early 2002 the centre court area was transformed by Garry Donnellan, a local artist working out of Iconoclast Sculpture Studio, into a giant painted mural designed to look like a swimming pool, created as a work in progress over several weeks before being donated to charity for auction.
Going back further, an archived version of the Highpoint site from April 2000 has British pop singer Tina Cousins, who’d had a top-10 hit in Australia a couple of years earlier with “Pray,” playing Centre Stage on 14 April that year. David Hamilton’s Puppets, a touring children’s puppet show rather than a household name, performed there twice daily for most of the following week, and a Parenting Services Expo took over the surrounding Level 2 and 3 area for a stretch earlier in the month. In 2003, Highpoint was also used to promote that year’s Formula One, with a Kmart Holden Racing Team V8 Supercar and a Jaguar F1 car on display, and at least one visitor claims to have met Mark Webber and Greg Murphy there on the same day.
That Formula One promotion wasn’t a one-off either, an early February 2003 events page has a whole “Grand Prix Action” promotion running for four days at Centre Court, complete with a driving simulator, more F1 cars on display, and celebrity appearances timed to lead into that year’s Australian Grand Prix. The same month had Channel 10 running a Superstars of Summer promotion with branded Kombi vans parked outside the Riverbank food court entrance handing out McDonald’s vouchers, and another Country Food & Wine Expo back on Centre Stage with proper cooking demonstrations. Guy Sebastian and Rove McManus both made appearances that December too, Guy Sebastian’s timing checks out particularly well, since he’d only just won the very first season of Australian Idol the previous month. Highpoint also hosted Steve-O from Jackass in March 2004, right around the peak of the franchise’s popularity.
A later Highpoint-branded portable stage setup, placeholder until I find a proper current-day shot.
People have also since told me about a whole run of WWE meet-and-greets that used to happen on the bottom level through the 2000s, which I had absolutely no memory of myself. Mick Foley signed there in 1999, John Cena and Torrie Wilson drew a line that reportedly snaked around the whole of Level 1 and the car park for a WrestleMania Revenge signing in 2005, Beth Phoenix appeared around 2006 or 2007 near where JB Hi-Fi is now, and CM Punk and Kofi Kingston both signed on the same day in 2011, Kofi’s appearance was apparently at Big W rather than on Centre Stage itself. One person also mentioned still having an album poster signed by Destiny’s Child and a DVD signed by John Cena from these same appearances. On top of that, Angry Boys, Chris Lilley’s TV series, filmed a concert scene for the character S.mouse on the old Centre Stage, with at least one local roped in as an extra on the day.
Highpoint’s 1993 Smoking Ban Controversy
Here’s one from well before my own time at Highpoint. In December 1993, The Canberra Times ran a story about a regular Highpoint shopper named Merryn Wild, who’d suffered wheezing fits she attributed to passive smoking exposure at the centre, and threatened legal action over it. She specifically mentioned her nine-month-old daughter Phoebe being susceptible to the same kind of reaction. Highpoint’s manager at the time, Neville Mathews, confirmed they were investigating a full non-smoking policy for the entire centre the following year, and Wild’s solicitor, Eugene Arocca, called it out as strange that smoking centres would set aside non-smoking zones at all when a passive smoker couldn’t avoid the rest of the venue anyway. It’s a striking early example of a shopping centre being pushed toward a smoke-free policy well before that became the norm everywhere.
Being Robbed at Highpoint Shopping Centre: A True Story
Not every Highpoint memory is a good one. Around 2007, when I was about 19, my friend Chris and I were the kind of nice, helpful guys who thought we were doing the right thing by stopping when a group asked us for directions to an ATM outside the centre, before it became clear what they were actually after, I think they were hoping to get us to withdraw money for them, but we were poor, unemployed uni students at the time, so there wasn’t much to get out of us that way. It turned into a minor robbery instead, the group of six to eight teenagers demanded cigarettes, and when we didn’t have any, one of them told me to hand over my iPod or he’d break my earphones. They also roughed Chris up a bit in the process, he ended up battered and bruised, nothing serious, but we did want to show the marks to police that day. The group were white, likely a mix of Italian and Greek background, not black, which I mention because people so often assume crime in the area is committed by people from African countries. Since the earphones were already basically done for at that point, I just disconnected them and let him take those instead, I kept the iPod itself. They patted us down looking for cigarettes as well. I still remember, almost twenty years later, that “Misunderstood” by Razed in Black was playing in my ear right as it happened. The whole thing happened directly in front of a security camera, and I remember walking back to the exact spot with security afterwards to show them it was clearly in view of one. Walking around with security guards like that was oddly embarrassing in itself, anyone who saw us probably assumed we were the ones who’d done something wrong.
What I remember almost as clearly as the incident itself is how useless the response was afterwards. Highpoint’s own security staff told us they couldn’t review the footage without police instruction, and weren’t sure themselves how to actually get to the nearest police station. The random shop staff we asked were no better, none of them were from the area either, so nobody could point us in the right direction. This was 2007, so neither of us had a smartphone to look it up. We ended up reporting it at Werribee police station instead, well outside their jurisdiction, and nothing ever came of it, looking back, it’s pretty poor that they never even forwarded the complaint on to Footscray so the footage could actually be reviewed. Chris is a police officer himself these days, and I’d like to think he gives people a more useful response than we got that day. This kind of thing, low-level teen crime paired with security that couldn’t do much about it, is a big part of why Highpoint picked up nicknames like Knifepoint and Lowpoint over the years. It also kept me away from the place for years afterwards, that day left me with a real phobia of Highpoint for a long while.
Rebel Sport’s Basketball Giveaway
When Rebel Sport opened at Highpoint around 1995, it apparently handed out full-sized basketballs to shoppers, with the queue reportedly stretching well past the store itself. Considering how big a deal branded giveaways were at the time, that’s a clever bit of opening-day marketing.
Borders Bookstore at Highpoint: A Fond Farewell
Inside a Borders store, the kind of layout the Highpoint location would have had too.
For anyone too young to remember, Borders was a big American book and media chain that had a run of large, multi-level stores in Australia through the 90s and 2000s, the kind of place with proper couches for reading, a massive magazine section, and usually a CD and DVD department alongside the books. I loved going to Borders stores on trips to the US as a kid and teenager, it was a great shop, and it’s a shame the Highpoint one is long gone along with the rest of the Australian chain. The Highpoint store also had a Gloria Jean’s set up inside it, which was a pretty standard pairing for Borders locations around the country at the time. It went into administration in the US in 2011, and the Australian stores, which had been run separately for a while by that point, closed not long after. Borders also hosted a lot of author signings and events over the years, though none of the specific names that turned up in my research were ones I actually recognised, so I’ve left them out rather than list a string of names that won’t mean anything to most readers. Borders wasn’t even the only bookshop at Highpoint either, an Angus & Robertson also hosted its own author signings there over the years, and Collins Booksellers and Dymocks both show up on later store lists too, so at various points Highpoint had as many as four different bookshops trading at once. One person online had a fond memory of their entire family signing up to Borders’ mailing list under different names specifically to rack up multiple sets of discount coupons before doing their Christmas shopping there, though I doubt that particular trick would work on anyone these days.
Old Highpoint Electronics Stores We Miss
The same atrium, dressed up for Christmas on another occasion.
A 2006 store list gives a good snapshot of just how much shelf space Highpoint gave over to electronics and entertainment retail at the time, Dick Smith Electronics, EB Games, Ezy DVD, Game Rush, Godfreys, Geek Central, JB Hi-Fi, Radio Rentals, Sanity Music, Strathfield Car Radio, Ted’s Camera Store, The Shaver Shop, and Video Ezy were all trading at once. I really miss this era of electronics retail, that wide range of separate specialist stores made an actual trip out of it, there was a thrill to hunting around for a good deal across half a dozen different shops. Most of that range has since compressed down into small departments inside EB Games or JB Hi-Fi, which is convenient, but it’s taken a lot of that thrill out of the hunt.
The Pancake Parlour’s Giant Teacup
There’s apparently a giant teacup-shaped piece of decor that used to sit inside the Pancake Parlour at Highpoint, along with a large wall mural, and going by how many people specifically remember it without being able to find a single photo of it anywhere online, it sounds like exactly the kind of restaurant decor from that era that nobody thought to actually document properly at the time. Honestly, I have trouble telling my memories of the Highpoint Pancake Parlour apart from the one in the city, both were far better themed than any newer Pancake Parlour I’ve been to since, better novelties, better decorations, the newer ones feel comparatively plain.
Kenny’s Cardiology
One of the older skylight-covered strips.
My sister used to buy Beanie Kids dolls, Skansen’s Australian answer to Beanie Babies, from Kenny’s Cardiology, a cards, gifts and variety franchise that’s been operating in Australian shopping centres since 1986 and is still around now.
Peppermint Planet Club
Highpoint also had its own kids’ club, called Peppermint Planet Club, run out of the Level 2 and Level 3 information desks with free offers and giveaways for members, per that same June 2000 site archive mentioned earlier. I’d completely forgotten this existed at all until I saw it come up there.
Highpoint’s American Express Card
The modern equivalent of that same strip today.
Here’s an odd one. That same June 2000 site archive has Highpoint billing itself as the first shopping centre in Australia to offer its own co-branded American Express credit card, complete with an 8.95% introductory rate for six months, a 15.50% standard rate after that, and the first year’s card fee waived.
Build-A-Bear Workshop at Highpoint: One of Victoria’s First?
How dramatically the roofline has changed from the 70s and 80s original.
Build-A-Bear also had, and still has, a store at Highpoint, and going by how much space it took up on the old archived versions of the site, constant event listings and new doll design announcements, it seems to have been treated as one of the more important locations in the country for the brand. Build-A-Bear’s actual first two Australian stores opened in Sydney in late 2004, at Bondi Junction and Castle Hill Towers, so Highpoint wasn’t literally the first in the country, but it was probably one of the first in Victoria.
What’s at Highpoint Shopping Centre Today
A lot of what’s listed here disappeared well before the centre’s big 2013 redevelopment, and even more of it has vanished since. The old food courts have been rebuilt more than once, the mini-golf course is long gone, and Toys “R” Us closed for good back in 2018, as covered above. Honestly, most of the specifically fun stuff on this list, the mini-golf, the rides, the arcade, the novelty carts, is gone entirely now, replaced with the kind of fashion and homewares tenancy mix you’d find at any large centre. Highpoint today is bigger, glossier, and by most accounts a fair bit less charming than the version so many people are still trying to find old photos of.
These days there’s not much drawing me back to Highpoint specifically. Pacific Werribee covers most of what I actually need now. Highpoint does still have a few things Werribee doesn’t, a proper LEGO Certified Store, Toymate, which markets itself as Victoria’s biggest one-stop toy shop, and an Apple Store for whenever my phone starts playing up. Outside of visiting one of those or trying my luck hunting down modern toys at the big box retailers, I don’t really have much reason to make the trip anymore.
If you’ve got photos of any of this, especially the Pancake Parlour’s teacup, I’d love to see them. And if I’ve got any of the above wrong, or you remember something that isn’t on this list at all, let me know and I’ll update it. If you want to go digging yourself, Highpoint’s old interactive centre guide from 2004 is still sitting there on the Wayback Machine, well worth a browse.
