Living Rock Aquarium & Tailoring

The Campsie/Canterbury area where I live is highly multicultural and burgeons with the enterprise of immigrants. Earlwood shops cover every facet of the bridal industry: bombonerie, page boy & flower girl outfitters, florists, solariums, manicurists and businesses offering deluxe wedding photography and video packages. It also has two serious Greek Tavernas. Campsie has halal butchers and Turkish coffee and nut shops, Vietnamese bakeries and Fijian grocers as well as purveyors of saris, sushi, kebabs, Indian spices and DVDs and twee kids' fashions from Taiwan &Hong Kong.

Canterbury Road specialises in appealing to renovators and petrol heads with most automotive services offered, car dealerships inBMWs, minis and Japanese imports and three car seat cover businesses. It has lighting, plumbing and tile emporiums aplenty and shops selling both new and second hand furniture.Ausland Furniture is not, as I first thought, a store specialising in furniture for the deaf, but one that sells the flashy bedroom suites and gigantic ceramic leopards beloved of some of our middle eastern neighbours.

However, by far the most original experiment in commerce on Canterbury Road was Living Rock Aquarium and Tailoring where in a single visit you could be measured for a bespoke suit and pick up a couple of guppies for your lounge room tank. This combined business lasted for about two years until piscatorial supply nudged out budget couture and we now need to go a bit further to get a pair of pants altered. The tropical fish business has also relocated but the sign proudly announcing this bold entrepreneurial venture remains. See photo below (we have enhanced it a bit).

We are abject - we can no longer order a suit and top up our aquarium at Canterbury's one-stop supplier of tailoring services and tropical fish.

Post script: If you go looking for the original Living Rock Aquarium & Tailoring sign you will be disappointed. It was painted over a week after I posted this!