Today I drove Ann to the airport for her short vacation in Thailand. In ten days she is hoping to catch up with her two children, Jam and JJ, her sister Noy, her mother, her dentist nephew and doubtless many others. She is also planning to divorce her husband. A full card indeed!

On the way home through traffic-drenched Sydney, I decided to pop into Roselands. Roselands was the original big shopping mall in Australia, dating from 1965. It was such a novel place that people would take day trips there, for never were so many shops and facilities housed under one vast roof before. My family too would make school holiday trips to Roselands, the whole day spent hunting up and down the escalators, running through Grace Brothers (now Myer) and being treated to a lunch at the stupendous Four Corners food court.

The Centre also boasted a raindrop fountain and various sculptures, which were, I think, an attempt to usher Australians into a new cultural awakening. Today, some 40 years after my last visit, I noticed that the fountain and sculptures were gone and that, in spite of some modernization, there was a slightly run-down feel to parts of the building. That's no problem for me - Roselands needs to wear some of the marks of age and a little shabbiness is an antidote to the numbing similitude of so much of the Westfield's project.

Considering how ubiquitous the shopping mall is now, it strikes me as both quaint and remarkable just how much this place was loved, and apparently still is.