Roselands Shopping Centre

Roselands Shopping Centre is a medium-sized shopping centre in Roselands, a suburb in south-western Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Opened in 1965, Roselands was the largest shopping centre in the Southern hemisphere for years, even though it is quite small by today's standards.HistoryConstruction of Roselands Shopping Centre began on 9 June 1964, on the site of the former Roselands Golf Course . Cost of construction at the time was A$15 million.Roselands was officially opened on 12 October 1965, and at the time it was the largest shopping centre in the southern hemisphere. The centrepiece of the new centre was a large Grace Bros. department store. It also contained Australia's first "food court", known as "Four Corners" themed to represent food from the four corners of the world, a rain-themed water feature and a cinema .A major incident occurred at 4.30pm on 13 June 1969. A large fire broke out in the Grace Bros. store which caused possibly millions of dollars worth of damage before it was extinguished. The fire started on the top floor, which was a 'temporary' type of structure to allow for further floors to be added later. There was a lot of timber in walls on the top floor, and most of it was storage and reserve areas, so rarely used by staff. An electrical fault in a pillar on the 2nd floor in the soft furnishings department was apparently the start of the fire. It was quickly extinguished, but unknown to staff it had spread up the conduit to the floor above, where the huge bedding department storeroom was located. By the time people realised the fire had spread upstairs, water in the sprinkler system had boiled and the fire was out of control. Most of the damage was caused by water seeping down through the concrete floors below. The fire was contained to the top floor, which was completely destroyed. The following morning the lower ground floor of Grace Bros was over ankle deep in dirty water, and as this was the electrical and major furnishings floor, everything was a total write off. The clothing floors were also severely damaged by water, The ceiling tiles all became saturated and collapsed onto the racks below, wetting and staining much of the clothing.