High Street Memories: Shaun Micallef on growing up in Clovelly Park, Adelaide

Comedian Shaun Micallef left Adelaide for Melbourne in 1994 as a 31-year-old lawyer looking for a change. And while he’s spent 30 years living in Melbourne since, he’s the first to admit when the weather presenter comes on the TV screen, he glances at Adelaide on the map first – an instinctual move of course.  

His parents still live in the house he grew up in – located in Clovelly Park. It’s here he spent his childhood with three younger sisters. A two-kilometre walk away was South Road; it holds fond memories for Micallef who frequented the strip with his mother.  

A trip to Four Square – a New Zealand supermarket co-op that made its way to Australia in 1952 – is where they’d go for a weekly shop in the 1960s.  

From an old-school butcher, to the immigrant barber who cut his hair, to a second-hand bookshop Micallef purchased books from until he turned 19, it’s still a very nostalgic trip down memory lane when he drives past these days.   

It’s at Four Square on South Road that he won the “happiest baby” competition aged two – making the local newspaper at the time.  

“I outclassed my peers for the first time. It was the start of my career as the golden child of South Australia,” Micallef says. 

Micallef aged two, with his mother at the local Four Square store in Adelaide, where he won a “happiest baby” competition. Picture: Supplied

While South Road is a long strip that runs for 115 kms, in the 1960s, it wasn’t a major thoroughfare it has become today.   

“South Road isn’t normally considered a high street, but it’s the major arterial route as you head out of town,” explains Micallef.   

“As good a town planner as Colonel William Light was, he did not anticipate the post-war baby boom and the sprawl toward the southern suburbs in Adelaide.

“This is a big fat road, and not the sort of one you would wander down with your children now, but the area I lived in is where Mum and Dad set up house when they got married. I was born in the early ’60s and it wasn’t unusual to not have a car, we’d get to the street on foot and Mum would take me to Four Square to get all her requirements. They were a supermarket chain with two shops either side of it,” he recalls.  

It’s where Micallef learned how to count change watching the shop keepers dish out the coins to his mother for each transaction made.  

“There weren’t any bank notes; you could get what you wanted using coins most of the time,” he says. 

A road safety game from the 1960s from the Four Square shop in Adelaide, kept by Micallef. Picture: Supplied

Micallef recalls the introduction of the decimal currency in 1966. As a four-year-old already attending school, he was given sixpence a week pocket money. 

“The plan was to save up what I could, but Mum recalls me objecting to the sixpence becoming five cents at the time because in my mind, one penny went missing.  As a result of my arguing as a six-year-old, I got an extra cent coin with my pocket money,” he says. 

Much of his saving were spent at the local second-hand book shop, and some of those treasured books still hold a special place on Micallef’s shelf at home in Melbourne.  

In his new book, Slivers, Shards and Skerricks – which he launches at the Wheeler Centre on October 31 – his comic work nods back to many titles he collected at this store over the years.  

From old Dostoevsky novels including The Idiot and Crime and Punishment to works by American humourist SJ Perelman – who Micallef attempts to write like in his new anthology – he dips into the rhythm and language of the past that not only nods to this bookshop’s place in his life, but sees Micallef spend time with some of his favourite writers of the past while writing his own tales.  

Shaun Micallef’s memories of South Road, Clovelly Park

The barber

I often went to the barber for a haircut. There was a barber’s pole out the front with his name John on the window. It actually said JOHNS with no possessive apostrophe. Around the age of 10 I realised that technically there should be two Johns who work there.  John was an immigrant like my dad and his English wasn’t great. He had no idea what I was talking about, but he humoured me with my query. It was me being pedant at a young age. Back then I could get a haircut for 20 cents or two shillings. 

The butcher

The butcher was next door to the barber – a really friendly guy and a contrast to John. He was a big, round and a ruddy faced guy always in a bloodied apron which should alarm a child thinking back now. He would give me a slice of fritz – it’s a South Australian delicacy made with blended meat trimmings.  I assume he made them on the site and they’d be a special treat no matter what mum bought from there.    

The baker

By the age of 10, mum let me walk down South Road to buy bread on my own. I would eat bits of it on the way home; it looked like a bird had a go at it. With three sisters back at home, a loaf of bread didn’t last long. I would eat my share on my way home. You could buy day old bread back then which was five cents cheaper than fresh bread. I’d pocket the difference to buy myself some lollies for anywhere between 2 and 5 cents.   

The fish and chip shop

In the 70s I spent a bit of time at this local fish n chip shop buying dinner to bring home for the family. I was 12 when I started going there. One horrifying thing about that shop was the zapper that killed insects situated right above the fryers. One stinking hot day, a large beetle got electrocuted and fell in the chip fryer. I was concerned but didn’t let on. I continued to wait for our five battered fish and minimum chips for 25 cents back then. One of my sisters was very keen on eating the chip that was most cooked – that dark crispy chip which I suspect was a large beetle. I haven’t let on until now. 

The second-hand book shop

I still have books on my shelf at home in Williamstown from this shop that no longer exists on South Road.  I often went there in the first 20 years of living in Melbourne, to wander down the strip and give Mum and Dad some peace.  I would often buy something because I love old books. This shop was a great comfort to me. The store sign simply read: Second Hand Books.  

Where does he go when he visits now?

I do get back to Adelaide often to visit Mum and Dad who are still in the same home from my childhood.  It’s cream and red brick with a massive tree out the front.  Sadly, the Four Square store isn’t there anymore – it’s been replaced with an adult shop and the carpark is long gone too. There’s lots of abandoned buildings, a few churches and a graveyard now. The blinds and furnishings shop my parents shopped at called Burns For Blinds is there by way of a ghost sign. 

I do drop into Barnacle Bill Seafood to get Mum and Dad some lunch. It’s their favourite spot, and while it’s not the fish and chippery, it’s what they’re happy with.