campbelltown’s downtown plaza took a deliberate step into its own past on March 5, 2026, just after 11: 00 am ET when Mayor Darcy Lound unveiled a photographic collage titled Living History. The mural honours the Downes family and the shopping centre they established in 1951, a retail focal point on Queen Street that predated later developments and, for decades, drew the town’s shoppers to its storefronts and a downstairs supermarket.
Campbelltown mural location and legacy
The mural board was installed in Downtown Plaza opposite the entrance to the Campbelltown City Library, which occupies two floors of the premises much as Spotlight did previously. The display explicitly recognises Rex, Clive and Bryce Downes, the three brothers who opened what became the town’s oldest continuously run shopping centre in 1951, and it was unveiled 75 years after that founding.
Representing the family at the unveiling, Derek Downes — second-generation Downes family member — reflected on the family’s intention to invest in regional New South Wales and on the role the stores played in the town’s life. He said, “The family wanted to open stores in regional NSW, and in those days that pretty much what Campbelltown was – even though things started to change in the 1970s. ” Derek added that the Downes name remained widely recognised and that continuity of stewardship had been a priority.
Deep analysis: what the mural reveals about local commerce
The mural functions as both a tribute and a localized historical marker. It ties a single retail brand to a broader timeline: a 1951 founding, prominence through mid-century decades, and a decline of Queen Street as a retail hub by the 1980s after other centres opened. The photograph-based collage places the Downes presence alongside institutional shifts in the plaza itself — a library replacing other tenants and a change in building ownership roughly a decade ago.
That arc — foundation, prominence, and transition — explains why the family’s memory remains a civic touchstone. The mural’s placement opposite a two-floor municipal library suggests a civic reframing of commercial memory: private retail history is being preserved as part of the public realm, reinforcing the plaza as a site of collective memory rather than solely commerce. The presence of a former supermarket beneath the Downes store, operating before Coles and Macarthur Square arrived, anchors the mural in a tangible retail ecology that the town has since reconfigured.
Voices at the unveiling and next steps for the site
Campbelltown Mayor Darcy Lound performed the official unveiling. The event gathered a compact but diverse group of people connected to the building and its history: Jamie Zois, who purchased the Downes building with his father about 10 years ago; Michael Chalker, who ran Chalker’s Music in Downes Plaza for decades and represented the Campbelltown Historical Society at the ceremony; real estate agent Darren Zammit; veteran Councillor Meg Oates; and Councillor Khaled Halabi, a long-time tenant of Downtown Plaza and one of the more recent council members.
Derek Downes recalled a serendipitous reconnection that helped bring the project to life: “I met Darren Zammit four years ago, he put me in touch with Michael Chalker and it’s great we’ve been able to talk about where we’re going and there’s someone who can continue the tradition, the family name in Campbelltown, because a lot of people still recognise the name of Downes. ” Chalker’s role in coordinating the celebration and his symbolic gesture of bringing a small Tardis to proceedings underscored a community-driven approach to curating local history.
As a public acknowledgment of a privately built shopping tradition, the mural reframes the Downes legacy as a shared asset. It also signals a continuity of stewardship: building ownership has changed hands, but the family name and memory remain in the town’s public spaces, inviting further conversation about conservation and reuse of historic commercial sites.
Will this photographic mural become a catalyst for broader recognition of Campbelltown’s retail history, and what steps will local custodians take to ensure that the story it tells is kept visible for another generation?
