This faded, peeling sign once read ROBUR GOES FURTHER. Now it peaks over a fence in Kingsville, spending its final years watching tradies in utes and mums with prams buzz by, oblivious to it.
The building it clings to began as Owen Ulmer’s fruit shop, hawking citrus and berries to the folks of what was then still West Footscray. Post-WWII, when the suburbs exploded with factory workers and young families, James Reginald Grinter took over the building, turning it into a grocer, likely commissioning this Robur Tea ad.
For decades, Melburnians were defined not only by which footy team they barracked for, but which brand of tea they preferred in their cuppa. If you weren’t Robur, you were Bushells. Griffiths, Glen Valley, and Lan-Choo didn’t have the advertising power of these two tea titans. It was a marketing arms race as these two tea giants tried to out-do the other in a city that drank tea like it was air.
Robur Tea, born in Melbourne in 1891, was plastered on every brick wall, wooden fence, and corrugated iron shed in every corner of the city and its suburbs. They marketed it as a thrifty brew that could help you brave modern life or at least keep you awake during your twelve hour workday in the factory.
But by the time Grinter slapped this Robur ad on his shop, the tea wars had begun to fizzle. Coffee imported from the wave of Italian immigrants and fizzy soft drinks like Tarax and Marchants started stealing market share. By the 1970s, Robur was swallowed by the jaws of globalisation. What was once a symbol of Australian identity became another casualty of the corporate machine, evaporating from shelves as if it had never existed.
This building, like Robur, didn’t fare much better. After Grinter’s grocery, it became a milk bar where kids spent their pocket money on mixed lollies and Sunny Boys. But even milk bars are mostly gone now, replaced by 7-Elevens and chain supermarkets. The world has moved on, but this cracked and fading ad still whispers its defiance: Robur goes further. Maybe once it did. Now it just watches.
