Brisbane store MCDONNELL & EAST

There's not a lot to say really. It was a department store in George St with a fairly heavy emphasis on clothing. There was a time when it was very fashionable to shop both at Mac & East (as it was known) and George Street more generally, but over the years Mac & East didn't really move with the times and gradually lost market share, meanwhile George Street got overtaken by Queen Street as "the" major shopping street in Brisbane. The closure of Mac & East (about a decade ago?) was somewhat drawn out as I recall, as a lot of people got nostalgic about it and wanted to keep it open (piece of Brisbane's history and all that) but eventually it closed because it just wasn't attracting customers any more.

I recall going there in the early 1970s to be fitted for school uniforms and even then it was past its prime and mainly attracted an elderly customer base who presumably shopped there out of habit. It lingered on for a while with the strategy of offering free parking to anyone who made a purchase, but a lot of people used it to shop elsewhere and made some very minimal purchase there just to get the free parking.

Kerry