Crump Lane

You are in Crump Lane – named after Crump General Store.

Opened in 1904 by John Crump, the Crump General Store was a prominent Dandenong business which sold everything from groceries to crockery, drapery, clothing and hardware.

Although the store front was in Lonsdale Street, this lane was a bustling hub of activity where goods were loaded and unloaded at the rear of the store. The lane accommodated many businesses, including one Dandenong’s early horse coach-building businesses and the mortuary of JW Garnar’s Undertakers.

Known as ‘The Popular Store’, Crumps prided itself on the exceptional quality of its goods with war time advertisements stating the ‘never once in that trying time has it deviated from its high-quality standard.’

A handy feature of Crump General Store was its horse stalls where customers could leave their horses while they shopped in town.

After Crumps death the store operated by his son, Albert Crump, with the help of his wife Hazel. In those days there was no cash register and no refrigeration – butter and other perishables were stored in a cellar. Their daughter Betty remembers ‘learning to ride a bicycle between the bags of flour and stock feed in the store’.

A large billboard once adorned the wall at the entrance to Crump Lane – it advertised films at the local Boomerang Theatre and notified people of events taking place at the Dandenong Town Hall.

The site occupied by Crump General Store later became McEwans Hardware.

In the early 1990s McEwans Hardware stores in Victoria and South Australia were bought out by Bunnings and later West farmers Limited.