Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings Debut Spotlight feature. For December that debut is Melbourne Ghost Signs by Sean Reynolds (Scribe), a beguiling photographic collection of the faded signs and half-hidden logos of Melbourne, revealing the historic tales—big and small—of this ever-changing city.
Melbourne Ghost Signs originally started as an Instagram account that now has nearly 30k followers! What do you think draws people to these iconic images?
It’s a pretty strange thing for me to have stumbled into becoming an Instagram local oddball (or celebrity if you want to call it that!). I think part of it is obviously nostalgia, which is a very powerful thing, a powerful drug. People love to see the milk bars they grew up with, the brands that they may or may not know have faded away and finding things from our youth that are now ghost signs. I know for me personally, I’m surprised that any time I see something about video hire—something that I grew up with that meant so much to me as a kid and young adult—is now a ghost sign. That’ll make you feel old!
But nostalgia’s not everything with what I do. I think one of the reasons that it’s resonated with people so much is that there’s a bit of archaeology to it in a way. I kind of dig up the past and the signs are not just ghost signs—they’re ghosts with signs. They have these stories that are buried beneath them, so I dig those up and add a dash of poetic storytelling. Everyone loves stories and Melbournians love stories like they love their caffeine or their bánh mìs, so that’s been something I’ve been able to tap into.
What surprises me the most about it is this feedback, this connection, this weird communal link that my posts create—[with] all these strangers from across Melbourne and beyond. So it’s not just about me sharing, it’s about all of us finding something that resonates, something real within these stories and behind the signs. It’s a bit of treasure hunting, it’s storytelling and story sharing, and it’s a good way to remind ourselves that even forgotten things deserve their moment in the spotlight.
Can you tell us about your journey to publication—what made you decide to turn this project into a book?
When my Instagram started to gain traction, I thought maybe this could be something like a book—something real that people could hold in their hand, they could feel the weight of it, they could flip through the pages of stories and [have] a good look at some of these signs. So the idea was always kind of there and I thought about self-publishing for a while. Then in 2022, Scribe Publishing actually came to me and said ‘How about it? Let’s make a book!’, and I said ‘Absolutely! This will be so easy. I’ve got the photos, I’ve got the signs—I’ll just package it all up together and we’re good to go.’ Of course nothing is never that easy, and I was incredibly foolish to think that it would be. I ended up re-writing the book about four times. I started to look at the photos and think, these aren’t my stories, I’m telling other people’s stories. I wanted to put my best foot forward, so I went out and re-shot a good majority of the signs for the book. I wanted this to be the best version possible otherwise it’s not worth doing.
Melbourne Ghost Signs is like a beautiful time capsule of this ever-changing city. What do you hope readers will take away from the book?
My hope is that when people crack open this book, they don’t just flip through the photos or skim through the stories—it’s not like scrolling on your phone, this is something substantial that you can sit there and hold. I kind of want this to hit them, to make them stop and look around and really see this world that they’re living in: its layers of history, its remnants of past lives that were here before any of us. There are these markers that are baked into the bricks of the buildings around us, and you have to slow down and notice them—that’s what I’m hoping people do after they’ve read this book.
There’s a deeper thing here too. Every sign and every story is a reminder that we’re all living our own epic tale. We’re the heroes of our own weird little narratives and just stumbling through this messy thing that we call life. There’s a beauty in that—the way that there’s extraordinary stuff in the ordinary of everyday life—you just have to look for it. So if this book does anything, I hope it shakes people awake to know life is layered, it’s complex, it’s completely absurd sometimes and it’s stubbornly beautiful. Every day it feels like there’s nothing happening, but everyone has a story, and I think there’s a real beauty in that, and the signs kind of represent that.
Can you tell us about your favourite Melbourne ghost sign? (Or favourite story behind a sign?)
People love to ask me what my favourite sign is! It’s kind of like that desert island scenario: if you had to just pick one crumbling piece of Melbourne’s history to take with you on this desert island, which would it be? I am a sucker for Robur Tea—it lived, it died, it thrived here in Melbourne from about the 1890s to the 1980s, so about 90 years. I actually love it so much that I have a tattoo of Robur Tea. The beauty of these signs is that they started out as advertisements and now they’re monuments to these lives and businesses that once were these cornerstones of the city and suburbs we live in.
Sean Reynolds in front of a Robur Tea ghost sign.
Some of my favourite stories are not the obvious ones—I like the weird ones. For instance, there’s an undertaker sign in Windsor. When I started to look up the story behind it, the guy who was the undertaker was not this buttoned-up funeral director that you’d expect. He was a lively, footy-loving St Kilda fan who played music and embraced life. A funeral director who loved life—to me that’s the kind of contradiction that’s amazing. We think of history as this static, stale thing, but it’s actually very layered with these incredible stories.
The other kind of stories that I really love are ones that shift things away from the white male majority that we see in history books or statues. Women’s stories like Miss Myra Watson who owned her own motor garage in the 1920s. At a time when just owning a car itself was seen as a luxury, you have this woman who owned her own business. Her ghost sign is in my book; I think that’s a really incredible story. Another one would be Anne Dowd Delaney Harrison who ran a string of hotels in Footscray in the mid-1800s until she was horribly betrayed by her husband. So it was a heartbreaking story, but these are the tale I love; they’re messy, they’re complicated and they’re very human. That’s kind of the pulse behind the paint. These people’s stories make the past feel alive. I think that’s an interesting and beautiful thing.
What is your favourite Australian photography book that you’d like to recommend to our readers?
We are incredibly lucky here in Australia when it comes to photography books. There’s Signs of Australia by Brady Michaels and Dale Campisi, which is kind of a love letter to old buildings, ads and faded Australiana which I really enjoy. There’s the work of Warren Kirk who has captured a lot of the mundane, suburban, Australian tapestry of life that we have in the suburbs which really tells a story. And of course, I’m sure many of you have heard of Old Vintage Melbourne by Chris Macheras that has been a huge success (also by Scribe Publishing).
For me, the story that I would pick would be Gus Berger’s The Lost City of Melbourne. Gus also made a documentary of the same name which is a haunting tribute to the Melbourne of the past that was buried, bulldozed and obliterated back in the day in the name of progress. It’s a beautiful book, a beautiful documentary. It’s infuriating, it’s heartbreaking and if you really love Melbourne you owe it to yourself to crack this open and let yourself feel that sting, that punch—it’s an important thing.
You can pick up a copy of Melbourne Ghost Signs at your local bookstore today.
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