Quongs Bakery, Darwin

Quong’s Bakery, under the family’s house in Smith Street West.

The Quong family returned from Queensland to Darwin in November 1945. Very soon they had opened the town’s first post-war bakery, Quong’s Bakery, under the family’s house in Smith Street West. The bakery soon became a great social venue, especially on Wednesday nights when the mail would arrive via Guinea Airways. Businessmen would pick up their mail in the afternoon, head back to their offices to answer the urgent letters and get them ready for the next day’s plane. They would then drop in at Quong’s Bakery on their way home at around midnight and stay there until the early hours of the morning, eating freshly baked bread straight from the ovens and washing it down with whiskey. Eddie sold the bakery just before Cyclone Tracy destroyed the building in Smith Street.

Source: Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory 

Liz Martin, Stories From the Road Museum AUSTRALIA

Quong bakery advertisement

Image Courtesy of: Northern Standard, Friday 22 November 1946, p.4.

The advertisement of Quong's Bakery in 1946. The address was listed as Beetson St (the street name was changed to Smith Street West in 1954). On the advertisement, it was written as' the first civilian bakers to start in Darwin since Blitz, and still first in quality and service'