Fern Plaza, Ferntree Gully Rd. Ferntree Gully

It's a big place, this, tucked into the hills up there:

I was unfamiliar with Maxi before coming here- it turns out to be a huge unadorned barn of a place, with unlined ceilings and exposed ductwork and very tall shelves piled with a bit of everything. Very different from the same companies kinda snooty Leo's supermarkets, which are located elsewhere in inner Melbourne.
Overall this feels like the kind of place where you can confidently expect to find a sausage sizzle on the go every Saturday morning.

South Yarra Arcade, Toorak Rd South Yarra.

A quiet and somewhat neglected backwater halfway up the hill:

There are a couple of hairdressers, a jewellery store, a milliner's, a cafe that is decked out a bit like the waiting room of a Zanzibar brothel and of course a pilates studio (upstairs). Blonde women stroll through on clacking heels.
Pretty much the entire South Yarra experience in a nutshell. Highly recommended.

Parkdale Plaza, Nepean Highway, Parkdale.

This is a solid, dependable kind of place:

in a nice semi-rural setting. Well, not really, but there are trees. There are also cheap shoes. Lots of cheap shoes, and some booze. You could hock your old X-Box at the Cashie and stroll home in new boots with a six pack of Little Creatures under your arm. Nice.

Dream run.

Mmm. Look at that.

That's a map of the route 742 bus, from Eastland all the way to Chadstone, via Vermont South shopping centre and the mighty Glen in Glen Waverley, with a chance to slip into Centro Oakleigh as well. Talk about travel broadening the mind.

The big one- Chadstone.

Look, explaining Chadstone is probably beyond my abilities and certainly way beyond the scope of this blog. It would take a team of sociologists, demographers and market researchers months to scratch the surface of Melbourne's south eastern monolith. Here's a thermographic MRI scan of the beast:

The only sensible thing left to do with it is to start building apartments on top. Chuck an airport style light rail/people mover around the outside and you would have a suburb that would be the envy of homeowners stuck in places like Sanctuary Lakes and Elmswood. I'm guessing flats above the Prada/Burberry/Tiffany end of things would attract a higher price than those in the Aldi/Kmart/Pet Barn neighbourhood.

That said, I remember when it was a kind of rectangular courtyard, with shops along three sides and gardens, a fountain and a community theatre space along the remaining long side. There was an old-school AMF bowling alley underneath Myers. And it had a Downyflake Donut place, too.
Things were different then I guess:

May need to be revisited at some stage.

Castlemaine.

In Castlemaine, they have a plaza with a name unlike any other I have encountered so far:

They call it the "Mega IGA". That's it. See the sign?
But it does have three liquor outlets and a butchers called Meat Shack, which conjures up some lovely mental images. So it's not all bad.

Sunshine special.

Phew. Sometimes you get more than you bargained for. On the way to check out Sunshine Plaza the other day, I found this semi-derelict joint around the corner:

"City West Plaza"? What? Which city? It sounds like something from Batman.
It was all a bit tired, and the locals seemed a bit put out I was taking photos. Why?

Oooh, probably because some of them had ducked into the Sexy Land on a Saturday afternoon. OK.
ANYWAY, like the fucking Lord of The Rings or something, to get to Sunshine Plaza you first have to meet and defeat Sunshine Marketplace:

Which is absolutely enormous. Like, huge. I think it has one of every chain store in Australia tucked into its sprawling billowing folds. But then again, I didn't actually see a CopperArt in there, so maybe not. But, fear not, across Harvester Road is our destination:

There is indeed a plaza here, quite a large one, too, with an ALDI and a bulk-billing medical centre, and some other pokey little stores which I couldn't quite understand what they sold. The amenity/ambience is pretty dicey, though:

The smell of urine here, at one the main pedestrian entries, was palpable. If you wanted to palp it. Which I wouldn't recommend.