Yesterday, Monday, January 5, McDonald’s Campbelltown welcomed back the first locals it served when it opened its doors in Queen Street for the very first time exactly 50 years ago.
On January 5, 1976, Tom McBurney took his family – wife Kay, son Thomas Jnr and daughter Fiona – to the brand new restaurant for a feed of Big Macs and French fries.
As it turned out, the family, who lived in Lindesay Street, had their photo taken while at Maccas and ended up being featured on the cover of the next edition of the Macarthur Advertiser (see pictured below).
Fifty years later, daughter Fiona and her father Tom McBurney (pictured above) returned to the restaurant, which is still in the same location.
The pair got their photo taken with that Advertiser front page, but other than that, surprisingly, there was no fanfare to mark the 50 year milestone.
“It’s amazing to think that after half a century, Campbelltown’s first McDonald’s is still here, in the same location it was so many years ago,” Fiona said afterwards.
“My Dad’s excited that the McBurneys have a claim to fame as part of Campbelltown history.”
According to The History Buff blog, Campbelltown McDonald’s was one of the first McDonald’s restaurants in the Sydney metropolitan area.
When the restaurant opened for business on January 5, 1976, “more than 80 local people were employed to staff the new McDonald’s which was built at a cost of $250,000”, The History Buff said.
The restaurant has undergone many changes over the years, including the opening of a new building on the same site in 2005.
For some years Campbelltown boasted its own Maccas baron, Ken Tagg, who after buying the one in Queen Street – for a rumoured $1 million – went on to establish 10 McDonald’s outlets in Campbelltown and across the Macarthur region.
