BREAKING: Shire Residents Demand Return of Miranda Fair’s Giant Red Star — “Our Eiffel Tower, Our Statue of Liberty, Our Soutjh Star.”

Finn Seabrook | Local Correspondent | Sutherland Shire Gazette

28 November 2025

MIRANDA - A full-scale cultural uprising is underway across the Sutherland Shire as locals call for the reinstatement of Miranda Fair’s iconic red star - the glowing rooftop beacon that once guided generations home like a suburban GPS with emotional range.

For decades, no matter where you lived in the Shire — the salt-sprayed east in Cronulla or Kurnell, the deep south in Engadine or Heathcote, or as far west as anything beyond the Woronora Bridge — the rule was simple:

If you could see the star, you could find your way back to Miranda. And if you could find Miranda, you could find home.

Without it, residents say the region has plunged into navigational anarchy.

“Before smartphones, all we had was the star,” said one Woolooware dad. “You’d crest a hill, spot that glowing red orb and think, ‘Right. Motherland is that way.’ Now? Chaos. Confusion. People drifting aimlessly into Caringbah when they never meant to.”

The star, once perched proudly atop the rooftop carpark, acted as the Shire’s unofficial compass — a landmark so theatrically unnecessary yet deeply beloved that many now describe it as “our Eiffel Tower” or “the Statue of Liberty if she were 80% Perspex and occasionally flickered.”

Shoppers say its removal has turned the Miranda carpark into a lawless concrete tundra.

“I walked 47 minutes looking for my Mazda last week,” said one Engadine resident. “Back in the star era, I’d just point myself toward the glow and spiritually align.”

A petition demanding the star’s return has already gained thousands of signatures, including multiple who admit they simply “don’t have the cognitive bandwidth in December to remember which level I parked on.”

Westfield has declined to comment, though insiders claim management is considering a “modern digital replacement,” which residents have already pre-emptively rejected as “soulless and offensively efficient.”

As one Kurnell local summarised while gazing wistfully toward the horizon:

“It wasn’t just a star. It was community. It was orientation. It was hope… in LED form.”