Salvos’ Footscray cafe shuttered after five months because it was ‘too popular’

At a busy intersection in downtown Footscray, the roller door is shut at the former Lighthouse Cafe. The place is stripped bare, with not a chair nor table left.

All that remains of The Salvation Army’s project is a mural on the wall (“Footscray” in electric and ocean blue, painted by the Western Bulldogs’ Cody Weightman), and a sign advising of its immediate closure – after just five months.