Fitzroy

Adjoining the eastern boundary of Carlton, 2 km. north-east of Melbourne’s centre, Fitzroy was Melbourne’s first suburb. The eastern boundary of Fitzroy adjoins Collingwood.

The name comes form Sir Charles Fitz Roy, Governor of New South Wales, 1846-1855. Alexandra Parade divides the former Fitzroy municipality into Fitzroy North and Fitzroy South.

In 1839 the area of Fitzroy south of Alexandra Parade was subdivided into lots of about 12 ha. and offered for sale. The area was called Newtown (which tended to extend eastwards into present-day Collingwood), and Newtown subsequently was called Collingwood. Present-day Collingwood was East Collingwood. In 1850 the area now known as Fitzroy was made the Fitzroy Ward of the Melbourne City Council. Three years after East Collingwood became a municipality, a separate Fitzroy municipality was created on 10 September, 1858, by severance of the ward from Melbourne. By then its population was about 10,000 persons.

The layout of streets was mostly in the lands of private subdividers: the government surveyor had prescribed only main arteries such as Nicholson, Brunswick, Smith, Gertrude and Johnston Streets. Building types were a mixture of masonry, timber and prefabricated, a few mansions and predominantly terraces after the gold rushes. Several terraces in Gore Street, Victoria Parade and Gertrude Street are registered buildings.

Early religion and education had a strong Wesleyan component. There were three Wesleyan/Methodist schools (1841,1858,1862) and a church at the corner of Brunswick and Moor Streets (1842). The earliest surviving church is St. Mark’s Anglican, Gore Street (1855), with the Christian Israelite church in Fitzroy Street being only six years younger. Fitzroy’s earliest surviving building is the delicensed Devonshire Arms hotel in Fitzroy Street (1850).

Brunswick Street became the main commercial sector, and Smith Street less so but lying on the route to Heidelberg. The route skirted Fitzroy North, which was laid out in the mid 1850s as a more gracious suburb.

Fitzroy (south) was well positioned for working men’s housing, as they could walk to work locally or in Collingwood, Carlton, North Melbourne or Melbourne. Local work site included flour mills, footwear factories, a brewery, joinery works and timber yards. There were cricket and bowling clubs, but in 1865 football was some time off.

The Presbyterian church opened in 1851, moving along Napier Street to a new building in 1871, and the Mercy Sisters Convent in Nicholson Street was formed around Bishop Goold’s house (1850). Non-church schools began in 1855. The present primary school in George Street dates from 1855. A town hall was built in Napier Street in the early 1870s. In 1875 The Australian Handbook described Fitzroy as -

During the 1880s Fitzroy (south) became increasingly working class. Mansions became boarding houses, and the single men in them attracted prostitution as a local industry. Other local industries included sly-grogging, cocaine dealing and internecine activities between pushes of under-employed larrikans. Coinciding with the descent into unlawful activity the Churches increased the charitable activities, focusing on ragged children, facilities for single women and the relief of distress. Much of the philanthropic initiatives, though, came from organisations outside Fitzroy.

In 1883 the Fitzroy Football Club was formed from the remnants of the local Normanby club. It joined the Victorian Football Association and was one of the break-away clubs which formed he Victorian Football League in 1896. Like the Collingwood club, Fitzroy’s best years were its early ones, winning five premierships before 1914.

In 1886-7 three tramlines were opened through Fitzroy – Nicholson Street, Brunswick Street and Smith Street. The Smith Street route extended beyond Fitzroy’s borders by 1890 and had retail catchments in Collingwood and Northcote. It became a regional shopping strip. Foy and Gibsons, beginning as a drapery business in the 1870s, later became a landmark department store. In 1884 the Fitzroy side of Smith Street had several large furniture emporia. Names lasting until the next century included Clauscens furniture, Treadways drapery and Moran and Cato’s grocery chain. Gertrude, Brunswick and Smith Street were nearly all retail, commercial or licensed premises. Railways, on the other hand, were in Fitzroy North, with a spur line running southwards to near the Brunswick Street oval but not reaching beyond Alexandra Parade.

The Fitzroy council opened a pioneering free public library in 1877. The following year Fitzroy was proclaimed a city and in 1888 it substantially added to the town hall building to provide for the library and a court house. Fitzroy was described in 1893 in The Australian Handbook as -

At about that time Fitzroy’s pre-eminent entrepreneur MacPherson Robertson returned from America to introduce new kinds of confectionery to the boiled-lolly business he had begun in 1880 in the bathroom of his family’s Fitzroy home. The “Great White City” factory for MacRobertson’s confectionery in Smith Street occupied half a hectare by the 1920s. Robertson became a renowned philanthropist, particularly during the Melbourne centenary celebrations in 1934.

In Victoria Parade in 1893 the Irish Sisters of Charity began St. Vincent’s Hospital, which within twenty years became the second busiest in metropolitan Melbourne. One hundred years later it remained in inner Melbourne while several others had been closed or moved to outer suburbs, although the prospect of removal was canvassed in 1997. The Free Kindergarten Union (1908), began with a kindergarten in Fitzroy, and the Salvation army and the Presbyterian church established refuges for women. The impoverishment of the inner suburbs drew philanthropy, and the depression of the 1930s kept it there. The Methodist church’s Frederick Cato, a Fitzroy boy who established his grocery chain’s main warehouse in Brunswick Street, supported the Methodist Mission. The Aboriginal community had support from Pastor Doug Nicholls, who played for Fitzroy Football Club, 1932-37. The Brotherhood of St. Laurence, founded by Gerald Tucker in Newcastle in 1930, began in Fitzroy in 1933 when Tucker took over the Anglican Mission Church of St. Mary. He organised for the relief of distress and declared war on slums.

Tucker’s activity coincided with F. Oswald Barnett’s Slum Study Group, which led to the establishment of the Housing Commission in 1938. Fitzroy’s slum reputation was accompanied by the decline in the shopping areas as central Melbourne (Bourke Street) grew stronger and modern strips were built in newer suburbs.

When the Housing Commission built modern estates in outer suburbs in the postwar years some of Fitzroy’s population took advantage of the new houses. Their places were often taken by postwar immigrants. By 1954 about 12% of Fitzroy’s population was Italian-born; in 1966 33% were Italian or Greek-born, and Australian-born had fallen from two-thirds to one-half. The Italian-born and the population with an Irish background constituted a strong Catholic body. Within ten years, however, the numbers of Italian-born and Greek-born residents had halved and within another ten years they had halved again.

The first Commission estate was the mid 1950s St. Laurence Estate, off Hanover Street. The second was the high-rise block at Brunswick and Gertrude Streets, obliterating several streets of small cottages, mostly built before the more substantial terraces further east, but which would have been acceptable to gentry renovators in ten years time. The high-rise estate’s corner touches a Conservation Area which is on the National Estate Register. Moving up Brunswick Street from the estate there is the number-one store of the Cox Brothers retail empire which failed after the 1960s credit squeeze. Moran and Cato’s massive warehouses remain, but much else of Brunswick Street has been remodelled and redecorated to become an eateries and entertainment strip, picking up from Lygon Street, Carlton, where rents had forced out the zany and the esoteric.

Between 1947 and 1991 Fitzroy’s population fell by 44%, to 17,885. The non-Australian born component, however, moved from 42% in 1947, to a high of 49% in 1966 and back to 40% in 1976 and 1986. The ethnic composition moved from noticeably Italian/Greek to a wider range, with nearly 9% from Asia.

Fitzroy (south) has Catholic primary and secondary schools and a State primary school. Post-primary schooling is confined to the William Angliss College of TAFE.

In 1987 the median house price was 125% of the Melbourne median, and in 1996 it had moved to 175%. In 1997, however, it was reported that 49% of children in Fitzroy were in families on a welfare benefit or classified as working poor. This statistic reflects the long-term existence of people in Fitzroy who are on low incomes and who have experienced social inequality. In the 1970s secular welfare organisations were created – the Fitzroy Legal Service (Australia’s first independent free community legal service), the Aboriginal Legal Service, the Aboriginal Health Service and the Aboriginal Child Care Agency.

Fitzroy has class and ethnic diversity, the Brunswick Street retail and entertainment strip and housing stock ranging from solid bluestone foundations to high-rise estates on concrete columns.

Fitzroy municipality’s census populations were 11,807 (1861), 23,118 (1881), 34,938 (1921), 29,399 (1961) and 17,885 (1991).

On 22 June, 1994, Fitzroy city was united with Collingwood and Richmond cities to form Yarra city. On 18 November, 1993, part of Carlton North had been transferred from Melbourne city to Fitzroy.

Carlton

Carlton is a residential, commercial and educational area adjoining the northern boundary of central Melbourne at Victoria Street. Its other boundaries are Elizabeth Street/Royal Parade, Cemetery Road/Princes Street and Nicholson Street. The University of Melbourne is in the postcode area of Parkville, but is treated here as being in Carlton. The area north of Cemetery Road/Princes Street is Carlton North.

The subdivision and settlement of Carlton came later than that of Fitzroy and Collingwood.. By the gold rush, 1851, two thirds of those suburbs were subdivided, often in a hap-hazard way calculated to maximize profit on the resale of land. When Robert Hoddle, Government surveyor, came to survey Carlton in 1852, care was taken to lay out streets in an orderly grid, with reserves for open space and religious institutions.

His survey was bounded by Royal Parade, Grattan Street, Nicholson Streetand Victoria Street, but with the University provided for in a reserve north of Grattan Street. The churches’ precinct was in Queensberry Street, between Lygon and Rathdowne Streets (Anglican, Free Gaelic and Wesleyan), and one block north in Pelham Street (Catholic). There were no school or hospital reserves, but Lincoln Square, Argyle Square and Carlton Gardens were shown.The two squares provided a distinctly English tone for the new suburb.

Carlton, thought to have been named after the residence of the Prince of Wales, was relatively elevated, and attracted several notable homes. Justice Redmond Barry lived in Rathdowne Street, equi distant between the City Court and the University of which he was the first Chancellor in 1955.

By 1860 Carlton had five schools of which one, in Faraday Street, was a National School (1858), and ran continuously until 1972.

By 1884 there were four government schools: Lygon Street, 1870-1908, Queensberry Street, 1881-1932, Faraday Street (already mentioned) and Rathdowne Street, which was opened in 1884 and is the sole survivor. Four non-government schools closed between 1863 and 1884.

The number of schools is indicative of the size of the local population.Whilst some large homes were built, speculators subdivided blocks of landfor cottages, forming narrow streets and narrower lanes for house frontages,overcoming Hoddle’s vision for a spacious suburb. In any event, the gold-rush immigrants wanted houses within walking distance of their workplaces, many of which were in central Melbourne.

In 1858 one of Carlton’s best known landmarks began. In Bouverie Streetthe North Melbourne Brewery was opened. (The name North Melbourne was appropriatebecause for some years after Carlton was surveyed all the land north ofVictoria Street was “North Melbourne”.) The brewery failed and was sold in 1864 to Edward Latham, who secured the services of a skilledbrewer. Carlton Ale never looked back. The bluestone offices (1864) in Bouverie Street remain, after the brewery site was cleared in the late 1980s.

Other landmarks which began in the 1850s include the Melbourne University(1855), the Catholic Church and St. Georges school (1855), the lying-inhospital (1856 – later the Royal Women’s Hospital), and the land grant forthe Trades Hall at the corner of Lygon and Russell Streets. In 1866 St.Judes Church of England in Keppel Street was built. Nine years later theFree Hospital for Sick Children was opened when it moved from Spring Street,Melbourne, to Redmond Barry’s residence in Pelham Street, between Drummond and Rathdowne Streets. St. Nicholas’s Hospital was built on the site in1899, the forerunner of the Royal Children’s Hospital, Parkville.

In 1864 a local football club was formed and won premierships in 1873-5 among local competition, before the formation of the Victorian Football Association in 1877. The Carlton Football Club was a founding memberof the Victorian Football League in 1897, the year it moved its home ground to Princes Park. It won five premierships between 1906 and 1914 and eight more, including three in its best postwar decade, the 1980s.

In 1878 eight hectares were set aside in the Carlton Gardens for a building for Melbourne’s International Exhibition in 1880-1. The international event was Melbourne’s sixth exhibition, and its grandest. The building with its prominent dome became the venue for exhibitions, motor shows, home shows,the first federal Parliament and countless public examinations for secondaryand tertiary students.

In 1887-8 tram lines were opened along Swanston Street, Elgin Street, Rathdowne Street and Nicholson Street. There was no tram along Lygon Street,but it had substantial rows of shops and commercial buildings.

In 1903 The Australian Handbook described Carlton as -

By the turn of the century Carlton was home mostly to artisans, workmenand small industries. Emigrants found employment and affordable housingthere, and two main groups were Jews and Italians. Jewish residents hadsynagogues in Bourke Street West, Melbourne, and in East Melbourne, butby 1919 their increasing numbers in Carlton brought about a synagogue inPitt Street. It ushered in the peak Jewish population in south Carlton duringthe inter-war years.

Not long after Jewish residents began arriving Italians settled in centralCarlton. Their numbers grew during the inter-war period, and the early postwaryears saw the greatest Italian influence in Carlton. They left or influencedseveral landmarks: Bosari’s Emporium, Lygon Street (1940), the Valmorbidafamily’s grocery shops (Agostinos and King and Godfrees), University Cafe,an early espresso bar (1951) and Toto’s pizzeria, Lygon Street (1966). Italianinfluence came to the fore with the first Lygon Street Festa in 1978.

Another expanding postwar population was students at Melbourne University.The university had had residential colleges since 1871, on an arc of land north of the University granted to the Presbyterian, Wesleyan, Catholicand Anglican Churches, but student digs in low-rent houses were popular.Their presence added variety to the burgeoning cafÃƒÆ’Ã‚Â© life in LygonStreet, several beginning life-time associations with Jimmy Watson’s winebar. (Watson came from an Italian family and bought his wine saloon in 1934,upgrading it to a place of high reputation. Remodelled by Robin Boyd with a stunning white facade (1963), the business is run by the family’s third generation and is commemorated by a premier annual wine trophy.)

The Catholic reserve at the corner of Pelham and Rathdowne Streets becamethe Scared Heart Church (1897). The Lourdes Grotto in its ground was built by Italian craftsmen during the 1940s. Behind the church is one of Carlton’soldest buildings, the bluestone St. George’s school (1855). The site was noted for festivals and processions during the early postwar years. In the late 1980s the property was transferred to Our Lady of Lebanon Catholic Church and primary school, a sign of changing ethnic composition as Italiansfound more spacious residences in Bulleen and other suburbs further fromcentral Melbourne.

Carlton’s southern boundary has three prominent sites facing central Melbourne. The Carlton Gardens, with notable tree-lined paths, and decorative gardens with a fountain fronting the refurbished Exhibition building. Various annexes to the Exhibition were removed during the 1990s and a site at therear will house the new State museum (The Aquarium, a popular commercial annexe, was burnt down in 1953.) Further to the west, there is the bluestone Bouverie Street brewery buildings, beside one of Melbourne’s longest-lasting demolition sites.

Across middle Carlton are University, Lincoln and Argyle Squares, twoof them partly occupied by bowling clubs. Argyle Square fronts Lygon Street,with shopping strips north and south of it. Many shops have been convertedto cafes and restaurants, and the wide road provides a spacious outlookand room for kerbside cafes. The Lygon Court Plaza (1988) has 35 shops innearly 9,000 square metres of space.

North of Grattan Street there are the University, the Royal Women’s Hospitaland a blend of commercial and residential premises. Neighbourhood Macarthurand Murchison Squares make for attractive precincts. The University has spread beyond its reservation, consuming numerous residential and commercial properties.

The north area of Carlton, adjoining Princes Street, is predominantlyresidential. It was once targeted for slum reclamation. By the mid 1960s the Housing Commission had defined 81 ha., bounded by Swanston Street, CemeteryRoad/Princes Street, Nicholson Street and Grattan/Carlton Streets, as appropriatefor redevelopment. Ultimately two high-rise estates were built in Rathdowne and Palmerston Streets.

The Commission’s threatened redevelopment and the prospect of the Eastern Freeway funnelling traffic through Carlton gave rise to the formation of the Carlton Association in 1969. The Association, linked to the gentrification process under way in Carlton, rapidly grew and its intellect and numbersbrought about rapid changes in Government and Council policies. The suburb’s nineteenth century building stock was substantially saved.

Saving Carlton from through traffic was achieved incrementally during the 1980s as traffic barriers and one-way routes were installed.

The median house price in Carlton was 22% above the median for metropolitanMelbourne in 1987 and in 1996 it was 48% above the metropolitan median.

Carlton had census populations of 152 (1861),13,119 (1911) and 17,052 (including 7,977 in Carlton North 1986).

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Parkville

Parkville, a residential suburb in three parts with Royal Park at its centre, is 4km. north of Melbourne. On its west is North Melbourne and on its east is Carlton.

Parkville is situated on a plateau with relatively shallow soils, which made it suitable for grazing but not agriculture. As the plateau is mostly mudstone or non-basaltic material it has not been wanted for quarrying, unlike Brunswick to its immediate north. In about 1845 a reservation for a park or open space was approved by the Governor of New South Wales (after a request for a smaller area by the Melbourne Town Council), extending from North Melbourne to Carlton and comprising 1,036 ha.

The population increases after the gold rushes resulted in severances from the reservation for urban growth, and Royal Park of about 283 ha. was proclaimed. In time further severances occurred: 1858, for an experimental farm of 575 ha. in the north-west: 1861, for a zoological garden of 20 ha., for the Acclimatization Society in the middle of Royal Park;1868, three areas for houses, forming Parkville North, South and West; and 1875, a further area enlarging Parkville South from Park Drive to Gatehouse Street, which enclosed a watercourse which later formed the linear Ievers Reserve.

Parkville South is the largest of the three residential areas, and before its 1861 severance it included land and a showground used by the Port Phillip Farmers Association and Melbourne council markets for horses, pigs and cattle and for hay and corn. The pastoral activity at the south end and the model farm at the north end were linked by grazing and agistment over Royal Park which lasted until the 1920s, keeping up to four dairies going in Parkville.

An early surviving example of a Parkville house (1873) is at 44 Morrah Street, a single storey cottage with an attic. More often,t wo storey terraces or semi-detached houses were built, with considerable moulded and wrought iron decoration. All of the residential part of Parkville South is a Conservation Area under the Register of the National Estate. The balance of Parkville South (i.e. the markets area), was given over toan enlarged University High School (1929), Royal Melbourne Hospital and Royal Dental Hospital (1944 and 1963). In 1957 another severance next to Parkville South was made for the Royal Children’s Hospital, which was opened in 1963.

Parkville South has a few shops along Royal Parade and Naughton’s Hotel is a popular venue for residents and for University students from across Royal Parade.

The University of Melbourne is bounded on three sides by Carlton, but is in the Parkville postcode area.

Parkville North is linear shaped, with Royal Parade as its main frontage and The Avenue as a crescent-shaped western boundary.It contains research, educational and theological institutions, numerous blocks of flats and some notable Queen Anne Federation-style houses.

Parkville West is the smallest of the three, facing FlemingtonRoad near the Flemington Bridge railway station. The surrounding traffic noise was made louder when the area was chosen as the entry point for the Tullamarine Freeway. Fortunately Royal Park provides an expansive “backyard”.

In both world wars Royal Park was a site for Army camps. After the second world war the housing shortage persuaded the Victorian Housing Commission to use “army huts as transit camps”. The settlement at Royal Park was named Camp Pell, lasting for ten years, frequently being used to accommodate families who had been evicted by the Commission’sslum reclamation program. Camp Pell gained a degree of notoriety, with some residents being classed as incorrigible, but communal facilities were scarcely uplifting. By the late 1950s the residents were rehoused in Commission estates at Heidelberg West, Doveton, Preston, Maidstone and Broadmeadows. Camp Pell primary school ran from 1952 to 1956. When Camp Pell closed, Royal Park was free of occupation whether by crowded housing or grazing stock, and Melbourne Council embarked on a program of building ovals, cricket pitches, hockey and netball facilities and a baseball venue in it. A public golf course is north of the Zoo. The north-west corner’s model farm, however, was kept aside for the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories, social welfare facilities and the Mount Royal Hospital and accommodation for elderly persons. Mount Royal’s occupation began in 1878 when it took over a disused Industrial School for children, situated in Royal Park.

Parkville and Royal Park have tramlines along Royal Parade and through the park to Brunswick. A train line also crosses the park, intersecting with the tramline near where a railway station is provided for the Zoo.The train line also had an Inner Circle connection running eastwards toFitzroy North.

Parkville’s median house price in 1987 was 267% of the median for metropolitan Melbourne, and figures at approximately that level have been maintained. The price level signifies the desirability of houses in Parkville, and the regard in which they are held by the residents. This was never more evident than in the 1980s when rear extensions to a house by a well known football player resulted in litigation amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars, ending with the Council granting money to pay the litigants’ costs. The “Wade Case” made town planning history.

West Melbourne

West Melbourne, an industrial, commercial and residential suburb, adjoins the north-west corner of Melbourne’s central business area. The Flagstaff Gardens and the Queen Victoria Market are included in West Melbourne’s postcode area.

West Melbourne is generally associated with North Melbourne, as both were surveyed and proposed for sale at the same time. The dividing line between them, however, is Victoria Street and its westerly prolongation to the Moonee Ponds Creek.

In 1842 the first institution of significance erected in the West Melbourne area was a cattle yard at the corner of Elizabeth and Victoria streets (now the Queen Victoria Market). In 1851 a Benevolent Asylum was built between Abbotsford and Curzon Streets, straddling Victoria Street and thus partly in West Melbourne. The opening of the asylum coincided with the Melbourne Town Council’s overtures for a new township to accommodate the gold-rush population influx. A site for the township was found by severance from an open-space reserve of 1,035 ha. that had been approved by the Governor of New South Wales in 1845. The result was a smaller reserve – now Royal Park – and a township called Parkside which now comprises North and West Melbourne. Town allotments were put up for sale in September, 1852.

The western extremity of West Melbourne’s subdivided area was Adderely Street. Beyond there the land was low-lying, with a lagoon about one kilometre across, into which flowed the Moonee Ponds watercourse and a stream from Parkville which runs through Ievers Reserve in that suburb. The lagoon dried out in Summer, but during wet spells the vista was park-like.

The lagoon and the low-lying land blocked easy access to Footscray and Williamstown, obliging early travellers to ford the Maribyrnong River at Avondale Heights, before punts and bridges were provided. The Dynon or Swamp Road required frequent maintenance for westwards movement. The swamp became a foetid receptacle for waste waters from Flemington, North Melbourne and Parkville, and in 1879 it was drained and filled. The North Melbourne railway yards occupy its northern area. In the 1930s depression its southern area, near the outfall of the Moonee Ponds Creek, was the notorious Dudley Flats, where impoverished people scrounged building material from the land-fill tip to build shelters and huts.

Being on the edge of a booming Melbourne, West Melbourne was quickly inhabited. Presbyterian and Catholic church services began in the early 1850s, and in 1854 the first church was built on the Catholic reserve in Victoria Street. By the end of the 1860s there were also Primitive Methodist, Methodist New Connection, Anglican and Baptist churches. The Baptist church (1866) at Hawke and King Streets (now a small grassed reserve), was for many years one of the most important Baptist congregations in Melbourne. A school was opened in King Street in 1853. It was replaced by a State School in 1875 at the corner of King and Roden Streets. The building is on the Victorian Heritage Register, although the school closed in 1992.

The dominant building in West Melbourne, however, came to be a church, St. Mary’s Star of the Sea, on the brow of a hill in Victoria Street. Built of Barrabool sandstone to a French Gothic design it is a testament to the money-raising capacity of the large Catholic congregation. Built between 1891 and 1900 it came after the presbytery and before the adjoining St. Mary’s co-educational regional school.

The railway yards were completed by the end of the 1880s, providing a significant source of local employment. Flour mills and wool stores were opened, served by railway sidings. The residential component of West Melbourne, however, was mostly displaced by expanding industry on the edge of the central city area, although several row houses and individual dwellings were identified in a conservation study in 1983 as being of significance.

In 1913 an Anglican church was erected in King Street, West Melbourne, opposite the Flagstaff Gardens. It was Melbourne’s first Anglican church, St. James’ Old Cathedral (1842), transferred from the corner of Williams and Little Collins Street. The Flagstaff Gardens are in the West Melbourne postcode area, and are an elevated point which has served as Melbourne’s first cemetery, an observatory, as a telegraph station and a quarry. In 1873 it was reserved as a public garden. In addition to monuments for the proclamation of separation from New South Wales in 1850 and for the old pioneers’ cemetery, the gardens have a bowling club and tennis courts which are increasingly used by workers from city high-rise offices.

Another well-known building in West Melbourne is Festival Hall. It was built by John Wren in 1915 and became metropolitan Melbourne’s main venue for boxing and wrestling. Rebuilt in 1956 after being burnt down the year before, it was the Olympic Games venue for gymnastics and wrestling. In the 1950s and 1960s it became an entertainment centre, with famous appearances including Bill Haley, Frank Sinatra and the Beatles. By the 1990s it had been overtaken by more spectacular venues, but the Wren family remained in ownership.

Although the State primary school closed in 1992 the Catholic school near the Star of the Sea church was enlarged to become the Simmonds Catholic Boys’ college. It constitutes one of four Catholic school campuses in North and West Melbourne.

The Queen Victoria Market west of Queen Street is in West Melbourne, consisting of open sheds, a few shops, a car park and former Market offices. The sheds sell mainly textiles, clothing, footwear, fruit and vegetables. The Market is discussed under Melbourne.

In 1987 the median house price in West Melbourne was 89% of the median for metropolitan Melbourne and in 1996 it was 120% of the metropolitan median.

Flemington

Flemington is an inner residential suburb 4 km north-west of Melbourne, situated between North Melbourne and Ascot Vale. Its eastern boundary is the Moonee Ponds Creek, with alluvial flats that were flood-prone until recent tines, rising to the north-west towards Ascot Vale. To the south-west is the Flemington Racecourse, also situated on low alluvial flats, next to the Maribyrnong River.

Flemington’s name has either of two possible origins. The more likely is from James Watson who early in 1839 came to Port Phillip as a pastoral agent for English and Scottish investors, as well as investing for himself. He purchased land in Flemington and Heidelberg. His wife was Elisabeth Rose, whose father was manager of the Flemington estate in Scotland. (Watson also named his Heidelberg land Rose-Anna, inspired by his wife’s name, and the area later became the suburb of Rosanna.) The other possible origin for the name is thought to be Robert Fleming, who established a butchery on the site later taken by the racecourse. A butchery beside the Saltwater (Maribyrnong) River would have been in keeping with the river’s later use for noxious outfalls.

Flemington racecourse was first used for horse racing in March, 1840. In 1848 the Port Phillip Racing Club took a lease of the racecourse site. The first Government land sales were held in December, 1840.

Flemington is traversed by Mt Alexander Road, the route to the Bendigo gold diggings. In 1851 the Flemington bridge over the Moonee Ponds Creek was built, improving the connection to the gold diggings’ road out of Melbourne. The Flemington Hotel had been there since about 1848. In 1855 the pre-eminent merchant and speculator, Hugh Glass, acquired Watson’s property and built Flemington House, in the vicinity of Mt Alexander Road and Mooltan Street.

In 1859 the western part of Flemington was taken for a new stockyards, to relieve the congested facility at Elizabeth Street, Melbourne. Two years later abattoirs were opened near the stockyard. The move coincided with the opening of the railway line from North Melbourne to Essendon, which ran near the stockyard at Newmarket, Flemington’s commercial centre.

A primary school was opened in 1858 in Mt Alexander Road, next to a Wesleyan church, both on land given by Glass. Down at the bridge several industries were established: a bone mill, soap and candle works, and more hotels were opened along Mt Alexander Road and around the stockyards.

On 25 January, 1862, Flemington was incorporated in the Borough of Essendon, an association which lasted until 17 March, 1882, when the separate Flemington and Kensington borough was created.

In 1876 Flemington’s third large industry was opened (after the stockyards and the abattoirs) on low-lying land: Debney’s tannery, a source of local employment, gave its name to lower-lying land next to it, Debney’s Paddock, later to become a major postwar high-rise housing site.

When Flemington and Kensington borough was created in 1882 it met in a hall at 323 Racecourse Road Newmarket, by then an active area with three hotels but only a few shops. By the turn of the century several churches were opened, friendly societies were formed and the hotels continued active trading. Newmarket was “racehorses, drovers and dogs.”

In 1906 tramlines were opened along Mt Alexander Road and Racecourse Road (Newmarket), a year after the borough was united with Melbourne city. (The Melbourne council had taken over the stockyards in 1898.) The borough’s town hall in Bellair Street, just off Newmarket, had an independent life of only four years, but it continued to be a social centre for years to come, housing a free library and providing meeting rooms.

In 1910 the Glass property was sold, having been vacant for some tine. (When Glass died in 1871 his widow had remained on the property.) The owner, John Madden bred horses for export to India, and he renamed the house Travancore, after the Indian state. In 1924 the property was subdivided, creating the Travancore Estate (with Indian street names), and space for the new Flemington primary school. Travancore House (demolished 1947) became a special school, the land down near Debney’s tannery became a land-fill tip for thirty years, providing a breeding place for rats and venue for tip-scratching during the depression years. Occasional floods from the Moonee Ponds Creek still carried in frogs to nearby houses.

The land-fill area was partly taken in 1957 for the Debneys Park high-rise flats which were erected within ten years, adding over 4,000 residents to Flemington. A primary school was opened in 1975 (relieving the Flemington Primary School), and a high school opened in 1965. A girls’ high school opened in 1966, replacing the Domestic Arts School which occupied the original school site in Mt Alexander Road (1858), and subsequently became the Debney Park secondary college.

By the 1950s Flemington received influxes of European migrants, the largest group being Italian. St. Brendan’s church and school, always a landmark, was well attended. The smaller St. Stephen’s Presbyterian church, with its attractive spire in the post office precinct, at Newmarket, was burnt down in 1970.

As the postwar migrant families moved out of the Flemington cottages they were bought by people wanting inner-city living, but at prices which became less affordable as demand strengthened. Travancore, with pre-war art nouveau flats and larger Californian bungalows, had always commanded better prices, and property values moved accordingly. Whereas in 1986 the median house price in Flemington was 87% of the median for metropolitan Melbourne, in 1996 it was 118%.

Flemington has open space at its extremities, along the Moonee Ponds Creek and in Debneys Park, and in a corner near the racecourse. There is local shopping in Newmarket, and the most convenient regional centre is at Puckle Street, Moonee Ponds. Flemington remains best known for the racecourse. In years past optimists owned or had a stake in horses hopefully destined for a Melbourne Cup win. The blend of blowflies and air borne manure on a day with a hot northerly seldom disturbs Flemington in the 1990s. The drovers and dogs went when the last muster was held at the stockyard in 1985.

Flemington and Kensington had a census population of 1,291 in 1861. Estimated populations were 1,811 (1883), 4,825 (1886) and 9,069 (1890). Flemington had a census population of 6,109 in 1911.

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