Tag Archives: University of Melbourne

Peter Shaw

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The goal of this blog is to combine my personal interests in amongst other things; technology, programming, sports, fitness, finance, and politics. Hopefully my short life story will help you understand how I developed those interests…

Peter Shaw

Peter Shaw

I am the oldest of three children, born in Ballarat and raised on a farm at Dunneworthy near Ararat.

I studied Commerce at the University of Melbourne, and whilst studying played rugby at club and state level.

After graduating I gave semi-professional rugby a go in England. But was frustrated by a broken leg and a lack of talent and after two year overseas I returned to Australia.

On my return I discovered the incompetence of English doctors, they had set my broken leg at 25 degrees. This required another operation. Determined to use my recovery well I taught myself the rudiments of computer programming.

After a short period working back on the farm I finally commenced my official career and i have worked full time in the finance industry since 2001.

During my spare time I have brought together my lifelong interest in sport and politics with my emerging interests in technology and finance. In 2007 I founded LocalHero. A website/application to link local content to local people. It has had several stages but remains an obsession.

In my spare time I like keeping fit by playing sports including touch football and rugby. I am president of Royal Park Touch Association, the founder of the E.M. Shaw Cup, and co-founder of Northen Touch.

Carlton

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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 -

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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 café 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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Further Reading:

Parkville

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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.

Further Reading:

  • Benjamin, Eric, Parkville, Parkville Productions, 1979.
  • Forge, Warwick, The Wade House Case, McCulloch Waterloo Press,1985.
  • Lewis, Hilary, South Parkville, Parkville Association, 1996.
  • Sanderson, W.A., Royal Park, The Victorian Historical Magazine,May, 1932, The Historical Society of Victoria.
  • Uhl, Jean, Mount Royal, A Social History, (Chapter 9), Mount Royal Hospital, 1981.

University – a waste of time?

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“You’ll learn more atop an open stage(coach) ’tween Oxford and Cambridge than from the universities of those fair cities.” –William Hazlitt

People have aked me why I sign my emails with the above quote. For those of you who know little of Hazlitt he was an essayist of Irish extraction with some pretty radical ideas, for his time.

Yet the reason I append the above to my epistles is twofold, admiration for the man more than his beliefs, and a strong belief in the statement itself. You see Hazlitt was that rare thing in the modern age, he was self taught, and whilst I disagree with many of his political opinions, his clear reasoning and assessment of human nature are unparalleled.

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