Hume and Hovell, explorers, recorded the Aboriginal word “jillong” in 1824, thought to mean land or cliffs, when they came to Corio Bay. The name “Geelong” was derived from the Aboriginal word, and was given to the area by Governor Bourke in 1837 when he visited Port Phillip and also formerly named Melbourne and Williamstown.

In June, 1835, John Batman crossed Bass Strait from Tasmania and claimed treaty lands from local Aborigines. The western boundary of Batman’s treaty land included Geelong.

Seventeen months later two of Geelong’s earliest settlers, John Cowie and David Stead, came from Tasmania to the Geelong district to depasture sheep. The Manifold brothers landed sheep at Point Henry two months later. Early in 1837 a pioneer Geelong citizen, Dr. Alexander Thomson, settled at the future Geelong suburb, Belmont, and established his Kardinia estate overlooking the Barwon River.

In 1838 the shipping activities caused a customs house to be erected. It has survived as probably Victoria’s oldest building – a round portable structure – and is in the Geelong Botanic Gardens. A town survey was made and land sales were conducted in February, 1839. The Woolpack Inn (later Mack’s) was opened in 1839 and the “Geelong Advertiser” began publication the following year. St. John’s Presbyterian church was opened in 1841. The sandbar blocking access past Point Henry was successfully passed over, and cargo movements were henceforth shared between Point Henry ad the Geelong waterfront.

During the late 1840s churches and schools were established and local industries such as flour mills, tallow works and vineyards were established. The Geelong town council was incorporated in October, 1849.

In the year before the gold discoveries at Ballarat and Bendigo the first Bright and Hitchcock’s store was opened. (It became a Geelong landmark until acquired by the Foy and Gibson’s chain in 1959.) The opening of the goldfields greatly increased Geelong’s maritime activity, not least because the inland route to Ballarat was flatter than the one from Melbourne over the Dividing Range. Outwards traffic also increased with wool from the Western District pastoral properties. The rapid growth also brought Geelong’s second major retailer, Morris Jacobs, whose store was also a landmark until acquired by Myer Melbourne in 1950. Geelong’s population went from 8,000 in 1851 to 22,000 in 1853. It thereupon stabilised, not reaching 30,000 for another sixty years.

During the late 1850s some of Geelong’s notable institutions and buildings were created: Geelong Grammar School and Geelong National Grammar School (later the Matthew Flinders Girls’ Grammar) in 1858, the Town Hall, Market Square, the mechanics’ institute, and the railway connection to Melbourne was opened. In the municipal sphere Geelong’s future was curtailed like Melbourne’s, with the creation of closely adjacent road districts and suburban councils – South Barwon and Bellarine/Indented Head roads districts, Newtown borough (1858) and Geelong West borough (1875). The resulting patchwork became the obvious first candidate for municipal reform in 1993.

In 1860 the Geelong football club won its first local premiership. The year after, one of the club’s notable players, Charles Brownlow, was born. His first year as a player was 1879, and he captained the team in 1884 and coached it from 1892 to 1917. He is commemorated with the Brownlow Medal for the competition’s best and fairest player. Geelong played a pivotal role in the growth of football, and was called the Pivotonians until the 1950s when the name was replaced by the Cats. (The Pivotonians came from Geelong’s rail and port role as a pivot for Western District Commerce.)

Geelong’s third notable educational institution, Geelong College, began in 1861. It was headmastered by the father of George (Chinese) Morrison.

During the late 1860s and the 1870s woollen mills, a meat preserving works and a brick and tile company were opened. The Barwon Paper Mill was opened near Fyansford in 1878, which was also the year when serious infestations of phylloxera were reported in the Geelong district’s extensive vineyards.

The Geelong mechanic’s institute fostered a technological school in 1869, which evolved to become the Gordon Technical College (1887) as a memorial to General Gordon of Khartoum. Extension of curricula led to it becoming the Gordon Institute of Technology (1921) and expansion to a campus at Waurn Ponds (1971), later Deakin University.

In 1894 a better seafaring lane across the sandbar was created with the Hopetoun Channel. Just before the formation of a harbour trust for the Geelong port, The Australian Handbook (1903) described Geelong –

Geelong town became a city on 8 December, 1910 and electric trams began running in 1912, but the first world war and the years immediately after it were a quiet period. Between 1922 and 1925 Geelong’s future industrial growth began: three woollen mills, Cresco fertilizers and the Ford Motor Company’s vehicle plant near Corio. The Corio whiskey distillery (1928) and the Geelong Advertiser’s radio station 3 GL (1930) were opened. In 1938 one of the last Port Phillip Bay steamers, Edina, (Edina?) made its final trip to Geelong, ending a romantic period of seaside excursions and contests for the fastest trip., On the eve of the second world war the International Harvester Works were opened beside Ford, and a grain-elevator terminal was built at Corio Quay.

In the postwar years Geelong entered a glorious period of growth. Successive football premierships (1951-2) were won and local cyclist Russell Mockridge, won two gold medals at the Helsinki Olympic Games. Population growth was rapid as postwar migrants settled in new suburbs. The Shell Oil Refinery opened at Corio in 1954, and the on-rush to modernity saw retail takeovers from Melbourne and the closure of the electric-tram services. The Alcoa aluminum refinery was opened at Geelong’s pioneering landing place, Point Henry, in 1963. Between 1947 and 1965 greater Geelong’s population went from 58,400 to 101,600 persons.

The rapid development beyond central Geelong resulted in small old industrial premises becoming under-used or abandoned. The mixed-use core of Geelong, with a network of lanes for access to small subdivisions and loading yards, became anachronistic. Urban consolidation for redevelopment overtook older areas, much like inner Melbourne underwent site consolidation during the 1960-80s. Market Square was developed in 1985, adding a department store, supermarket and 95 shops. Three years later in the adjoining block to the north Bay City Plaza was built with a department store, discount department store and 82 shops. The two sites added 45,200 square metres of retail floor space to Geelong, bringing it to over 160,000 square metres.

The Geelong city council boundaries extended from Rippleside at the western end of Corio Bay, along Western Beach and Eastern Beach and ended at Eastern Park, just beyond Limeburners Point. Eastern Beach with breakwater jetties and a swimming enclosure are the most notable amenities. Easter Park contains the Botanic Gardens, which have numerous rare exotic trees, sports facilities and the Geelong High School (1910). There are several foreshore reserves, smaller reserves, Johnstone Park beside the town hall and art gallery and Kardinia Park at Geelong South, home of the Geelong Football Club since 1940.

Geelong’s commercial and retail centre runs along the Moorabool Street spine of the town’s 1838 survey. The waterfront end contains several wool-export and commercial buildings which are suitable for refurbishment. The Dennys Lascelles warehouse (1872) Moorabool Street, became the National Wool Museum in 1987. The retail heart runs along the east-west little Malop Street pedestrian mall, adjoined by the redeveloped Market Square.

Immediately south of the commercial area there are three Catholic educational institutions and St. Mary of the Angels church, the Matthew Flinders Girls’ Secondary College, the Swanston Street primary school (1871-1993), the South Barwon Secondary College (formerly Geelong Technical School, 1913) and the Geelong Hospital (Kitchener memorial Hospital, rebuilt 1922).

Beyond these institutions is Geelong South, served by a railway station near the Kardinia Park football ground, Kardinia Park also has netball courts, a swimming centre and an elderly citizen’s club. There is a neighbourhood shopping area and a reserve beside the Barwon river. Further around the river there is the industrial area of Breakwater, which adjoins Geelong East. The Breakwater railway station is near the Geelong racecourse and showground (1907).

Eastern Beach and swimming pool (on Victorian Heritage Register). (Valentine photographic booklet, c.1947.)

Eastern Beach and swimming pool (on Victorian Heritage Register). (Valentine photographic booklet, c.1947.)

Over thirty buildings and structures in the former Geelong city are on the Victorian Heritage Register. Notable among them are seven warehouse/commercial buildings, Christ Church (1843), St. John’s Lutheran Church (1841) and the old post and telegraph offices, in addition to those previously mentioned.

The median house price in Geelong in 1987 was $62,250 and in 1996 it was $104,000.

On 18 May, 1993, the Geelong city (13.4 sq. km.) was united with Geelong West and Newtown cities, three shires and parts of two shires to form Greater Geelong city (1,252 sq. km.).

Geelong municipality’s census populations were 16,613 (1861), 9,721 (1881, Geelong West severed), 14,805 (1921), 20,034 (1954) and 13,036 (1991).

Western Beach and Corio Wharves, postcard, c.1909.

Moorabool Street, showing Bright and Hitchcock’s store, (Rose view folder, c.1950).

Moorabool Street. (Valentine photographic booklet, c.1947.)

City Hall. (Valentine photographic booklet, c.1947.)

Further Reading:

• Billot, C.P., “The life of Our Years: A Pictorial Chronology of Geelong”, Lothian Publishing Co., 1969.
• Brownhill, Walter Randolph, “The History of Geelong and Corio Bay, 1955, With Postscript 1955-1990” by Ian Wynd, The Geelong Advertiser Pty. Ltd., 1990.
• Willingham, Allan, “Geelong Region Historic Buildings and Objects Study”, Vol. 2, Geelong Regional Commission, 1986.

Early pastoral leaseholds included members of John Batman’s Port Phillip Association. Rural amalgamation began in the early 1850s, shortly after a village reserve was surveyed.

The village was named Wyndham, apparently at the suggestion of the owner of the new village inn, Elliott Armstrong, who knew Sir Henry Wyndham, a soldier who had distinguished himself at Waterloo. The name Werribee had already been given to the river, however, and overtook Wyndham as the town name (1884) and the shire name (1909). Werribee is though to be derived from an Aboriginal word for spine or backbone, which describes the strong visual curve of the river over the nearly treeless plain.

Rural amalgamation around Werribee was massive. Thomas Chirnside was attracted to the open plain’s suitability for grazing and its proximity to the Melbourne markets. By 1863 he controlled more than 28,300 ha. in the Werribee district. W.J.T. (“Big”) Clarke of Sunbury also had a substantial holding in the district. Pastoral dominance reducedthe number of smaller holdings as they were bought up by Chirnside in the1860s. The town grew relatively slowly, but steadily. A railway line wasopened between Newport and Geelong in 1857, with a station at Werribee.A Church of England school, opened in 1855, was replaced by a National schoolin 1861, the year in which a Catholic church was opened.

On 10 October, 1862, the Wyndham Road District was proclaimed, and wasreplaced by a shire council on 11 March, 1864. The shire extended from Footscrayto the Little River, and northwards to the Melton Reservoir. The area was276 square miles, or 715 square kilometres. It contained the places nowknown as Balliang, Exford, Hoppers Crossing, Laverton, Little River, Manor, Mambourin, Mount Cottrell, Tarneit, Truganina, Werribee South/Point Cook, and Wyndham Vale. The shire also included Altona until it was severed on 29 May, 1957, to form a separate shire. The name change to Werribee shire occurred on 15 December, 1909, and proclamation as a city took place on 20 March,1987. On 15 December, 1984 when Victorian council boundaries were restructured,the name was changed back to Wyndham, and a small part in the north was transferred to Melton shire.

Between 1860 and 1890 Werribee had two centres of gravity, the township and the Chirnsides’ Werribee Park. Thomas’ brother, Andrew, joined him in1875 in acquiring land around Werribee, ultimately enlarging the holding to over 37,600 ha. By 1878 the brothers had completed the building of theWerribee Park mansion, about three kilometres south of the Werribee township and 500 metres east of the Werribee River. The dry, rain-shadow property was augmented by wind-pump wells, and it became the site of coursing, hunt-clubs, elaborate annual picnics and a volunteer troops encampment for colonial defence. The Chirnside Battery’s drill ground was south-west of the mansionon a flat beside the river. In 1884 Thomas Chirnside donated land for St.Thomas’ Presbyterian church.

The suicide of Thomas, the Laird of Werribee Park, in 1887 and his brother’sdeath three years later resulted in the property being divided between Andrew’stwo sons. A second mansion “The Manor” was built by the son whoinherited the property north of the township.

By 1881 about one-quarter of the shire’s population lived in Werribee township. Apart from hotels the principal recreational venues were the racecourse(1879) and the mechanics’ institute (1883). The Australian Handbook, 1893, described Werribee as –

Shortly after the Werribee Park estate came in the sons’ hands, land taxes persuaded them to bring in tenant farmers. The cleared grazing land was readily converted to cropping and dairying. During the early 1900s some tenant farmers became freeholders, and all told about 130 farmers were living on land that had recently been a family sheep walk. In 1892 the Melbourneand Metropolitan Board of Works acquired 3,580 ha. from the Chirnside estate for the metropolitan sewage farm, the site later being named Metropolitan Farm..

The Werribee township formed a progress association in 1910, to quicken the pace of change and improvement of amenities. Reticulated water was suppliedby the State Rivers and Water Supply Commission until 1929, when the YanYean supply finally connected.

In 1904 the State Government acquired land for closer-settlement farms,and the Commission’s irrigation improvements brought about successful settlement eight years later. It ushered in a community of Italian market gardeners,as well as orchardists and poulterers. The State Research Farm (now the Animal Research Institute) was begun in 1912. Soldier settlers took up farms after the first word war, and in 1925 the area was renamed Werribee South.

The Werribee Park mansion and 404 ha. of land was sold to the Catholic church, and became the Corpus Christi seminary for the training of priests.Some of the grounds were let to Italian farmers. Both the Chirnside sons left the district, moving to Brandon Park, Waverley,and to Chirnside Park. During the inter-war years the township’s population increased by about one-third, to a little more than 3,000 persons,sufficient to patronise a picture theatre (1928) and for the opening ofa higher elementary school 91923). Shortly after the second World War The Australian Blue Book, 1949, described Werribee shire as –

The township had four hotels, four churches, two savings banks and branches of two others, market yards and an agricultural and pastoral society. The cooperative milk factory was the only large industry that had been attracted.

Post war population growth was at first mostly in the eastern (Altona) end of the shire. Werribee township’s rapid growth began in the 1960s, thepopulation more than doubling between 1961 and 1971 to over 12,000 persons. The township acquired additional recreational facilities, new churches and denominational schools, two more State primary schools and a district hospital.I ts growth had been acknowledged by the construction of the Maltby By Pass, taking the Melbourne to Geelong road out of the town’s centre.

A new suburb adjoining the Melbourne side of Werribee, Hoppers Crossing,was commenced. It grew rapidly, acquiring a drive-in shopping centre in 1981, along with pre-school facilities and State and church primary schools.Four years after the Hoppers Crossing shopping centre the Werribee Plaza,about three times as big (39,000 sq. metres), was opened, but actually onthe edge of Hoppers Crossing. This left scope for the strip shopping centrenear the Werribee railway station to be enlarged and for a village shoppingcentre to be built on the other side of the railway line.

The Corpus Christi seminary closed in 1973 and the Werribee park property was sold to the State Government. The mansion and outbuildings have beencarefully preserved along with the formal gardens. A zoological park, theState Rose Garden and the State Equestrian Centre have been included inits grounds. The closure of the seminary did not herald the diminution ofthe Catholic community. The St. Andrews church had two active school campusesand a third one under consideration in the mid 1990s, and the McKillop secondarycollege was opened.

There is a linear park along the Werribee River, and elsewhere watercourses drain into swampy basins which are being made into recreationalwetlands. In addition to these large spaces there are ball-game courts andovals on two other reserves.

House prices in Werribee have been below the metropolitan median pricebetween 1987 and 1996, resting at about 80%. A survey of children on povertyin 1997 showed that 38% of Werribee children were in families on welfarebenefits or classed as working poor. It was not as well off as Altona (29%),but considerably better than the metropolis’ highest figure of 61% in Footscray.

The census populations of Werribee township andits immediate environs were 366 (1871), 693 (1901), 2,301 (1911), 3,348(1947) 8,228 (1966) and 12,872 (1971). The shire’s census populations were1476 (1871), 7853 (1933) and 16,114 (1954). Altona was severed in 1957 andthe new shire’s census populations were 13,689 (1961), 30,246 (1976) and72,230 (1991).

Further Reading:

• Allom Lovell Sanderson Pty. Ltd., Werribee Park Metropolitan Park Conservation Analysis, 1985.
• James, K. N. (ed.) Werribee: The First One Hundred Years, Werribee District Historical Society, 1985.

Melbourne’s central city area has traditionally been defined as the “Golden Mile”, which is the checker-board survey by the government surveyor, Robert Hoddle, who in 1837 fixed a township of six blocks by four blocks. The boundaries were Spencer, La Trobe, Spring and Flinders Streets.

The “Golden Mile” sufficed until the postwar years for defining Melbourne’s commercial and retail heart. During the 1960s town planning surveys extended the northern boundary to Dudley Street, the Queen Victoria Market and Victoria Street. Shortly afterwards notions of a central business or activities district pushed the boundaries of the “central area” into East Melbourne, down St. Kilda Road, beyond Flinders Street and across the Yarra River to Southbank and beyond Spencer Street to Docklands. Postcode boundaries have not mirrored these expansions, and the Queen Victoria Market is in the West Melbourne postcode.

This discussion will begin with the “Golden Mile”, but with that area extended southwards to the Yarra River because of the river’s port facilities.

Early Settlement:

In August, 1835, two parties of settlers arrived in the vicinity of Melbourne. Both were from Tasmania. Captain John Lancey entered the Yarra River in the boat “Enterprize”, a vessel owned by John Pascoe Fawkner and sent over for the purpose of settling Fawkner and others at Port Phillip. Lancey anchored west of Spencer Street on 29 August, 1835, and completed the unloading on cargo on 2 September. While Lancey was on his way up Port Phillip Bay the second party was camped at Indented Head on the Bellarine Peninsula on the west side of the bay. That party, under Robert Robson, master of the “Rebecca”, included Mr. and Mrs. Henry Batman, and had been at Indented Head for nine days when the parties caught sight of each other on 16 August. John Batman joined his party at Indented Head on 23 August.

On the day that Lancey finished unloading, members of Batman’s party arrived by foot at the “Enterprize” settlement to announce that Lancey was camped on land “purchased” by Batman from the Aborigines. The “Enterprize” party stayed put, and the title to who first settled Melbourne remained contested one hundred and fifty years later.

When Lancey first entered the river mouth he went up the westerly stream, the Saltwater or Maribyrnong River. Drinking water was a long way upstream. He subsequently found that the easterly Yarra River had a rocky falls which, mostly stopping the inflow of sea water, kept drinking water salt-free a short way upstream. The river also had a wide basin downstream from the falls. The river’s geography dictated the place of settlement. Batman’s party apparently realised the suitability of the place, as Henry Batman and his family arrived there on 16 September, 1835.

Fawkner arrived at Melbourne on 11 October and John Batman arrived on 20 April, 1836. He occupied a house at Batman’s Hill, west of Spencer Street.

On 10 June, 1838, it was reported to the Governor of New South Wales that the settlement, “Bearbrass”, had a European population of 142 males and 35 females. On 9 September Governor Bourke reversed his view that the settlers were trespassers, authorized the settlement and appointed Captain William Lonsdale as the settlement’s Police Magistrate. Lonsdale arrived on 1 October.

On 4 March, 1837, Sir Richard Bourke arrived at Melbourne with the surveyor, Robert Hoddle. Three days later Bourke named the township Melbourne after William Lamb, second Viscount Melbourne, Prime Minister of England. He also approved the checker-board plan of Melbourne, prepared by deputy surveyor, Robert Russell, who had been at Port Phillip since the previous year.

The plan of Melbourne was tilted towards north-north-west so that Flinders Street, next to the river, ran approximately parallel to it. Somewhat coincidentally a valley with a stream along it ran at right angles to Flinders Street, and Elizabeth Street ran along the bed of that stream. Elizabeth Street became a vertical axis, dividing east from west. Along the horizontal axis the ends were marked by Eastern Hill and Batman’s Hill.

Thoroughfares:

The main streets were 99 feet (30 metres) wide. Running parallel to the main east-west streets, lanes one-third as wide, were inserted. They were to serve as rear rights of way for properties. Most properties had an area of about two-tenths of a hectare. If the intention of the rear rights of way was to overcome the tendency for further subdivision, it did not succeed. The rights of way became main addresses, and a network of lanes was created by subdivision as they cut up the Crown allotment for resale. As the allotments ran from a main to a little street, the easiest subdivision was to divide them so they had a frontage to each street. Access to the properties’ rear was achieved by forming a narrow lane down the side of the property fronting the little street, ending at the common rear boundary of each property. By 1854 there were eight such lanes off Little Collins Street in the block between Elizabeth and Queen Streets.

The other typical form of subdivision was to run a lane the full distance between a main and a little street, and cut up the allotments either side so that they had frontages to the lane. Some of these became attractive through-ways, surviving to the present, examples being Bank Place and McKillop and Hardware Streets. A further variation was the U-shaped lane system, the arms of the U being the entry ways off a main thoroughfare and the cross piece running parallel to the thoroughfare. Examples are Melbourne Lane, where the Kelvin Club is now situated, and the Guildford Lane complex which retains small two or three storey workshops and the bluestone shell of the New Theatre (1937). Other lanes were T-shaped, F-shaped and nondescript variations which ran around boundaries and yards. As well as providing access, the lanes brought light and air into buildings.

The Guildford Lane complex, from a street directory, c.1947. Fifty years later the complex was unusually intact.

The intricate webs of lanes served the central city area until postwar site consolidations resulted in many of them being built over. This is discussed under Postwar Melbourne.

Nineteenth century descriptions of Melbourne described how yards and lanes were receptacles for rubbish and stagnant pools of water. The explanation for the condition of the lanes was that they were privately formed, usually abandoned by the subdivider, and the adjoining property owners or occupiers usually did not cooperatively maintain them. The Council avoided becoming financially involved. This meant that the worst examples were undrained, unpaved, uncleansed and unlit, unless the council enforced a health order or finally got around to doing something.

Before the Gold Rushes:

West of Queen Street there were numerous sections (a section being bounded by three main streets and a little street), reserved from sale, together with half sections. The reserves came to be occupied by Police and Military Barracks, Government Offices, the Customs House, the Western Market and Roman Catholic and Anglican churches. No reserves were provided in Hoddle’s plan between Queen and Elizabeth Streets, although Welsh and Anglican churches were established immediately north in La Trobe Street. East of Elizabeth Street there were reserves on which were built St. Francis Catholic and St. Pauls Anglican churches, the library and police offices. Other institutional buildings, mainly by way of land grants, were Wesleyan, Baptist, Independent and Presbyterian churches, the Eastern Market, the general hospital, the post office and the town hall.

Elizabeth Street ran down the middle of the town, and the Townend Stream ran down Elizabeth Street. The western end was the civic end, with the port and the first market site (1841). The Elizabeth Street gully or Townend Stream impeded traffic from the east, and in 1846 the Eastern Market was proclaimed on the south-west corner of Exhibition and Bourke Street. It absorbed a hay and corn market in Flinders Street, allowing the site for St. Pauls church and school to double in size.

Melbourne was a country town, with a rapidly expanding pastoral hinterland as livestock were brought form Tasmania and New South Wales. Buildings were often hasty, temporarily run up affairs, usually made from bricks not well fired. If water did not get in through the bricks it could do so through weak mortar or roof shingles which shrunk in the summer heat. When the property booms came during the gold rushes and the 1880s, most buildings were weather-damaged or too small, and they were replaced. There are a few rare survivors, three of them being churches. The transepts and nave of St. Francis church, Lonsdale Street, were built in 1842. The brickwork is concealed by weather-proof mortar. In Collins Street the rear of the Baptist church (1845) survives, and its brickwork is similarly concealed. St. James Old Cathedral best shows off its stonework. Built in 1842 at the north-west corner of Collins and William Streets, it took the site of Melbourne’s all-denominations Pioneer Church (1837). Its supersession resulted in its being re-erected in King Street in 1914.

There are a few pre-Gold Rush secular buildings. Two former hotels, Oddfellows at 33 Little Lonsdale Street and Black Eagle at 44 Lonsdale Street, date from 1849. Others are Jobs warehouse, 58-60 Bourke Street (1848-9), and buildings at 300 Queen Street (1848) and 328-30 King Street (1850-1).

Land sales were begun in June, 1837, when five blocks around Queen Street were auctioned in Sydney. Two blocks overlooked the river, either side of the section which included the Customs House reserve. Five months later another five were auctioned in the same vicinity, but northwards to Lonsdale Street. (Lonsdale Street initially was the northern limit of the town.) All were west of Swanston Street. In 1838 and 1839 further blocks were sold, first east of Swanston Street, then east of Russell Street and lastly east of Exhibition Street. The pattern of sales is suggestive of two parts to the township, and that in fact eventuated as most churches erected buildings either side of Elizabeth/Swanston Streets, and markets and police were similarly located. Flinders, Collins, Bourke and Lonsdale Street were suffixed with “West” and “East”.

On 14 July, 1841, the New South Wales Governor Sir George Gipps approved the election of Markets Commissioners for Melbourne. They were elected from wards with boundaries intersecting at Bourke and Elizabeth Streets. On 12 August, 1842, the Legislative Council of New South Wales passed Act 6 Victoria No. 7 for the election and operation of a town council, with the same wards as the Market Commissioners. Fawkner was one of the twelve councillors elected.

After the Gold Rushes:

Melbourne was already a city when gold was discovered. Its city status had come with Bishop Charles Perry’s Letters Patent when he arrived in Melbourne and read the Letters from the steps of the uncompleted St. Peters Church of England, Eastern Hill, on 13 February, 1848. The secular confirmation of that event came with an Act of the New South Wales Legislative Council on 6 July, 1849, legally making Melbourne a city.

The gold rushes dislocated the infant trades, and gold seekers tolerated tents and bark huts. Building activity recommenced in 1853 as population and unsuccessful miners sought conventional occupations and conventional housing. A program of public works and buildings began: a gas works was opened in 1852, and a larger one west of Batmans Hill in 1855; the museum and the university were opened in 1854 and 1855; the railway lines were opened between Port Melbourne and Melbourne (1854), St. Kilda and Melbourne (1857) and Brighton and Melbourne (1859); telegraph services began to Williamstown (1854) and Adelaide and Sydney (1858); the Yan Yean water supply began (1857); and the Council built its first town hall (1854) and improved the boggy streets by tree-stump removal, paving and drainage. The cemetery west of Queen Street and north of Franklin Street was closed, except for families with graves or vaults. A market was opened to its east in 1857, and gradually expanded on to the cemetery, as remains were disinterred, to form the Queen Victoria Market.

Queens Wharf, in front of the Customs House, was the river port around the swing basin. Private wharves were built along the river between King and Spencer Streets. The Government Immigration Depot was about one block to the north. Boarding houses sprang up around it.

Inner Melbourne became commercialised with merchants, agents, clothiers, tinsmiths, timber yards, brick yards, agricultural implement makers and a galvanised iron factory. Bluestone, although costly and difficult to dress, appeared, and was a more durable building material. Banks moved away from the port area, establishing an early presence in Collins Street.

The banking precinct, corner of Queen and Collins Streets, c.1910. The ES and A Bank is on the left. It is on the Victorian Heritage Register.

Precincts:

The eastern end of town was marked by an ecclesiastical and educational precinct at Eastern Hill. The Houses of Parliament were built at the end of Bourke Street in 1855-6. This elevated tone was lowered in many citizens’ eyes however, as a Chinatown grew nearby. It was between Bourke and Lonsdale Street, from Swanston Street to Spring Street and between Lonsdale and La Trobe Streets, from Russell Street to Spring Street. Bourke Street was also the entertainment precinct, inhabited by dubious actresses who solicited in foyers. Superimposed on Chinatown was the brothel quarter, Madam Brussels’ establishment at 34 Lonsdale Street being the most notorious. (There were also active areas in Little Lonsdale Street and in the many hotels along main streets.) They made a lurid literary cocktail for several generations of journalists, and a battleground for various religious missions.

The east end precincts, from a street directory, c.1947. Nearly all the lanes in the north-east quarter were built over by 1997.

Other precincts emerged: retail in Collins and Bourke Streets in the centre of the city (the “Block” and several arcades being notable examples); softgoods along Flinders Lanes, moving eastwards from the warehouses in the west; medical along Collins Street and in Lonsdale Street near the Melbourne Hospital; and furniture at the east end, not far from Chinese furniture makers. Small workshops, cordial makers, tobacco and cigarette makers, printers, engravers, plumbers and bootmakers inhabited small streets and lanes.

Collins Street, looking eastwards from Elizabeth Street, c.1904. “The Block” is the large building, fourth from the corner.

The Land Boom, 1880-1890s:

The density of Melbourne’s buildings intensified but growth upwards was delayed until hydraulic lifts allowed buildings to be more than three or four storeys. The boom-time 1880s coincided with the formation of the Melbourne Hydraulic Power Company in 1886. The resultant increase in floor values promoted the demand for more floor space. The Australian Building at the north-west corner of Flinders Lane and Elizabeth Street (1888) was comparable to the American skyscrapers. Height increases coincided with steel construction and improved fire resistance of buildings.

Many of central Melbourne’s best regarded streetscapes date from these years, as do most of the commercial buildings on the Victorian Heritage Register.

The increased building density and decades of literature on the miasmic dangers of unsewered dwellings finally produced the will for a metropolitan sewerage authority, the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works (1890). Its long time champion, Melbourne’s town clerk, became its first chairman.

The Australian Hotel, Spencer St., Melbourne, c.1910
(Image courtesy Tony Davies, London, U.K.)

Grand Hotel, Melbourne, 1890s.
(Image courtesy Tony Davies, London, U.K.)

The Old White Hart Hotel, Bourke St., Melbourne, c.1908.
(Image courtesy Tony Davies, London, U.K.)

Menzies Hotel, Melbourne, c.1910
(Image courtesy Tony Davies, London, U.K.)

After the Land Boom:

The collapse of the boom was followed by a rural drought during 1895 to 1902. There was long-term depression and recession. Fortunately for central Melbourne the transport utilities were in place, with railway lines from the suburbs and a dense network of cable trams, mostly put in service between 1887 and 1890. In 1911 Sidney Myer opened a department store in Bourke Street, beginning a period of central city retail dominance which lasted until the early 1950s.

When Myer opened his store some of the large shopping areas were in Smith Street, Collingwood, Chapel Street, Prahran, and Bridge Road, Richmond. Wage earners shopped in the suburbs, and wage earners who lived in the city were likely to patronise the Eastern Market. Myer adopted aggressive selling techniques and his entry coincided with the increasing popularity of city picture theatres. In 1927 the mighty Foy and Gibsons expanded from Smith Street into Bourke Street. Within ten years their city sales were five times their Smith Street sales. Ball and Welch, who had been in Carlton since 1875, closed the Carlton store in 1930 and concentrated on the city store. G.J. Coles came to Bourke Street from Collingwood in 1924, expanded to the Coles Book Arcade site in 1939 (no relation), and had three large variety stores in the city by 1955.

Edments Store, Melbourne, c.1908
(Image courtesy Tony Davies, London, U.K.)

In 1905 the central city’s first reinforced concrete building was erected, and numerous other examples followed before the first world war. The 1920s saw reinforced concrete extensively used, and in 1929 welded steel frameworks were introduced. That year also saw the landmark Temperance and General (T&G) head office built on the elevated corner of Russell and Collins Streets. By 1933 it, along with the new Manchester Unity building one block westwards, dominated Melbourne’s skyline. Only the spire of St. Pauls Cathedral came near them.

In 1913 a Parliamentary Committee issued a report on slum housing. Although the brothels had moved from Little Lonsdale Street to the suburbs, the east-end housing came under scrutiny. The actual building fabric did not alter much, perhaps because the popular C.J. Dennis books of verse (Moods of Ginger Mick, 1916, and Rose of Spadgers Land, 1924), lent the area a less unattractive aura, and probably because many buildings were converted to industrial uses.

Parade for Returning Anzacs, Burke St., Melbourne, 1919
(Image courtesy Tony Davies, London, U.K.)

The Postwar Period:

Building activity virtually ceased during the 1940s and early 1950s, although the Russell Street police headquarters (1940-43) was an exception. Some smartening up came with civic decorations for the Coronation, Royal Visit and the Olympic Games. City traffic grew sharply during the early 1950s. The Council had installed the first traffic lights in 1930, but the impact of congestion was highlighted when the first parking meters were installed in Bourke Street and Collins Street in 1955. Treadways (draper) one block away wanted meters too, so that long term parkers would be discouraged and more customers could find parking space.

In the early 1950s the Commonwealth Government began a (probably unintended) slum-reclamation movement by acquiring most of the block bounded by La Trobe, Spring, Lonsdale and Exhibition Streets. Its high-rise green-clad building was erected in 1958. That was two years after a near neighbour, the I.C.I. building, was started. The I.C.I., Melbourne’s first curtain-wall building, was also the first to go over the height limit of 40 metres, dictated by the reach of fire-fighting ladders.

The abandonment of the height limit led to higher buildings on larger sites, often set back with forecourts. An era of site consolidation began.

The Local Government Act provided machinery for the council to discontinue roads (including lanes and access-ways). The test was usually that all the land around a lane was owned by one title-holder or that suitable alternative access was available if another title-holder was involved. The council willingly facilitated site consolidation, giving away the lanes at first. (When full market value was later levied it did not lessen demand.)

Postwar Retailing:

Central-city retailing and picture theatres had a great postwar heyday. The immediate postwar shortages of private cars and petrol probably funnelled shoppers on to city-bound trains and trams. The rapid growth of private car-ownership, beginning in about 1949, saw the proportion of cars to population in Australia compounding at over 9% a year in the next decade. Suburban shopping grew and drive-in shopping centres came in the late 1950s (see Heidelberg West, Waverley and Chadstone). Nevertheless, in 1956-7 Central city retail sales still had some astonishingly high shares of metropolitan sales –

Category: Central city sales as a percentage of metropolitan sales.

Jewellery 70% Women’s clothing 61% Drapery 57% Electrical goods, excluding TV 54% Domestic hardware 49%; Men’s clothing 47% Furniture 43% Television 41% New Cars 35%

Forty years later only the first three categories had a significant presence in central city retailing. Car showrooms had gone by the 1980s, as had most furniture showrooms.

Postwar Change and Site Consolidation:

Picture theatres suffered rapid decline when television came, but city theatres lasted better than suburban ones. Theatre proprietors got out of big auditoriums, and one much lamented venue was the Regent Theatre which was sold to the council for part of a city square, opposite the town hall.

The city square project was initiated by a Lord Mayor, Councillor Sir Bernard Evans, a practising architect. The council engaged in extensive site consolidation, closing down the Queens Walk arcade and the Regent Place shopping precinct. The loss of the area’s retail critical mass probably contributed the virtual extinction of retailing in that part of the city, leading in time to the demise of the flagship of retail exclusiveness, Georges Ltd. (1995). The city square did not achieve its planned potential because of a union ban on demolition of the Regent Theatre. In the 1990s over half the square was sold to private interests for construction of a hotel in conjunction with a refurbished Regent Theatre.

Further east along Collins Street, the “Paris End” of the 1950s and early 1960s, commercial development was attracted to the best address in town. The Collins Street Defence Movement (1976), came too late in the opinion of most observers to save much of the old streetscape. The west end of Collins Street was also a good address, and high rise spread from there to King, William and Queen Streets.

The council also promoted site consolidation in the block bounded by Lonsdale, Elizabeth, La Trobe and Swanston Street. It lay on the route of the planned underground railway around the central city’s periphery. Ultimately a large part of the site was occupied by a multi-storey office building and the city’s third big department store, Daimaru, (1991), six years after the completion of the underground railway. Fragments of the old landscape remain in the form of the shot tower, enclosed in a glazed cone, and a few lanes not absorbed by the redevelopment. Sniders Lane reminds pedestrians of Sniders and Abrahams cigarette factory, and a large building in Drewery Lane has been converted to apartments.

Inner-city living:

While the irresistible tide of office building engulfed the city in the 1980s, some councillors took up the cause of inner-city residential living. The office glut depressed rents, older low-rise buildings were vacated, and their conversion to residential use became economically sensible. Ground-floor modifications provided off-street parking space for the residents who kept their cars. The demand for inner-city living was quickened by the postwar baby-boomers’ disenchantment with the cream-brick suburbs, now that the children were off their hands, and younger people liked the proximity to work and entertainment.

Inner-city living provided a patronage catchment for cafes and bars, gymnasiums, small convenience stores and entertainment venues. Whilst the central city was still the biggest of several regional shopping areas in metropolitan Melbourne in the 1990s, it also gained more of a local shopping component.

Entertainment, Shopping and Malls:

When cinema resurged in the 1980s the suburban drive-in shopping centres claimed most of the new growth, and the central city ceased to be anything special. Live entertainment, however, was different. At the south end of King Street and in adjacent Flinders Street nineteenth century warehouses were converted into night clubs during the 1980s.

The city’s retail spine is along the blocks between Elizabeth and Swanston Street, with pedestrian bridges over Little Lonsdale, Lonsdale and Little Bourke Streets, conveying shoppers between Myer/David Jones in Bourke Street to Melbourne Central above the underground railway station. Collins Street is less intensively shopped and shopping weakens considerably at Flinders Street. It makes a sobering contrast with the shopping precinct which once existed at the Flinders Street station where the Mutual Store catered to the carriage trade. An easterly retail precinct extends along Bourke Street, Little Bourke Street (Chinatown) and Lonsdale Street (Greek precinct). Bourke Street east hosts a high proportion of entertainment venues.

Swanston Street, the city’s civic spine with Princes Bridge at its south end, increasingly became a traffic conduit. Relatively inactive uses along the St. Pauls’ Cathedral, City Square, Town Hall, Queen Victoria Hospital, State Library, and Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology frontages lessened pedestrian activity. In 1992 Swanston Street’s footpaths were widened, most vehicular traffic (except trams) was prohibited, and the thoroughfare named Swanston Walk. It has not been as successful as the single-block Bourke Street Mall (1983), crowded with city shoppers and buskers who manage to keep clear of passing trams.

Enduring Precincts:

An unchanging feature of the west end has been the legal fraternity’s precinct. The Supreme Court (1874) in William Street has as near neighbours the Federal Court, the County Court and the Magistrates’ Court. Owen Dixon Chambers accommodates the barristers.

The finance and business sectors also inhabit the west end of town, causing lunch-time eateries and gentlemen’s outfitters to move there from the middle of town. The medical and dental professions have a continued presence at the east end of Collins Street.

Buildings:

As the central city’s building profile has grown skywards, once prominent buildings are overshadowed. In the 1960s the Herald Sun building and its radio masts, viewed from passing trains, dominated the skyline. In the 1990s it was low-rise.

During the early postwar years the visually dominant city buildings included the Finders Street Station (1900-10), General Post Office (1859-1907), the town hall (1867-1887), Queen Street government offices (1874, 1900), the Royal Mint (1869), ANZ Bank and former stock exchange at Collins and Queen Streets (1876), a row of five commercial buildings at 471-502 Collins Street, including the Olderfleet and the Rialto (1887-91), the shot tower (1889) and the electricity power house and chimney stack at Lonsdale and Spencer Streets.

Also visually dominant was a later generation of medium-rise buildings including T&G, Manchester Unity, Myer Stores Bourke and Lonsdale Streets (1930s), Police Headquarters, Russell Street, Herald-Sun, Southern Cross Hotel in Exhibition Street (1962) and the Reserve Bank, Exhibition Street (1965). The last three of these have been overshadowed by post-1960s high-rise buildings. The prominent ones, either standing well above their neighbours or with eye-catching facade treatment, include BHP House (1972), ANZ towers (1981), Nauru House (1977), Rialto Towers (1985), 101 Collins Street (replacing the Conzinc building, 1960s), 333 Collins Street (incorporating an historic banking chamber, 1990) and Melbourne Central. The Museum railway station underneath was renamed Melbourne Central, virtually upon the announced transfer of the Museum from Swanston Street to the Carlton Gardens. Rialto Towers has an observation deck with views over Southbank, Docklands, and Port Phillip Bay.

Some central city churches stand out either because of tall spires of the attractiveness of their settings.

Open Space:

Grassed open space is a rarity. The best area is in front of the State Library. The grass surface of the city square was trampled under by demonstrators in the 1970s, and paving was substituted. Several building were given plot ratio bonuses for forecourts during the 1960s and 1970s, but the meagre use made of many forecourts resulted in a reversal of planning policy extending buildings back to the street alignments. The best surviving forecourt is in front of the National Mutual building, erected on the council’s former Western Market site. Small plazas near the general post office and the town hall proved popular, and the council commercialized its plaza by putting an up-market eatery on it in a bid to lift the tone of Swanston Walk.

Open space is provided on three of the central city’s four edges: Flagstaff and Carlton Gardens (north), Parliament and Gordon Reserves, Fitzroy and Treasury Gardens (east), and Enterprize and Batman Parks (south).

The last ones return Melbourne to its origins, placing the Batman and Fawkner contestants beside each other, west of the Yarra River falls where Lancey anchored the Enterprize.

Peripheral Areas:

The central city postcode area includes a triangular area between La Trobe and Victoria Streets, from William Street to Spring Street. It contains several historic reservations and buildings, educational institutions, retail facilities, transport terminals and hotels.

Moving from east to west there are the Royal Society buildings, a scientists’ society in a building dating from 1858, the Horticultural Hall (1873) and police and penal establishments – Old Melbourne Gaol (1853), City Court (1911) and the former Russell Street Police Headquarters (1944). The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology occupies nearly a whole block, including the former Emily McPherson College (1925). Near the Institute is the City Baths (1903). Across Swanston Street are air line and bus terminals, hotels and the historic Mac’s in Franklin Street (1853). The Dairy Produce Section of the Queen Victoria Market is in Elizabeth Street, on a market reservation of 1859. At its rear (and in the West Melbourne postcode area), are the market sheds and covered areas, originally for wholesale and retail fruit and vegetables, but retail since 1969 when the new wholesale market was opened in Footscray Road.

By the 1960s the central business district was extending down St. Kilda Road on its western side, following approval by the metropolitan planning authority for offices to be built there. In about twenty years nearly all the pre-war buildings along St. Kilda Road were replaced. The Chevron Hotel (1934), Church of Christ Scientist (1920), Kia-Ora flats (1936) and a few mansions from the previous century are examples which remind the observer of an earlier era. The most prominent office building was BP House with its curved facade (1964). The area was under the South Melbourne council, and there was reason to believe that the council welcomed the extra rates from development on its border.

At the Yarra River end of St. Kilda Road the Victorian Arts Centre was opened in 1968, later enlarged to include the Concert Hall, State Theatre and Victorian College of the Arts. BP House was converted to Domain Towers (apartments) and the site of the Homeopathic/Prince Henry’s Hospital (demolished 1994) was earmarked for apartments. Throughout the commercial developments and return to residential living St. Kilda Road kept its plane trees and green trams.

Other peripheral areas of the post-1990 central city area are Southbank and Docklands.

Populations:

The population census for the central city in 1996 was 6,373 persons, but many of those were hotel guests. The figure in 1991 was 3,592. A clearer estimate of the resident population is available from the dwellings census, 575 in 1991 and 1,182 in 1996.

Flinders Street Railway Station, shortly after it was completed in 1910. Until 1981, when the underground rail loop added three stations around the central city, most city-bound passengers used the Flinders Street station. (Postcard, pre-1914)

Swanston Street, east side, looking south. Second from left is the first T&G insurance building, then the Melbourne Town Hall. In the distance is the Queen Victoria Buildings, demolished in the 1960s for the City Square. (Postcard, pre-1914)

Further Reading:

• Annear, Robyn, “Bearbrass: Imagining Early Melbourne”, Read Books Australia, 1995.
• Boys, R.D., “First Years at Port Phillip”, Robertson and Mullens Ltd., 1935 (a chronology ending at 1842).
• Buckrich, Judith Raphael, “Melbourne’s Grand Boulevard: The Story of St. Kilda Road”, State Library of Victoria, 1996.
• Cannon, Michael, “Old Melbourne Town Before the Gold Rush”, Loch Haven Books, 1991.
• Cannon, Michael, “Melbourne After the Gold Rush”, Loch Haven Books, 1993.
• Davison, Graeme (ed.), “Melbourne on Foot: 15 Walks through Historic Melbourne”, Rigby Publishers Limited, 1980.
• Dunstan, David, “Governing the Metropolis: Politics, Technology and Social Change in a Victorian City: Melbourne 1850-1891”, Melbourne University Press, 1984.
• Lewis, Miles, “Melbourne: The City’s History and Development”, City of Melbourne, 1995.
• Williams, W. Lloyd, “History Trails in Melbourne”, Angus and Robertson, 1957.