Coode chose the canal route so as to avoid dangerous tidal ebbs and inflows that would occur along one that went straight from the Yarra River docks to Hobsons Bay. Inflows endangered flood-prone land upstream as far as Gardiners Creek, by the banking up of stream waters. The route also ensured that the Yarra waters would discharge into the river mouth, scouring the bay and reducing silt deposition.

The meander was known as Fishermen’s Bend or Humbug Reach (1887). Later “Fishermen’s Bend” came to be applied to the land opposite Coode Island, on the other side of the canal, and even to Sandridge Beach, Port Melbourne west, which became Garden City.

By 1909 the marshy surface of Coode Island was being filled for reclamation. Its chief use was as a quarantine station for stock, and buildings were erected there in the event of the need for a bubonic plague sanitarium. Much of the native vegetation had been replaced by exotics, probably from abandoned ships’ ballast. By the late 1930s the meander was almost abolished and the “island” joined to West Melbourne, but the name continued to be used.

In 1929 the construction of Appleton Dock on the south-east corner of Coode Island was begun. Swanson Dock was excavated out of the island near its south-west corner when containerised cargo services began in the 1960s. MacKenzie Road was constructed southwards, west of Swanson Dock, and bulk petro-chemical storage tanks were built along it, beginning in 1960. The liquids were unloaded from Maribyrnong No. 1 berth on the western bank of Coode Island.

In 1990-1 about 70% of liquid chemicals through the Port of Melbourne went through Coode Island. On 21-2 August, 1991, fire broke out at a liquid tank storage facilities, destroying or severely damaging 27 tanks. The event provoked a review of the facilities, leading to proposals for its transfer from metropolitan Melbourne. Six years afterwards a new site was not agreed, but in the meantime improved safety measure had lessened anxiety about future risks.

Coode Island also has transport companies, cargo storage, bulk (non-liquid) storages and port facilities.

Morgan’s Street Directory, 1939

Hugh Glass (1817- 1871), speculator, squatter and merchant, was born at Porta Ferry, County Down, Ireland, he was the son of Thomas Glass, merchant, and his wife Rachael, nee Pollock. In 1840 he migrated to Victoria and began farming on the Merri Creek; by 1845 he had established himself as a station agent and merchant. In 1853 he married Lucinda (Lucy), youngest daughter of Contain Nash, a Victorian squatter and station holder. After his marriage Hugh Glass began dealing in livestock.

In 1849 the estate ( owned by Watson ) with 2,494 acres of land in Essendon district, including 107 acres running west along Buckley Street to Waverly Street was sold to Hugh Glass. At this time he built Flemington House, valued in 1850 s at 60,000 pounds. Hugh Glass also built an artificial lake on the estate and imported white swans from Ireland and black swans from Western Australia. The landscaped garden sloped down to the Maribyrnong River, it became the showplace of Melbourne.

As an agent and dealer, Glass speculated in buying and selling stations throughout eastern Australia. He also owned a core of runs from which he sent stock to Newmarket sales, the most notable being the Wimmera and Westernport stations of Moyreisk, Nettyallock, Avoca Forest, Bullock Creek, Weddikar and Glenrowan. Although Glass invested in mining and suburban real estate, his absorbing interest was stock and station market and he considered himself primarily a squatter.

In 1859 the Melbourne and Essendon Railway Company was incorporated with 75,000 ten pounds shares, Hugh Glass the biggest property owner in the colony at the time was chief shareholder while McCracken and Smith families were also major shareholders too. In 1876 the Melbourne and Essendon Railway company was sold to the State Government. In 1861 Hugh Glass built the Flemington National school opened on the estate owned by Glass. First head teacher was Mr Joshua Mason under the common school act it was renamed the Flemington school number 250.

Glass was at his peak in 1862, he was reputed the richest man in Victoria, worth some 800,000 pounds. As a businessman, he was brilliant organizer with a detailed knowledge of law, which he used to his advantage. He was also alert to the possibilities of manipulating the men who made the law. For instance, in the 1860s he formed and directed an association aimed at influencing parliamentarians to pass land bills sympathetic to the pastoral interest. Although the extent of his influence is uncertain, James McKean claimed in 1869 that one of Glass s associations had spent 80,000 pounds in influencing members of parliament.

Without a doubt Glass had made himself a force to be feared and reckoned with in Victorian politics. He created around himself an aura of absolute power and self-assurance. At Flemington House he entertained lavishly, while his office in Bourke street was the centre of financial and political influence. By his style of life he buoyed up his contemporaries trust in himself, his methods and empire.

With all his ability Glass was unable to maintain his position. Glass, unlike other big squatters such as Richard Goldsbrough , bought large areas of freehold, mostly by acquiring certificates under the 1865 land act and by employing dummies (using others to buy properties for himself). This latter method of Glass s became notorious and a poem entitled The charge of the dirty Three Hundred, reputedly written by a clerk in the lands Department was widely circulated,

Pay them all said Hugh Glass
Let them all go to hell
All that is left of them
All the three hundred.

From his land he had to borrow heavily, his pastoral empire became mortgaged assets which after the 1865 drought were shown to be vulnerable.

By mid-1860s Glass owned 35,000 acres scattered over twenty runs, none of which was particularly productive. In his intrigues to acquire land he often lost sight of its economic potential and bought unwisely.

In the late 1850s he had also extended his leasehold interests into parts of New South Wales and Victoria. Unreliable water supplies, the drought in 1865-66 and 1868-69 exposed the weakness of his leases and freehold in these areas. The droughts decimated his assets and reduced the resale value of the remaining stock and of the stations themselves. Glass attempted to extricate himself by selling some of his stations, but did so at a loss.

Worse still, three of his purchasers failed in 1869, owing him over 100,000 pounds. In that year Glass s business empire collapsed; he assigned his estate to trustees, with debts reckoned at more than 500,000 pounds. All that remained was his suburban land, which later helped to clear his estate of its debits.

Glass s political influence in Melbourne came under attack at the same time. A select committee found him guilty of taking part in corrupt practices and parliament committed him to jail. The Supreme Court, headed by Sir William Stawell, a former partner, promptly reversed parliament s decision, arguing the Legislature had encroached upon the powers of the judiciary. The decision to release Glass was popular and he was widely congratulated. However, the popularity of his release derived as much from feeling that parliament was corrupt, overbearing and ripe for censure as from any sympathy with Glass himself. Nonetheless his political power had been effectively broken by scandal.

Glass s personal life was also placed under stress, Lucy the baby had died in 1866 and another daughter, Evangeline, died in June 1869 aged eleven months. In addition Glass s own health was deteriorating from cancer of the liver, he died on 15 May 1871 aged 55.

The inquest jury found that the immediate cause of death was an overdose of chloral, administered at his own request by his son, with the object of causing sleep to relieve pain. However the evidence at inquest by two doctors who attended Glass on his death indicated that the dose was fatal only because of his already diseased condition from which he might have died in a few months.

Glass had enjoyed an illustrious career, within ten years he fell from financial heights to bankruptcy and from success as a political manipulator to rebuke by a parliament. His strength lay in his vitality and opportunism but he lacked foresight. His political dealings left him open to public criticism while his rash purchases of land strained his financial resources, leaving his pastoral interests exposed to danger of drought. In the event his network of power and wealth collapsed.

Flemington house was a mayor landmark earlier this century and it is just a memory now but should be revived, according to Local historians.

Flemington mansion stood on hill where the Flemington Primary School now is and was part of sheep property owned by Mr. Watson, one of the state s earliest squatters. The original property, with a modest dwelling, extended over a vast area from Moonee Ponds Creek to present Showgrounds.

Flemington estate was sold to Hugh Glass, who settled there after his marriage in 1852. He determined to spare no expense in converting it into one of finest estates near Melbourne; it cost an estimated 60,000 pounds.

It took nearly two years and an army of tradesmen s to erect Flemington House with fittings and furniture coming from England.

The mansion was of bluestone and brick with a large ballroom, as big as a suburban town hall and 20 bedrooms.

It also had a music room, French room, smoke room, billiard room, dining room, library, kitchen with servant rooms off the side and two staircases that run upstairs both sides of entry.

This was surrounded by a balcony supported by 72 Corinthian pillars and 250 balustrades. Hugh Glass built an artificial lake that ran under the house with an underwater viewing area, which was made of glass that could be lit so people could view the fish, he had stocked from all over world.

In the grounds, numerous glasshouses, arbours, hothouses and aviaries were built. The hothouses and aviaries were moved to Melbourne Zoo after Hugh Glass death in 1871 and are still used today.

During his time at the estate, Glass experimented with growing a number of diverse crops such as tea, cotton, coffee, rice, guava, banana, and pineapple and even sugar cane with varying success.

Glass imported many brightly plumaged birds and songbirds to keep in the gardens; he also kept emus, kangaroos and ostriches. During the years that followed Glass was improving the Flemington estate, he was actively occupied in managing various large pastoral and agricultural estates elsewhere. Special paddocks were set-aside at Flemington to provide for depasturing of valuable imported stock before their transfer to properties.

Glass filled Flemington estate with several angora goats, deer, llamas and camels. Some were kept on the estate; the camels were subsequently used in the rescue Bourke and Will’s .

After Hugh Glass death in 1871 his wife Lucinda took over the mansion and 60 acres, the rest put in the hands of the trustee s.

The trustee s sold the land in land boom of 1880s, it was purchased by a syndicate at a very high price but when the boom collapsed the estate was reverted to the trustee s. At one time there was wide support for property to be converted to a public park but the government wouldn t buy the land and house.

the land knows as Glass’s paddock was sold on January 7 1892 and Moonee Ponds Coffee Palace opened on Puckle Street.

The mansion and a great portion of the property was purchased by a horse trader named Henry Madden in 1906, he renamed the property Travancore estate after a British army base in India.

Mr. Henry Madden and his brother spent their boyhood and youth living on the estate as their family live on the estate next door to Glass.

Henry Madden subdivided part of the property in 1918 and most of the rest during the 1920s. He retained the mansion and 60 acres until 1926. In 1926 he sold the mansion and land to the Victorian State Government. Real estate agents marketed the area as the new Toorak and like the name Travancore , street names on the new subdivisions, such as Cashmere St and Delhi Court, originated from India.

In 1926 the State Government purchased the mansion and transformed it into a residential special school and outpatients.

Clinic for intellectually disabled children. The gates to the former mansion are still standing at the Mt. Alexander Road at entrance to The Flemington Primary School.

Travancore mansion , was demolished by the Victorian state Government in 1945.

Further Reading

• R.W. Chalmers The annals of Essendon-volume (1850 to 1924)
• Essendon history societies from 1971 to 2003
• Essendon historic building. Historic Buildings of Flemington and Essendon,(1985)
• Essendon gazette. Men of Past,1992
• Owen, Garry, (E Finn), The Chronicles of Early Melbourne, (Melb, 1888
• Herington. J, Witness to Things Past (Melb, 1966)
• H. H. Peck, Memoirs of a Stockman (Melb, 1942)
• Kiddie, M.L, Men of Yesterday (Melb, 1961)
• Sayers C.E, Syme David, A life (Melb, 1965)
• Age, 16 May 1871

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.

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.

Further Reading:

• Butler, Graeme, “North and West Melbourne Conservation Study”, Melbourne City Council, 1983.
• Mattingley, Albert, “The Early History of North Melbourne, The Victorian Historical Magazine, December, 1916, and March, 1917”, The Historical Society of Victoria.

During the 1930’s, when Avondale Heights was known as West Maribyrnong, the district was subdivided into small dairy and cattle farms, with some poultry farming. Some of the families who lived in the area at that time were – Ahern, Duffy, Pearson,, Creegan , Fitzpatrick, Engblom, Johnston, McKenna, Roberts, Grech, Lauricella and Hicks.
Three separate market gardens owned by the Aherns, were rented originally by Chinese farmers.

The area, a plateau above the Maribyrnong River has a superb view of the distant city.
In the 1960’s the area was still dotted with small farms, with a small row of shops, it has grown as a suburb since then.
There is only one main road – Military Road which runs from Canning Street and Maribyrnong Road, then becomes Milleara Road; which has a row of shops about 60 at the Canning Street end and 30 at the other end.

Geological History of the Area

The Maribyrnong River was originally called ‘Salt Water River’, because sea water from the Hobson’s Bay penetrated the river for a considerable distance. The skeletons of a shark and dolphin were found under Maribyrnong Park, while oysters and other marine shells have been found where Steele Creek enters the Maribyrnong. Once the tides of Hobson’s Bay influenced the Maribyrnong as far as Braybrook and Avondale Heights.

Volcanic rocks have determined much of the physical character of the area. Molten lava flowed from active vents and cooled to form sheets of basalt, or bluestone. the flat plains of the Western Suburbs, owe their flatness to these lava flows.

Since the plains of bluestone were formed, the Maribyrnong River has cut through the plain, and it is because this rock was so hard and resistant that the river has such steep banks.

Bluestone from Fowler’s Quarry at Niddrie is about four and a half million years old. This means that rock in the Keilor Plains area belongs to the geologic period called Pliocene.

Aboriginal History

Aboriginal people that lived in the area from before white settlement were the members of the local clans, the Wurundjeri and the Marin-Balluk.

Early Explorations

On their journey of exploration from Sydney to Victoria, Hume and Hovell made their way towards the Keilor Plains, passing over the site where Keilor is today, until they reached the sea near Geelong. They were the first white men to travel over the great plain which sweeps up from Port Phillip to Sunbury.

The Keilor Plains

The Keilor Plains are composed of bluestone rock, which flowed down as molten lava from the Sunbury area towards Port Phillip Bay. the bluestone rock north of the Maribyrnong River ( where Avondale Heights is today) is some of the oldest volcanic rock in Melbourne.

Solomon’s Ford

Solomon’s Ford is at the west end of Canning Street. In 1803, an expedition led by Charles Grimes, the New South Wales Surveyor General, sailed up the Yarra and sent a party in a rowing boat up the Saltwater (Maribyrnong) River. The boat got as far as Solomon’s Ford and could not go any further. Grimes was the first recorded white man to explore the area. The ford was named after Michael Solomon who had a sheep station there. He was one of the first settlers in Victoria.
The first record of European farming interests in the area was in 1835, when Edmund Davis Fergusson and Michael Solomon had a pastoral holding in the Avondale Sunshine area.

Solomon’s ford was the lowest crossing point on the Saltwater (Maribyrnong) River, and was for many years the only way from Melbourne to Geelong and westward.

Canning St Bridge

During World War 1 you had to know a password to cross over the Cordite Bridge, which is now known as the Canning St Bridge. A curfew on the river was imposed at the beginning of World War 2 from 6pm to 6am. A boom was drawn across the water to stop any access.

First Evidence of Humans in the Area

On the 10th October 1940, Mr. James White dug up an ancient human skull, (now known as the Keilor Cranium) on the banks of the Maribyrnong River. This skull has been found to be more than 8,000 years and less than 15,800 years old.

Evidence has been found along the Maribyrnong River that proves that people lived in the area 18,000 years ago.

Animal bones were excavated and sent to the museum where work was done to determine which animals they belonged to, thus it has been possible to learn about part of the fauna of the Maribyrnong River valley during the latter part of the Ice age. Bones of Diprotodon or two-toothed marsupial as big as a Thylacoleo (Marsupial lion), and a Tasmanian Devil larger than the species living now. Kangaroos and wombats also lived in the Maribyrnong Valley at the same time, which was 31,000 years ago according to the radio-carbon analysis on charcoal from the same matrix as their bones.

References:

Jennison, S, 1997, Keilor’s Heritage, Keilor Historical Society, Keilor,Vic; pp72-74

Other information from Sam Merrifield Library Local History Collection