Pau Street - named in honour of a French General

Pau Street  in Coburg North was created in 1919 and named after General Paul Pau, leader of a French Mission to Australia in October 1918, just before the Armistice. 

Group portrait of Lieutenant General Sir John Monash KCB, with General Pau and members of the French Mission about to leave for Australia, in the grounds of Corps Headquarters. Back row, left to right: Major Burr; Captain Simonson; unidentified; Brigadier General T. A. Blamey CMG DSO; unidentified; unidentified. Front row: unidentified; unidentified; Gen Monash; Gen Pau; unidentified. Taken July 1918, Picardie, France. Image EO2751. Courtesy Australian War Memorial.

During their visit to Victoria, the French Mission visited the Coburg State School Infant School for the planting of a memorial avenue of honour in memory of 35 old boys of the school who lost their lives during World War One.

You can read about that here.

No one lived in Pau Street for many years. In fact, its first Sands and MacDougall Street Directory entry was not until 1951. Here it is on the 1930 Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works (MMBW) map - no buildings in the street.

MMBW detail plan 3497, Coburg. Date 1930. Index map 12E. State Library of Victoria online collection.

(Courtesy street-directory.com.au)

Near Pau Street are other streets named after other World War One figures and places, including:

Allenby Street, named after Field Marshall Sir Edmund Allenby.

AWM image H15646. Cairo, WW1. General Sir Edmund Allenby on the steps of the YMCA Anzac Hostel. On Allenby's left George Willliam Thomas Shapley, manager of the hostel.

Elliott Street, named after 'Pompey' Elliott.

AWM image E02855. Picardie, Somme, Amiens Harbonnieres Area, France, 9 August 1918. Brigadier General H. E. 'Pompey' Elliott, General Officer Commanding (GOC), 15th Australian Infantry Brigade, standing at the door of a captured German Divisional Headquarters near Harbonnieres.

French Street, named after Field Marshall John French.

AWM image H12244. France. 19 August 1915. Field Marshal Sir John French who had been appointed on 4 August 1914 as Chief of the British Expeditionary Force to France. (Donor Imperial War Museum Q28858)

Lens Street, named after a town in northern France where Australian troops fought. It's where the Canadians fought the Battle of Hill 70. You can read about that here.

AWM image H09627. Lens, France. c. 1918. The northern area of the town showing severe war damage. (Donor British Official Photograph L1804)

Louvain Street, named after a Belgian town ravaged by the Germans. You can read about it here.

From The Irish Story website. Read more about the sacking of Louvain (Leuven) here.

The destroyed city of Louvain in 1915. Read more about it here.

Mercier Street, named after Cardinal Mercier, a Belgian clergyman and figurehead of civil resistance to the German occupation of Belgium during World War One.

Image from Cardinal Désiré-Joseph Mercier's Wikipedia entry.

Roosevelt Street, named after President Theodore Roosevelt, US President and supporter of the allies during World War One. It was to be called Mannix Street, but Coburg Council rejected this suggestion. Read more about that here. 

Image of President Theodore Roosevelt from Wikipedia.

Sturdee Street, named after Admiral Doveton Sturdee, a WW1 naval commander.

Vice Admiral Sir Doveton Sturdee, Flag Officer Commanding the Fourth Battle Squadron, on the quarterdeck of HMS HERCULES, 1916/17. Wikipedia.

(The basic information on the origins of these street names comes from the 1993 edition of Street Names of Coburg)

Street Names of Coburg - a continuing story

from the Coburg Courier, December 1993.

It was Les Barnes who began the work of chronicling the history of Coburg through the story of its streets in his 1965 publication Street Names of Coburg. Since then there have been two more revised editions of this work, thanks to that other driving force of our area's local history - Laurie Burchell.

By the mid-1990s, Laurie and his team of Coburg Historical Society researchers had added well over 100 new entries and amended and added many more. It was a major undertaking in those days before the internet. The many, many resources we have available to us online today make the task of today's local historian both easier and harder. Sometimes you feel like you're drowning in the sea of information coming your way!

At the time of publication of the second edition of the book in late 1993, Laurie Burchell noted that there were 549 streets in Coburg and that the origins of 165 of those were unknown. 

(This third edition was published some time in the second half of 1994. Unfortunately, the date of publication has not been included, but there is a reference in the Foreword to the death of Les Barnes earlier in the year, confirming that it is a 1994 publication.)

Twenty-six years on and there are many more streets in Coburg and many more stories to be told. With the amount of subdivision and building work going on in the area, new streets are being created all the time.

It's time to revise and update the history of our streets. I'm working on it. My database includes the entries from Street Names of Coburg (I'm developing a similar one for Brunswick). I've added the streets in the Pentridge Village Development and the Kodak Development, plus anything else new I can discover. Once I've finished the foundation of the Coburg section, I'll work on Brunswick. 

It's a big task, but it's satisfying to build on the work of those who began it all those years ago.

If you want to take part in this project, please let me know by emailing me at gcheryl52@gmail.com.

Local historian extraordinaire - a tribute to Les Barnes

I came across these two articles recently as I was working my way through some material on the origins of street names in Brunswick and Coburg and I was reminded all over again of the superb legacy Les Barnes left Moreland's local historians. 

The person who saved these articles did not note the name of the paper or its date. It's clear, though, that they were written at the time of Les's death, so probably June 1994. The second tribute was written by his nephew Bill, also a local historian.

Les Barnes was a Brunswickian (Brunswicker?) through and through. He was born in Brunswick, lived here and died here. He also wrote and spoke about the history of the area in his own inimitable style. His prose is instantly recognisable - his personality comes through in every word he wrote. 

Without Les, the history of Brunswick would be so much leaner. He was a trade unionist, a union organiser in the 1940s - a leftie who moved to the left of the left and became a Communist in that inter-war era when so many saw socialism as the answer to the world's woes. He was also a passionate historian, a researcher extraordinaire who was one of the group who brought the investigation of history back to the area with the formation of the Brunswick Community History Group. 

No wonder, then, that when the City of Brunswick commissioned a history of the suburb (Brunswick: One history, many voices, edited by Helen Penrose) published in 1994, it was dedicated to the memory of Les Barnes.

At the very end of the book is a section written by Les on the origins of the street names of Brunswick. There is also a book version and one for Coburg, too. 

These histories of Moreland's streets were last updated in the mid-1990s, so there is so much more to add. I've made a start, and hope others will join me. 

Let me know if you are willing to be part of my new Streets of Moreland project. The more people who participate, the more the project will be in the spirit of the grass roots history that Les Barnes exemplified.

Coburg advertisements from 1953

As seen in the 1953 edition of  the Ruskin 'All about Coburg':

Not that I would have even noticed such ads. I was only a few months old and my family was living in Kerang. We didn't come to Coburg for another nine years (with a seven year stint in Ballarat in between).

The 1891 Women's 'Monster' Suffrage Petition

In 1891 Victorian Premier James Munro agreed to introduce a bill into parliament that would grant women the right to vote, but only if it could be clearly demonstrated that ordinary women wanted the vote. 

In an extraordinary effort, a number of women's groups, including the Victorian  Women's Christian Temperance Union, the Temperance Alliance, Women's Trade Union and the Victorian Women's Suffrage Society, organised a six week door-knocking campaign in which they collected some 30,000 signatures from households all around Victoria. 

This 'Monster' Petition indicated without a doubt that ordinary Victorian women definitely wanted the right to vote. 

The  calico-backed pages of the petition were glued together and rolled onto a cardboard spindle before being presented to Parliament. It's a huge artefact - about 260 metres long - and must have been a spectacular sight when it was carried into parliament. 

Today it is looked after by the Public Record Office of Victoria and you can read more about it here.

We are very privileged that the petition can be seen online and to give you an idea of what you will see if you check it out, here's a small section of one page that relates to my Brunswick street:

You can search for names of people, or people in a street, or an entire suburb (or other location) on the Parliament of Victoria's website here. Just keep in mind that you're more likely to find a rural location if it was on a railway line (eg Bairnsdale, Casterton, Castlemaine, Horsham).

You may also be interested in reading about the Great Petition Sculpture, created in 2008 to celebrate 100 years of women's right to vote in Victoria. It's located in Burston Reserve, near the Victorian State Parliament Building. 

Two views of the Great Petition Sculpture I took last winter.

Because I'm interested in the history of my local area (Moreland), I've started a list of the Moreland women who signed the suffrage petition. I've only researched a couple of them so far (three in Coburg and all the women from my street plus a couple of other Brunswick women).

You can read about one of the women, Teresa Baxter of Wilson Street, Brunswick, here. 

Teresa Baxter, as seen in the Herald, 16 December 1916.

As you can imagine, there are many, many Moreland names on the petition. Here is just a tiny sample:

Farrell, A         290 Weston Street, Brunswick

Farrell, J          Edward Street, Brunswick

Farrell, Mary   144 Barkly Street, Brunswick

Femis, Mrs      Brunswick

Ferguson, L T  40 George Street, Brunswick

Fergusson, Fanny        5 MacKay Street, Brunswick

Fidoe, Mrs       Albert Street, Brunswick

Fielding, E, Mrs          Nash Street, Brunswick

File, Elizabeth Lydia Street, Brunswick

Findlay, J        135 Union Street, Brunswick

Finn, F., Mrs   Wilson Street, Brunswick

Fisher, Ada     Belfast Road, Brunswick

Fisher, E          Weston Street, Brunswick

Fitch, Mrs        Pearson Street, West Brunswick

Fitzgerald, E, Mrs       Clarke Street, Brunswick

Fitzmaurice, C Barkly Street, Brunswick

Fitzsimons, Ellen         Weston Street, Brunswick

Flegg, A, Mrs  21 William Street, Brunswick

Fleith, Alicia   Albert Street, Brunswick

Fleming, A, Mrs          Albert Street, Brunswick

Fleming, Jane  Edward Street, Brunswick

Fleming, K      Brunswick

Fletcher, I        Evans Street, Brunswick

Flinn, Mrs        Burchet Street, Brunswick

The few stories I've uncovered so far make interesting reading, but I'd need a lifetime (and longer) to research everyone!

It'd make a great community project, though, and if you agree with me, let me know. 

This year's International Women's Day global theme is Balance for Better, promoting greater gender balance around the world. Australia's theme is More Powerful Together. 

The 'Monster' petition is a great example of both themes. 

Wouldn't it be wonderful to commemorate the achievement of these women from a now distant past and remind all Australians that there are many ways to work together to make a difference.

Pascoe Vale Football Club in the 1950s

About three years ago, this photo was donated to Coburg Historical Society by a local man who played in the featured Pascoe Vale Football team some time in the 1950s.

There are no names to go with the players, so if you know anyone in the photo, I'd be delighted to hear from you.

I'm also trying to track down the location of the photo, so any help on that would be appreciated, too. 

I thought maybe it was Raeburn Reserve in Landells Road, but I don't recognise any of the buildings. 

The two buildings in the first snip from the main photo look a bit like army huts and the big white building in the second snip looks too big to be a domestic dwelling but I don't think it's Blessed Oliver Plunkett Church (or school), which is just across the road. Maybe you can help? 

Bruce Smalls Sydney Road shop - The Value Centre of Coburg - in 1953

Advertisement in Ruskin's All about Coburg, 1953

At Smalls you could buy bicycles (Malvern Star cycles, for sure), motor cycles, Vespas, refrigerators, washing machines and radios. Quite a selection!

Ad in the Age, 24 January 1953.