Interested in the history of activism in Brunswick?

 

I'm giving a talk (a May Day tribute) on Brunswick activists and activism at the Brunswick Community History Group on Saturday 1 May at 1.30pm.

It's at Siteworks in Saxon Street, Brunswick (off Glenlyon Road).

Among others, I'll be talking about the contribution of trade unionist and historian extraordinaire Les Barnes, pensioner warrior Marg Nunan and Noel Counihan and the Free Speech protest. Plus much more ...

Betty Sullock, professional ice skater

Herald, 21 August 1952

Professional ice skater Betty Sullock, daughter of Richard Basil J.G. Sullock and his wife Jean, was brought up in White Street, Coburg. 

She learned to skate at Melbourne's Glaciarium (also known as The Glaci) at what is today's Southgate (near the State Theatre).

The Glaciarium, 16 City Road, South Melbourne. Image H2009.185/13Courtesy Harold Paynting Collection, State Library of Victoria.

In September 1949, aged 23, Betty set off for England to skate at the Westover Ice Rink at Bournemouth during their summer season. 

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, she skated in England, Sweden, France, Germany and Belgium and her speciality was pair and figure skating.

By the end of 1952 she was performing regularly in Australia - in Armand Perrn's 'Ice Follie' at the Tivoli Theatre in Sydney and in the show 'Hot Ice' which toured Australia from September 1953 to June 1954. By then she was married to Ken Donaghue, a stage manager of Potts Point, Sydney. (His father Jim was also a stage manager and both men worked at some stage for the famous theatrical company J.C. Williiamson's.)

The couple lived in the Sydney area where they raised their family. 

Betty Donaghue (nee Sullock), former Coburg resident and professional ice skater, died in NSW in November 2014 aged 88.

Sources:

Age, 8 April 1950

Argus, 5 May 1938

The Sun (Sydney), 7 January 1954

UK Outward Shipping records

Victorian electoral rolls

Ancestry family trees

State Library of Victoria picture collection

More on Nick Gadd's Melbourne Circle

I've written about Nick Gadd's Melbourne Circle project before and you can check it out here and here.

Now you can read his book.

Read all about Nick's book here. 

And they're racing at Flemington, November 1956

Argus, 7 November 1956

This photo features Mrs Patricia Poole of East Coburg, according to the Argus newspaper.

I've checked all the usual sources and can’t find any evidence of her being in Coburg, so probably she lived in the area for a short time only. 

It's possible her husband was Stanley Philip Poole born in Northcote in 1917 (died Heidelberg, 1981). If so, then she’s Patricia Wright and they had been married for fifteen years when this photograph was taken.

If anyone can tell me any more about Patricia Poole or the Poole family in Coburg, please get in touch. 

Chinese market gardens near Newlands Road, 1961

 

Coburg Courier, 10 October 1961

This photograph was taken almost 60 years ago and it's hard to believe now that there were once flourishing Chinese market gardens where the Coburg Olympic Swimming Pool now stands.

For some years I've collected information and stories of various Chinese individuals and families who lived in the Moreland area. 

Along the way, I've collected anecdotes, like those you see here:

The Chinese lived next to Pentridge past the convict-built bridge in Gaffney Street. They grew vegetables and lived in a building which would not be permitted nowadays. They fertilised their vegetables with human and animal excrement. Their English was mangled but the vegetables were brilliant. The old man also sold dim sims, squatting on the footpath outside Drum’s Hotel. He had some sort of steaming device. I have never tasted a better dim sim since.’ (Watt family member, Fine Crotchet and Common Sense)

Where the baths are, there used to be Chinese who grew their own vegetables. We used to buy most of our vegetables from them. We hardly had to go to Sydney Road at all.’ (We thought we had nothing to say: Stories from Newlands and its people, 1990)

I lived near Coburg Lake and we used to swim there and stole carrots from the Chinese gardens at the back of Coburg Lake until we saw the pan man tip the pans on the gardens. Never ate carrots for a long time. (80 year old, Facebook)

Where the swimming pool is now, the Chinamen owned it. They grew pumpkins and all kinds of vegetables. The larrikins would get hold of the pumpkins and throw then down Murray Road. I don’t know what happened to them, the little devils.’ (Watt family member, Fine Crotchet and Common Sense)

This is an ongoing project. It began when I recorded and researched the men buried in the Chinese Section of Coburg Cemetery. More than two hundred men were buried there between 1908 and 1922. Mostly they were middle-aged men from the impoverished Canton region of southern China, who arrived in Australia before the overthrow of the last Chinese emperor and before Sun Yat-Sen declared China a republic in January 1912.

From there my interest grew and although I've moved on to other projects unrelated to either the Chinese or Moreland history, I'm still interested in pursuing the story of the Chinese in the Moreland area.

If you have a story you can contribute or a resource you can recommend, please let me know.

Street lighting, Brunswick, late nineteenth century

Gas lighter. Image courtesy Moreland City Libraries. Lantern slide no.352.

I'm not sure of the identity of this lamp lighter, but his duties were to light the street lights of an evening then turn them off later in the night.

Coburg's stock inspector in the early 1900s was one-armed James Deeker, who also acted as the Coburg Council's part-time lamp lighter. It must have been a tricky task for a one-armed man and it involved later hours - he'd light the lamps each night at nightfall then turn them off at midnight, presumably then riding home in the dark. 

Selling newspapers on the corner of Blyth Street and Sydney Road, Brunswick, post 1880

Newspaper seller known as 'The General', Blyth Street. Lantern Slide no. 400. Courtesy Moreland Libraries.

It's a great image, isn't it? 

I wonder how many of you noticed the bluestone pavers at the Blyth Street and Sydney Road intersection. Or the bluestone gutters running down the east side of Sydney Road (and presumably on the other side of the road, too). Part of our area's iconic bluestone heritage. 

My eye was drawn, too, to the young man boarding the cable tram. He's wearing a boater, so it's likely to be summer, or at least warmer weather. Another vote for it being summer is that the boys on the left looking at the photographer are shading their eyes from the sun.

Then I wondered whether there were clues in the photo that might give a more accurate year for the photograph. Moreland Libraries has dated it post-1880. (Presumably they were working from the introduction of cable trams along Sydney Road but that wasn't until 1887).

I think it is likely to have been taken in the 1890s. I worked from the name on the shopfront just behind the tram - J. Rough. And on the side of the building I could just make out the words 'Estate Agent'. 

Sands and MacDougall Street Directories (every five years is online at the State Library of Victoria) reveal some of the answers.

In 1885 J. Rough is not listed, so it has to be later than that. He's also not listed in 1900. But he is listed in Sydney Road, Brunswick as an architect, in the 1890 Directory.

It was when I consulted the 1895 SMD (Sands and MacDougall Directory) that I came closest to having a date for the photograph. In that year, James Rough is listed as an estate agent at 505 Sydney Road, Brunswick. There probably wasn't much call for architects during the 1890s Depression. Whether Rough found working as an estate agent any easier is impossible to tell.  

 

All we know is that he was gone from that location by 1900.

So where does this leave the dating of the photo? 

Until lockdown is over and it is possible to look at hard copy versions of the SMDs (they were produced every year), I can only give a rough time period and my best guess is some time between 1891 and 1899. 

I'd be very interested in hearing from anyone else who can identify something else in this image that might date it more accurately.

And I'd love to know the story of the 'General'. I don't suppose that will ever happen, but you have to admit, the sight of an older man in a bowler hat and three piece suit, no matter how shabby, is intriguing...