Ward Grove - neatest street in Coburg in 1961

Coburg Courier, 7 February 1961

The caption reads: 'Mr W. Appleby trimming his lawn in Ward Grove provides one of the reasons why the Grove [that is, Ward Grove] is this year's winning street. Mr Appleby's two boys and the little girl from next door also crept into the picture.'

The idea of presenting awards for the best kept street went back to 1930 when Coburg Council introduced the idea in an attempt to encourage civic pride:

Age, 27 February 1930

I found the 1961 image when I was doing some research on Coburg in the 1960s at the State Library. I was reading the newspapers on microfilm and whenever something caught my eye I took a photo - unless the image was too poor. That's why I can't show you the photo of the Hicks family of 12 Sims Street, Pascoe Vale working on their nature strip. It was featured in the Coburg Courier on 9 February 1960. It appeared on the front page with the headline 'Best Coburg Street'. A later article (Courier, 19 April 1960) reported that Sims Street received an 'Oscar' for its efforts - the influence of American popular culture is clear! 

The April article went on to say that most nature strips in Sims Street were well kept but ‘three strips had not been mown since the holidays’. (Loved that comment - bet they were away at the beach!) 

The best kept street was a Rotary Club initiative aimed at boosting civic pride. On page 12 of the 19 April issue there was a picture of the street featuring its neat nature strips. To my eye it all looked very sterile, but I guess that the neat street was the ideal. 

All this set me thinking about George Johnston's descriptions of 'flat and dreary' Melbourne suburbia in his 1964 novel My Brother Jack. And then I recalled one of the children in my wider family in the 1980s attempting to teach me the words of our new National Anthem (introduced in 1984). According to her, 'Our land abounds in nature strips'. If she'd been around in Coburg in the 1960s (which was a decade before she was born) I guess that would just about have summed up the situation.

Should we change Coburg's name? - The burning question of 1920.

Established in 1839 as the village of Pentridge, the citizens of Coburg had not factored in sharing the locality with a prison of the same name. 

The Stockade, Pentridge,1849. Accession no: H15947. Image courtesy State Library of Victoria. 

By the 1860s, the townsfolk were lobbying furiously for a change from Pentridge to Coburg, citing the stigma of sharing a name with Pentridge Prison.

Pentridge Prison, c1861. Photographer Jean-Baptiste Charlier. 

Image H36668, Image courtesy State Library of Victoria.

And so they chose a name of Germanic origin, in honour of the 1867 visit of Queen Victoria's son Prince Alfred. (Queen Victoria's husband was Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha). It was the first royal visit to Australia and was marred by religious tension in Victoria and an assassination attempt in Sydney. (The Protestants and Catholics at loggerheads - the Orange and the Green stirring each other up.) 

Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh. Lithographic print published in the Illustrated Sydney News, 22 February 1868. 

Image courtesy State Library of Victoria. Image ISN22/02/68/SU..

Years later, during World War One, the issue of changing the name of the suburb was raised again, this time because it was Germanic in origin. You can read more about that here. 

And then, at the end of the war, the issue was raised again. The suggested name was Moreland, after the Moreland Estate, bought at the first land sales in 1839 by Dr Farquhar McCrae (died 1850), brother-in-law of the diarist and artist Georgiana McCrae. 

Farquhar McCrae lived at his property 'La Rose', built in 1841-42. (It's one of the oldest houses in Victoria and is now known as Wentworth House in Le Cateau Street, Pascoe Vale.) He called his estate Moreland, after his grandfather's plantation in Jamaica. 

Views of Wentworth House, 1972. Courtesy Coburg Historical Society.

So, given the connection to a Jamaican plantation during the late 18th century or perhaps the early 19th century, it seems safe to assume that this was either a coffee or a sugar plantation and that there is possibly a connection here to slavery (which ended in the 1830s). 

From the Coburg Historical Society collection.

The 1920 referendum was not successful, but 74 years later, the municipality's name did change to Moreland. I'm sure that those who chose the name thought it a non-controversial choice, and I suppose it is, but is it any more or less appropriate than those earlier names - Pentridge and Coburg?

I guess we could ask time and time again 'What's in a name?' It's an interesting question and not an easy one to answer.

Tarax Bar, Sydney Road, Coburg

Hickey’s Milk Bar, east side of Sydney Road, near the 5 mile post. No date, but probably the early 1940s. Coburg Historical Society collection.

Sisters-in-law Lilian and Jeanie Hickey at Tarax Bar (Hickey’s), Sydney Road, opposite Victoria Street. The Hickeys ran the Bar in the early 1940s but by 1943 Edgar Thompson had taken it over. Coburg Historical Society collection.

I was first told about the Tarax Bar a few years ago by Kevin Griffin (no relation), a lifelong resident of Coburg. 

One of his favourite haunts in the late 1930s, early 1940s was the Tarax Bar (now the Hoi Gee Café), located at 442 Sydney Road, although it was identified as being at the ‘5 mile post’ by everyone I asked who remembered it. You can see the five mile post quite clearly in the image of the Tarax Bar. It has long been moved from that location, and is now in the front garden of Coburg Historical Society's  Bluestone Cottage Museum at 82 Bell Street (next to the Municipal Offices).

I took this photo of the 5 mile post in February 2017.

Kevin used to hang out at the Tarax Bar with his mates and says the place was really popular: ‘Everyone used to hang out there. You could see cars and motorbikes lined up outside. It was always crowded. That was the meeting place.’

The Tarax Bar was set up along the lines of the sort of place you might remember if you ever watched the TV show ‘Happy Days’. One person remembers that ‘there were folding timber framed glass doors which opened right back to expose the whole shop to the street’, as you can see in the photograph. As well as Tarax, you could buy milkshakes and sundaes. Kevin’s eyes lit up as he remembered those beautiful sundaes with fruit and topping on them and another customer of the time remembers the many flavours available at the cost of sixpence a glass.

Not everyone got to enjoy the delights of the Tarax Bar, though. Money was tight in those days and one man recalled that his  pocket money 'did not stretch to my patronising such an establishment.’

It has not been easy trying to pinpoint exactly when the Tarax Bar operated. The Sands and McDougall Street Directories show that until 1935, Gardner Brothers fruiterers had a shop there. It was then a radio shop run by Dunbar Carey, but from 1938 to 1949 it is listed as the Tarax Bar, so it existed for at least a decade. From 1950 to 1957 it is described as either a milk bar or a cafe and in 1958 it became the Hoi Gee Café, which it still is today.

Tarax, an Australian brand of soft drink, was developed in the Goulburn Valley as a temperance drink. Because there was no yeast used and no fermentation took place in its production, its consumers could be absolutely certain that there was no alcohol content in the drink. By 1935, there were twenty-six Tarax bars across the state and we know that by 1938 there was one in Sydney Road, Coburg.

It is likely, then, that the appearance of Tarax bars across the state is tied to the prohibition of alcohol campaign that was being played out at the time. In mid-1938, the year the Tarax Bar opened in Coburg, the Coburg Courier ran article after article about the prohibition campaign that was a major issue at that year’s Council elections. Not that the young people who gathered at the 5 mile post to enjoy a refreshing (non-alcoholic) beverage would have been interested in this campaign. They were too busy enjoying themselves!

Sources: Sands and McDougall Street Directories, electoral rolls, Wikipedia, newspapers online via TROVE, Kevin Griffin, Tom Anderson, Don Trewella, Pauline Atkins and Bruce Henshall, Coburg Historical Society photographs.

This entry is based on an article I wrote for 'Search' (Coburg Historical Society's newsletter) in June 2016.

Mrs Dewar's Brunswick milk bar - 1920s and 1930s

Interior of Mrs Dewar's milk bar, 385 Sydney Road, Brunswick, taken in the late 1920s or 1930s. Image from the Harold Paynting Collection, State Library of Victoria. Image number H2009.185/26

I just love this photo of Sara Dewar's milk bar and soda fountain taken some time in the late 1920s or 1930s. As the State Library's description says, you can see cordials and flavourings, Horlick's Malted Milk, McNiven's Beauty Cake Cones, Cadbury's Cocoa, Tarax soft drinks, Elliott's Lemonade, jars of sweets, cash register and milkshake glasses. 

Sara Dewar (nee Tyack) and her husband Robert were originally from Wangaratta. Robert was a bookmaker and was well known in the local court: he'd been in a fight; he'd cheated at cards; he inflicted grievous bodily harm on a police informant; he used obscene language while trying to collect on a debt; he took money that wasn't his. 

By 1906 their daughter Nellie had come down to study at the Melbourne University Conservatorium of Music. (Wangaratta residents had raised the money to pay for her board, lodgings and fees.) By 1909, Robert and Sarah Dewar had joined her in Melbourne.

'One of our songbirds' Nellie Dewar, Punch, 17 June 1909.

In 1910, Sara Dewar charged her husband with violent assault at the court in Coburg. They were already living in Sydney Road by then and he was a 'racing man', she said. He had dragged her from one room to another by the hair, but the court did not convict him. Rather, they gave him some time to 'amend his ways'. (Coburg Leader, 2 December 1910)

It was around this time that Sara set up her Sydney Road confectioner's business. Robert was then working as a labourer. The address is given as 412 Sydney Road, Brunswick until 1924 when street numbering throughout the area changed and 412 became 385 Sydney Road, Brunswick. 

It appears that Robert and Sarah continued to live together until about 1925, when he resumed life as a bookmaker. Although he still lived in Brunswick, they lived separately. He appears in the Victorian electoral rolls until 1928. It is not known what happened to him after that.

Sarah's daughter Nellie married a local man, Louis Carrigg, at St Ambrose Roman Catholic Church, Brunswick in February 1912. They then moved to Dromana where Louis, previously an accountant, began work as a hotel keeper.

Standing: Miss K. Carrigg, Mr J. Barron, the bride, Miss E. Homewood. Sitting: Mr T. Etheridge, the bridegroom. Punch, 7 March 1912.

Sara Dewar remained in business at 385 Sydney Road, Brunswick until at least 1937. She then moved to Dromana where her daughter lived and died there on 26 October 1944 aged 76. Her daughter died just two months later, on 28 December 1944.


Sources:
Victorian electoral rolls
Victorian birth, death, marriage indexes
Sands and MacDougall Street Directories
Harold Paynting Collection, State Library of Victoria
Age, 6 November 1896
Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 2 April 1898
Benalla Standard, 23 August 1901
Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 17 March 1906
Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 15 September 1906
Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 24 November 1906
Table Talk, 17 June 1909
Punch, 17 June 1909

Coburg Leader, 2 December 1910

Punch, 7 March 1912

Argus, 20 August 1921