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...

We've faced a pandemic before. Influenza. 1919

The Influenza crisis made its presence felt in Australia from the time troops returned home from the war in Europe at the end of 1918. 

Our local area was not immune. 

In Brunswick, the Albert Street State School was used as an emergency hospital to begin with, but then, as the crisis deepened, the hospital moved to Broadmeadows where it was managed by the Brunswick Council.

Broadmeadows Influenza Hospital, No. 2 Ward, 1919. 

Courtesy Moreland City Libraries. Image O3.4.

Horse and drag transporting staff from the Emergency Influenza Hospital at Broadmeadows to Bell Street, Coburg, 1919. Courtesy Moreland City Libraries. Image O3.1.

I've written about the influenza epidemic in Coburg before and you can read about that here and here and here. 

As you can imagine, there were many deaths among returned servicemen and some were given an official military burial at Coburg Cemetery, even though they were not from the local area.

They were:

Died October 1918

4675 Pte William Henry Bullivant

2134 Pte John Burrell

5655 Pte Henry Matson

2893 Sgt R.W. Saunders

5199 Pte Francis Edward Sandie

Died January/February 1919

2913 Pte William Alfred Bushby

5658 Pte Albert Roy Butler

6382 Gnr Kevin McAloon

2536 Pte Wm G. Hefford

Died March/April 1919

2810 Sgt Robert Moore

4790 Pte Thomas F. Donnelly

3755 Cpl Henry Fitzpatrick

1399 Pte Percy Harold Ostler

Died in May/June 1919

2276 Pte Arthur O’Dell Lowes

24420 Driver Christopher M. McKinstry

506 Driver John Sandy

Died in July/August 1919

4559 Sgt Thomas Jones

5450 Pte James Joseph Cleary

367 Cpl Edgar Alfred Bell

3809 Cpl William Robert Fuller

2060 Tpr Athelstane Thomas Rowland

11815 Driver William Ness Law

6286 Pte George John Johnson

Sgt Charles Curtis Dedman (died Sep-Dec 1919)

2536 Pte William G. Hefford

The faces behind the naming of Harding Street, Coburg

This street was made in the very earliest days of Coburg (when it was still called Pentridge) but was first listed in a Sands and McDougall Street Directory as Harding Road in 1872. By 1911 it was known as Harding Street.

Street Names of Coburg tells us that the street was named for John Harding, listed in the 1868 Directory as a Sydney Road farmer located where the street began, so it's likely that it was an access road to his property in its very earliest days.

John Harding was a devout Methodist and a very early Sunday School teacher (as early as the mid-1840s, according to Richard Broome in his comprehensive history of Coburg).

I came across a photograph of this early Coburg pioneer taken in old age in a 1904 Jubilee History of the Methodist Church in Victoria and Tasmania. 

The volume also included photos of John's son Thomas and his wife Parysatis (nee Kendall), also stalwarts of the Coburg Methodist Church scene of the day.

At first I assumed that all three Harding family members were alive in 1904 when the church history was published, but this was not so.

John Harding died in December 1894 and is buried at Coburg Cemetery with his wife Elizabeth, who predeceased him. (She died in 1877.) They are buried in Methodist Section A, Grave 157.

Their son Thomas died in 1900 aged 69. He, too, is buried in the Methodist Section A (Grave 272) at Coburg Cemetery with his wife Parysatis, who died in 1910.

Parysatis Harding's unusual given name is spelled many different ways in the Victorian birth, death and marriage indexes. I can imagine that this was a constant cause of frustration for her. Parysatis was the name of a Queen of Ancient Persia. There were two of them - one was the mother of Cyrus the Younger and the other married Alexander the Great. I don't suppose there was anyone else in Coburg with that name, although the couple did call one of their daughters Parysatis and the name carried on for at least another generation.

Parysatis Harding was the daughter of another Coburg pioneer and member of the Coburg Methodist Church, John Buck Kendall, of whom I will write in a later blog entry.

---

Even though I was looking through the Jubilee history for completely different reasons, I now have a gallery of photos of early residents of both Brunswick and Coburg. It is worth remembering that church attendance was almost universal in the 19th and early 20th centuries and that much rich local history material can be gleaned from the pages of church newsletters, histories such as this one and in newspaper articles.

I'll share some of my finds with you over the next few months and hopefully some of you reading this will recognise names and faces and can add to the stories of their lives.

 

Selling fish in Sydney Road, around 1914

Fish market, Coburg, ca 1914 – ca 1916. Accession number H2002.198/69. Courtesy Radley Collection, State Library of Victoria.

The photographer is identified as G.G.M. This is the second photograph taken in the Coburg area that I’ve found by this photographer, but it appears he wasn’t local – the State Library of Victoria has over a hundred of his photographs in its collection and they come from all over the wider Melbourne area. They’re all taken in much the same time period, though, and they’re mostly of scenery, although there are a few portraits as well.

This photograph of a fish market has been identified by the State Library as being in Coburg so at first I thought it might have been at the Coburg Market site, which seems a logical place to be selling fresh produce.

However, the fishmongers are displaying their wares out on the street in wooden carts. There are no buildings in the background, which makes it unlikely to be in Sydney Road, Coburg, which by then was much more built up than appears to be the case in the photograph.

There is only one connection to Coburg that is certain - the covered van in the background has Sydney Road, Coburg printed on it. But there is nothing to say that the location is actually Coburg. So I’m wondering whether it was actually taken at the Melbourne Fish Market.

There was an open air fish market on the corner of Flinders and Swanston Streets from the 1860s. (It’s the site where Flinders Street Station is now located.) But by the time this photo was taken it had moved from there to a five acre site stretching along Flinders Street as far as Spencer Street and as you can see from the photo below.

Flinders Street with old fish market, ca 1910 – ca 1914. Looking east down Flinders Street with the old fish market (demolished in 1956) in right foreground, showing spire and clock tower. Image H2008.105/31. Courtesy State Library of Victoria.

If you’re interested, you can read a little more about the history of the various Melbourne fish markets here.

In the meantime, the location of this photograph remains  a mystery! Any suggestions anyone?

Land of Promise Estate, Moreland Road, West Brunswick

In 1839 the first ‘suburban’ lots were surveyed. The Brunswick area was laid out – two straight lines marking south and north (later Park Street and Moreland Road) then Moonee Ponds Creek in the west to Merri Creek in the east. Coburg began where Brunswick left off – at Moreland Road.

Speculators have been buying land and subdividing in Brunswick and Coburg since the first land sales in 1839. In February 1840, the Port Phillip Gazette brought out its slickest Biblical rhetoric: ‘Moreland-road West Brunswick! The Land of Promise!’ it cried. ‘A paradise in miniature, verily, verily! Eden resuscitated! A Home for the Chosen People!’

In that time there were large estates that might well be considered ‘paradise in miniature’ dotted around both Brunswick and Coburg. The wealthy did not spurn the northern suburbs then. E.J. Moorehead, writing in the Age in 1931, noted that ‘the large blocks of land running back to the two creeks, after their original service as agricultural holdings, attracted persons of wealth and leisure, who began to establish country homes there.’

Back in 1914 long-term resident Benjamin Cooke commented on the subdivision of the old estates, saying that ‘it seems that in the near future all the old homes with acreages will become a thing of the past.’ He was almost right – the acreages have certainly disappeared, but scattered throughout the district you can still find a mansion or two, among them Moreland Hall, Sherwood and Fleming House.

The Biblical rhetoric that appeared first in 1840 was brought out again in 1888 when the ‘Land of Promise’ Estate was carved up into 164 allotments and put on the market.

The auctioneer’s poster tells it all.

The Land of Promise, Moreland Road, West Brunswick, auction plan, 1888. Dyer collection, Map collection, State Library of Victoria. 

And here are some details from this beautiful poster.

I’ve included the full text of the advertising material here. It’s well worth a read. Some of it's very politically incorrect these days and would never make it to print, but it appeared day after day in the lead-up to the sale on 20 October 1888. Just a pity the auction wasn’t more successul on the day – the news reports in the following week tell us that only a few Moreland Road frontages were sold and that the culprit was the 'interference' of the races at Caulfield – bad timing, indeed.

Grace and Strength - athlete Joan Morrison of Coburg Harriers Club

              Joan Morrison of Coburg at the Women's Athletics Championships at Royal Park, 

Argus, 4 March 1946

Sporting Globe, 11 January 1947

The caption reads 'Joan Morrison of Coburg in the junior discus throw at today's women's athletics meeting.'

Age, Monday 6 January 1947

The Age newspaper provides a different photograph of Joan Morrison and adds that the event was the Victorian Women's Athletic Association Meeting at Royal Park held on Saturday 4 January 1947 and that Joan was second off scratch.

Argus, 8 January 1951

Four years later and Joan Morrison is still competing at elite level. The Argus tells us that this is Women's Athletics, held at Royal Park. Joan is limbering up before competing in the high jump. She won - jumped 4 foot 11 1/4 inches - her best jump to date. Two weeks later and the same newspaper reported that she jumped 5 foot 0 1/2 inches in a 'graceful leap' at Prahran Cricket Ground.

Not long afterwards, in a feature on Victorian women in sport, the Argus newspaper (23 February 1951) featured Joan. The headline read 'Three Inches from Helsinki' and the subheading was 'Joan Morrison, like all every good high jumper, thinks of the next Olympics in terms of inches.'

We are told that she's from West Coburg and that her father, W.G. (Billy) Morrison, formerly a member of the Footscray Harriers, is her coach. Her life revolves around sport. She even works for the sports manufacturers A.G. Spalding & Bros, we are told.

By then she had represented Australia overseas in the 1950 Empire Games in Auckland, New Zealand (as a 19 year old alongside eight other women including Marjorie Jackson and Shirley Strickland). 

Joan Morrison was a shot putter, threw discus and excelled at the high jump. 

In 1952 she competed at the Helskinki Olympic Games. 

And as Mrs Maurice Brophy, she appeared in a Herald newspaper article dated 19 July 1952 modelling the team uniform.

With marriage, her athletics career ended. Maurice and Joan Brophy brought up their family in the northern suburbs. Maurice, a solicitor, died in 2012 and Joan, the former champion athlete, died in 2016. They are buried at Northern Memorial Park.

Annie Beauchamp takes her first aeroplane ride aged 93

Herald, 16 November 1951

The newspaper article that goes with this photo tells us that this was Annie Beauchamp's first trip in an aeroplane and that she was travelling to Bathurst. It also tells us that 'in her early days Mrs Beauchamp travelled from Pentridge (now Coburg) to the city by horse bus. This probably took longer than today's air trip,' said the newspaper.

Annie as a younger woman. Image courtesy Louise Ruzic.

Annie Beauchamp’s father, Thomas Watts was seven years old when he arrived in Victoria with his family from his home town of Worle in Somerset.

Ten years later, aged 17, he married Sarah Banwell and the couple settled at Pentridge where their first child Annie (later Annie Beauchamp) was born in 1859.

Soon after her birth, Sarah took baby Annie home to visit her family in Somerset, because they are both recorded on the 1861 Census at Weston Super Mare. So Annie’s journey to visit family at the start of her life is mirrored by the aeroplane trip to Bathurst that she made at the other end of her life.

Annie was one of 9 children born to Thomas and Sarah Watts, although three of them died as infants. She was the only surviving girl. The first children's births were registered in either Pentridge or Newlands but from the early 1870s their children were born in either Moonee Ponds or Essendon.

In 1890, when she was 31 (quite old to be a first-time bride in those times), Annie Watts married William Beauchamp and settled in the Moonee Ponds area. The couple had two children – Eva born in 1891 and Arthur born in 1893.

After her husband’s death in 1905, Annie remained in Moonee Ponds until the mid-1920s when she moved to nearby Essendon.

Annie's daughter Eva divorced her first husband in 1936, remarried and moved to Bathurst in New South Wales.

The photo you see here is of Annie aged 93, taking her first ever plane trip to visit her daughter, now Eva Sutherland.

Annie died a year later, on 23 November 1952 and is buried at the Bathurst Cemetery. Her daughter Eva died in 1962 and her son Arthur in 1965.

Fun at the Coburg Fair - Sports Carnival, February 1925

Argus, 2 February 1925

The annual Sporting Carnival, held on what is now known as Bridges Reserve, raised money to improve the City's playgrounds and reserves. You see here a 'swan pond', provided by the Coburg Horticultural Society. The aim was to try use the rods (and rings) to ensnare miniature water fowl (toys, of course, not the real thing).

The Carnivals were well patronised annual events and for many years drew huge crowds. 

Athletics and cross country running may not have stood up against footy and cricket as must-do and must-see activities, but they were still very popular. 

Coburg Harriers Athletics Club was founded in 1896 and is still going, so it has long history in the area. If you'd like to read more about the Club's history in Coburg, you can do so here.

Floods in Coburg, October 1916

The rain's been coming down in buckets over the past few days and each morning I've gone out to find another 20mm or more in the rain gauge. Since last Thursday I've recorded 80mm - amazing.

The garden beds are very boggy, but the plants seem to love it, and so do I when I see the first of the broad bean shoots coming through the ground.

Let's hope it eases off now and we see some sunshine again soon. We could all do with some sunshine in our lives right now!

Taking you back 100 or so years now ...

The world was in the middle of a devastating world war when the photographs you see below were taken. 

A few months before (in July) Australian troops suffered more than five and a half thousand casualties in a two-day period at Fromelles. And between 23 July and 3 September 1916 23,000 Australians were killed or wounded in action at Pozieres and Mouquet Farm in France. Statistics like these certainly put the damage done by the October floods into perspective.

These two photos were featured in the Weekly Times, 7 October 1916, The first is of the Merri Creek in flood at Coburg. The second is of the Coburg Weir (at Coburg Lake) overflowing. The photographer was E. Moody.

And to put these floods into perspective again, the men at the Front had a terrible time over the (European) winter of 1916/17. The Somme campaign ended on 18 November but Australian troops manned the trenches during the bitter winter that followed. Rain, mud and slush turned to ice and the ground froze. Morale was low as men fell ill with rheumatism, bronchitis, trench foot and frost-bite and there were constant enemy raids and shelling.

One member of the 15th Battalion wrote 'One would open a tin of fruit or meat to find ice inside, or see liquid, spilled on his coat, freeze in a minute. The bread came frozen so hard that an ordinary knife made hardly an impression on it...'

Floods seem like nothing in comparison.

Bill ('Mac') McAlpine - tramways employee for 39 years

Herald, 2 January 1951

The article says it all, really. William McAlpine was a Tramways man through and through.

He married in 1913 and he and his wife Agnes had two children, both born while they were living in Coburg. When he retired, the McAlpines were living in Shaftsbury Street, Coburg. 'Mac' was retired for over 20 years and no doubt he enjoyed time in his garden. He mentions in this article that he was 'thinking about' taking his wife for a holiday in their car. I wonder whether they went and if they did where they went. 

Agnes McAlpine died in 1963 and William in 1972. They were laid to rest in the 2nd Avenue Rose Garden at Fawkner Memorial Park.

A 1933 upgrade to the buses on the Coburg to Heidelberg route

Herald, 16 January 1933

This photo of the latest update to a local bus company's fleet of buses was accompanied by an article telling us that the owner of the bus line, A.L. Windram, had just bought four new buses, each capable of carrying sixteen passengers. He employed eight men and in a time of high (and rising) unemployment, he  claimed to benefit many others through his fleet of buses. 

The article went on to note that 'it is estimated that indirectly, in the handling of the 15,600 gallons of petrol, the manufacture of £280 worth of tyres, and the hundred and one other essential details needed in the successful operation of transport service, another 50 families receive their share of support from this growing industry.'

This was at the height of the 1930s Depression and if you think about it, we are facing many features of those dark times today. 

It's hard to put a positive spin on things just now, but reminders like this that the world has faced tough times before and survived are helping me. I hope they help you, too.

English cricket eleven visits Lincoln Spinning Mills, February 1925

Herald, 6 February 1925

The visiting English cricket eleven were identified as (left to right): Woolley, Toone (manager), Strudwick, Tate, Sandham, Bryan, Gilligan, Mrs Douglas, Hearne, Freeman, Chapman and Douglas. [I have assumed that Mrs Douglas is the wife of the English team captain.]

Going by the date of the newspaper article, the visit took place between the third test at the Adelaide Oval which the Aussies won by 11 runs and the fourth test held at the MCG which the English won by an innings and 29 runs. Australia won the Ashes series 4-1. (source: Wikipedia)

Lincoln Mills opened in 1920 and was a major employer in the area. Most of it is now demolished but if you've ever been to Bunnings or Officeworks in Gaffney Street, you were there on the former Mills site.

Lincoln Mills, 1922. Image courtesy Coburg Historical Society.

1947 aerial view of Lincoln Mills, Gaffney Street, Coburg. 

Courtesy Coburg Historical Society.

During demolition, June 2007. Image courtesy Coburg Historical Society. 

(Photographer Lois Williams.)