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.