Category: History
The history of Balwyn’s Beckett Park
Beckett Park is one of my favourite open spaces in Boroondara. Together with the adjacent Maranoa Botanic Gardens (which deserves its own post), it’s a wonderful green area on top of one of the tallest hills in the neighbourhood. Establishment and naming The place where it is today was formerly open scrub and grassland. Before…
Historical transport and planning documents now online
I have spent some time uploading some historical transport and planning documents related to Melbourne and its development. Check them out here!
75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War
15 August 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the surrender of Japan in Australia. This is considered the end of the Second World War and is referred to here as Victory in the Pacific Day or simply ‘V-P Day’ (the UK, US and New Zealand prefer ‘Victory over Japan Day’). The end of the bloodiest…
The tank that Australia built
The story of Australia’s first locally-designed and manufactured tank is a fascinating one. I think that it’s an overlooked part of our history that deserves more recognition than it currently has. (Post title reference) During the Second World War, tanks and other armoured vehicles became increasingly important. Mechanised warfare played out on a much larger…
Which is the oldest roundabout in Melbourne?
Finding out which roundabout was the first to be built in Melbourne may be one of the most vexxed and complicated local history topics possible. There are so many contradictory sources that it takes a long time to unwravel exactly what has happened in the past. We’ll start by listing the roundabouts that have claimed…
Tram roundabouts of Melbourne
With 85 percent of Melbourne’s tram network mixed with general traffic, it is inevitable that they will have to pass through some interesting intersections. In Melbourne, there are 19 roundabouts that have tram track running through them. They are almost all located in the inner south-east (Middle Park, St Kilda, South Melbourne, etc.) or the…
Are more people living in apartments now than in 1954?
65 years ago the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works (MMBW) released the Melbourne Metropolitan Planning Scheme. This formed the foundations for our current planning system. Some aspects, like car parking requirements, remain exactly the same. Combing through the Scheme and its background reports yield some fascinating insights for what town planners considered to be…
What happened to the closed schools of the 1990s? Part 2
Read Part 1 here. Keysborough Primary School The original school in this area was opened in 1869 and moved to this cosy country school building in 1874. Not to be confused with the present-day Keysborough Primary School which opened separately in 2010 when Coomoora Primary and Keysborough Park Primary Schools merged. What the site is…
The shopping strips of Reservoir
Just before the prominence of private cars engrained itself into Melbourne’s urban planning after the Second World War, Reservoir went through a major housing expansion. Although there was some European settlement in the area before the post-war boom, much of the suburb remained undeveloped or underdeveloped in 1945. But just one year later, hundreds of…
Victoria’s rocket playgrounds
Googie architecture (1950s, 60s and 70s) has not been preserved as well as other periods in Melbourne and Victoria. Many of the examples of this brief but fascinating time in design have been lost to the winds of time. One of the lingering and somewhat surprising artefacts from this period is the famous rocket-shaped tower…
