More tales from the Bend

Whenever PMHPS speaks with people who grew up in Port, tales from the Bend emerge. It seems that the Bend offered the best kind of adventures a boy could have. (Girls weren't allowed down there). Boys roamed about in a way that would not be permitted in our safety preoccupied world. Many of these stories start with getting on the bike. Fun and fascination included being able to watch ships on the river from the elevation of scrapheaps, and messing about in the swampy wetlands for tadpoles. And how about this ... going down to the abattoirs at the bottom on Ingles St at the weekend and riding the sheep. Apparently animals were held there over the weekend before being slaughtered.  A mother's 'Where have you been!?' would have been a rhetorical question.
The abattoir occupied 5 1/2 acres near the river: 686' frontage to Lorimer, 570' to Hartley , 850' to Boundary St and 112' to Harbor Trust Street.
In tougher times, people would go down to the abattoir for sweetbreads and sheep's hearts. Hughie Sykes, a coalie from Montague would come home at lunch time with a bag full.
This 1872 map is faint, so to get your bearings, the abbattoir is shown inside the rectangle close to the river at the top of the map and Ingles St is the straight road that intersects the railway line. You can also see how little development there was west of the railway at that time and that there were absolutely no obstructions between the railway line and the river.

Source
Jubilee History of the Melbourne Harbor Trust compiled from the original records of the Trust and from the Victorian Hansard /​ by Benjamin Hoare

Does anyone know when the abatoir closed?  Do you have a Bend story? 

'A sodden expanse' - Fishermans Bend

PMHPS continues to be preoccupied with Fishermans Bend. In the late 1930s Fishermans Bend was on the cusp of a major transformation to industrial development - a change that was anticipated with excitement and optimism. Charles Daley in The History of South Melbourne says:
'The once-despised Fishermen's Bend - a no-man's land - under the pressure of economic circumstance, has come into its own, and its sodden expanse bids fair, under the exercise of human knowledge, skill and labour, directed to its reclamation, to provide eventually scope for great projects and undertakings conducive to the advantage of the State.
In this long-neglected and unoccupied area of 'Siberia,' ... great activity and interest have been aroused. On 5th November, 1936, occurred on, the north side of 'The Bend,' the opening of the great and extensive factory for motor construction of the noted firm of General Motors-Holden's, whose enterprise has set the example for other leading industrial ventures and subsidiary factories.
The Aircraft Factory ... in which the Broken Hill Proprietary, Imperial Chemical Industries and General Motors Companies are jointly concerned, has been established, and many applications have been made for leases on what must become a manufacturing area of great importance, giving employment to thousands of workmen.' (p344)

Rootes Factory in Salmon St
Harold Paynting Collection State Library of Victoria

The photograph above shows the Rootes factory under construction. The extensive plant covered almost an entire block and became the headquarters for manufacture of aircraft (principally the Beaufort bomber) by the Department of Aircraft Production during WWII. It reverted to car manufacture after the war.*

Source
*Port Melbourne Walk booklet produced but the Art Deco & Modernism Society 

Fishermans Bend - the past and the future

PMHPS's head is spinning with thinking about its submission to the Fishermans Bend Urban Renewal Area Draft Vision, so this week's post is about .... Fishermans Bend!
PMHPS will argue that an understanding of the environmental/natural history of Fishermans Bend is fundamental to planning for its future. So lets look at this 1864 map before the Coode Canal went in and altered the course of the river.
See the swamps and sandy terrain, the relationship to the Yarra River, the emerging city and the Sandridge township.

This is how one resident, writing in 1935, recalled the area:
'Fishermans  Bend was a fine place, almost in its primitive state, a great resort for sportsmen, rabbits, wild duck and other game being plentiful. Thick tea tree scrub grew on the south side of the Yarra from the present timber dock almost to the mouth. Three prison hulks were moored in a backwater since reclaimed half way over to Spotswood. A jetty ran some distance in to deep water on the south side, and the prisoners would row over to get supplies brought from the city. The Bend was a fine grazing ground; hundreds of cows and horses were grazed there paying so much a head to the local council, which employed a herdsman. The position was held by Mr Anthony Rodgers. Fishermens houses occupied the beach frontage almost to the mouth of the Yarra' (Sandridge recalled Age 9 2 1935)

Metropolitan Planning

Last week, Premier Napthine and Planning Minister Guy released Plan Melbourne which sets out the government's vision for Melbourne to 2050.
In the Society's collection is a copy of the first plan for Melbourne prepared by the newly formed Metropolitan Town Planning Commission in 1929. While the whole report is full of interest, unsurprisingly PMHPS headed straight for the Port Melbourne references. The report is also available online, downloadable chapter by fascinating chapter.
By 1929,  a considerable number of the Garden City Bank houses had been completed or were under construction, as can be seen in the photographs below. (The book is quite fragile so it couldn't be opened fully) Can you help in identifying some reference points?

Garden City Bank houses under construction

Brand new but treeless Crichton Avenue

Of particular interest are references to places still topical or in contention today. The further development of Fishermans Bend was contemplated in the Plan as follows: 'Fishermans Bend aimed at the creation of an industrial suburb of which 340 acres were planned for residential development, 420 acres for industrial purposes and over 80 acres for open space and playing fields.' (p254)
More about the 1929 Plan next week . . .

Further information
History of Strategic Planning in Melbourne
http://www.dpcd.vic.gov.au/planning/plansandpolicies/planningformelbourne/planninghistory

For National Science Week: The CSIRO in Port Melbourne

This post is a fragment of a huge story. Fishermans Bend has a very strong association with science and innovation and their application to industry and manufacturing. CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, was a very significant presence in Port until the eighties.
In 1938, CSIR as it was then known, leased 5.9 hectares of land at Fishermans Bend from the Government. At one time, CSIRO employed over 600 people at Fishermans Bend. Even though CSIRO acquired the Clayton site in 1959, the move from Port Melbourne was gradual. With the Fishermans Bend site too small to accommodate CSIRO's range of research activities, from 1964 the CSIRO Minerals Division moved to the former BALM Paint factory at 399 Williamstown Road. It was only vacated in 1989.

former BALM Paint Factory

399 Williamstown Road, formerly the Minerals Divison of CSIRO

'The research of the Minerals Division was directed towards assisting the development of new, and the improvement of existing methods of mineral processing through the application of continually developing expertise in physical and inorganic chemistry related to minerals. This scientific base enabled it to advance to to technology in areas such as environment and energy.' (Commonwealth Government Directory, Vol 2, 1985)
Tantalising snippets of discoveries, innovation and scientific leadership have been gleaned from casual web searches such as 'The 1990 system, a Cray Research Supercomputer Y-MP 2/216, was housed in Port Melbourne and managed by Leading Edge Technologies, which used a share of the system for seismic data processing.' 
It was also a local employer. Just this morning, taking these photos on Williamstown Road I met a man whose father used to be a carpenter at CSIRO. His father never owned a car, since work was just over the road. 
There must be many people who worked for  CSIRO in Port Melbourne and it would be great to hear from them.
Sources and further information
http://artdecobuildings.blogspot.com.au search by BALM 
Encyclopedia of Australian Science

Fishermans Bend - do the maps

On Sunday 7 July, several members of the Society attended a forum on the Future of Fishermans Bend convened by the Community Alliance of Port Phillip. To follow this discussion into the future, it is probably necessary to become familiar with the acronym FBURA for Fishermans Bend Urban Renewal Area. 
Background
On 5 July 2012, the Minister for Planning rezoned a large area of Fishermans Bend to the Capital City Zone.  At 240 ha, the FBURA is bigger than Docklands and Southbank combined. It is the largest urban renewal project in Australia. The rezoning was made without a planning framework of any kind being in place which has led to a rash of speculative development proposals.
Getting clear on Fishermans Bend
To a Port Melbourne person, Fishermans Bend has a particular meaning. It is often locally referred to as 'The Bend'.   But since we are entering a period of public debate, a definition can be useful.  Allan Meiers, in his book Fisherfolk of Fishermans Bend offers this definition: 'Fishermans Bend: A term used by Sandridge Council to designate all the land bounded by the seashore at Hobsons Bay, the northermost bend of the Yarra River and Boundary St which divides South Melbourne and Port Melbourne'
This is well illustrated in the following 1914 map:

 Port Melbourne, Parish of South Melbourne, County of Bourke 1914
State Library of Victoria

All the land shown on the above map was part of the City of Port Melbourne until shortly prior to the amalgamation of local councils in 1994 - including  the northern bump around Coode Island. 

The boundaries of the Fishermans Bend Urban Renewal Area are shown in the coloured hatched sections of the map below. As you can see, it is not the same as the area as conventionally and historically understood to be Fishermans Bend. 

Hope this sheds some light on the matter of Fishermans Bend.

Sources and further information
Allan Meiers Fisherfolk of Fishermans Bend piv
State Library of Victoria  Port Melbourne, Parish of South Melbourne, County of Bourke 1914

Migrant hostel in Fishermans Bend

Mike Brady's huge contribution to Australian life has been recognised in the Queens Birthday Honours with an AM.
A less well know part of his story is the time his family spent in the migrant hostel in Fishermans Bend after their arrival in Melbourne in the '50s.  The experience of life in the hostel is described in a colourful way by Noel Delbridge in his book 'Up There Mike Brady':

"A blind man could describe the scene, because the inescapable odours of Port Melbourne are penetrating the tiniest chinks in the bus doors and windows. It’s an obnoxious smelling cocktail of animal, vegetable and chemical waste.  To the south of the hostel is the Port Melbourne tip, permanently burning the rotting garbage deposited from homes and nearby vegetable and fish markets. The prevailing wind drives the sour smoke over the hostel.  To the east, stretching almost to the city, is a chain of animal-holding yards and abattoirs. Here, pigs are slaughtered and put through a furnace to burn off their bristles. The stench of burning hair and flesh is compounded as it joins the stink of boiling fat from the Unilever and Cedel soap factories.  Adjacent to the hostel is the Kraft Vegemite factory. The pungent, yeasty smell drifts over constantly. Vegemite is not the spread of choice at breakfast in the hostel canteen. The Brady's accommodation was in a large corrugated-iron hut divided into four flats. Each flat had three rooms - a living room in the middle and a bedroom at each end. Bathroom and toilet blocks, concrete and wet, were outside. An easement on the southern perimeter of the hostel became the boys' secret adventure park. It was a dumping ground for hard rubbish. ... Near Cook Street, adjacent to the hostel, was a brackish swamp of uncertain depth containing unknown liquids ... Old car bodies provided islands. This was a scary place, and they banned horseplay among themselves for fear of falling into the ooze and dissolving." It is poignant to recall those times when there was work for everybody, the car industry was in a growth  phase and new migrants were welcomed to the country. As another resident of the hostel recalled, her mother got a job at GMH 'just a walk over the sand dunes'. She attended Graham St School and her brother went to South Melbourne Tech. I am not absolutely sure of the precise location of the hostel. PMHPS member Don delivered telegrams to the hostel, and he is definite it was in Ingles St near Lorimer St, even though Delbridge says it was in Hall St. Do you have any further information or recollection of the hostel?

Sources and further information
Noel Delbridge Up There Mike Brady (Coulomb Communications Port Melbourne)
Vivienne Gunn, recording of talk to the PMH&PS 23 September 2003