East Melbourne Historical Society
People, places and stories, connected.
77 results
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Thumb print of missing planA significant hole has been plugged in our set of MMBW plans for East Melbourne. The missing plan covers the area bounded by Grey, Hoddle, Hotham and Powlett Streets. It was drawn in 1899 but had managed to escape digitisation until clever detective wor...
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Thank you all for coming this evening to share in the joy of our celebrations. When we started thinking about how we would celebrate these important events, we were clear that we wanted to offer something for our friends and neighbours in the wider community of East Melbourne.
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With the coming of summer a major event in the East Melbourne area is the Boxing Day Test at the MCG. This year’s match will be between Australia and South Africa.
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In the centre of the Fitzroy Gardens is a cottage almost invisible behind its overgrown garden but it is an interesting little house and worth a more careful look. It was designed in 1866 by Francis Maloney White as the gardener’s cottage. Its first occupant was James Sinclair an...
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On 17 August 1914 Arthur Mueller ‘Joe’ Pearce enlisted to fight in the Great War. He was the eighth man from Essendon to sign up and the first VFL footballer to volunteer for the war. He had played 152 games for the Melbourne Football Club from 1904-1913, and in a game where play...
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By 1917 it was apparent that repatriation services for returning service men and women were inadequate. Soldiers were arriving back in the country in large numbers, most of them damaged by illness or injury. Many of them would not be able to return to their pre-war occupations. T...
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The East Melbourne Historical Society has recently nominated Jolimont Station for inclusion on the Heritage Victoria register. The station has been a long overlooked part of our history. It does not appear even on the City of Melbourne's Inventory of Heritage Places. We felt it w...
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An exhibiton of paintings by Joyce Meier will be held at the Bridget McDonnell Gallery, 130 Faraday Street, Carlton, from 9 to 30 November.
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East Melbourne is rightfully known for its Victorian era streetscapes. However, between the wars it went through a period of re-development resulting in a scattering of buildings that are markedly different in style.
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Has anyone noticed? Yarra Park has gone the way of James James Morrison's Mother. She has disappeared! One wonders, was it despite or because of repeated warnings from the National Trust (commonly known as Jim) about green wedgies at the end of Town? In any case, Yarra Park donne...
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On 15 March this year more than 5,000 people gathered in East Melbourne’s Treasury Gardens, many dressed in black, many carrying banners. They streamed up the steps from Parliament station, alighted from trams which had come from all over the city, and walked with determination f...
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A documentary film made in 1910 about the City of Melbourne, then the interim capital city of Australia.
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There has been much publicity lately about the large imbalance in the numbers of statues of men as opposed to women in Melbourne. A google search puts it at 580 to 10! One of these ten statues is in the Conservatory in the Fitzroy Gardens, hidden away amongst the foliage.
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Directed by F.W. Thring, father of the famous Australian actor Frank Thring. Includes the Fitzroy Gardens and the Royal Botanical Gardens.
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Melbourne Heritage Action is a new group created to provide a forum of people dedicated to preserving, protecting and promoting the ongoing use of significant heritage places such as buildings, streetscapes, laneways and interiors in Melbourne. The group wants to encourage owners...
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If you have a strong interest in military history you may be interested in joining Military History and Heritage Victoria which currently has two vacancies on its executive committee. MHHV provides a forum for people and groups who are passionate about military history and herita...
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Punt Road. The other photo shows the Franz Joseph Glacier, where some actual movement has been detected by scientists over the past 600 years.
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An interesting side-light on the changing demographic of Melbourne in the years after the second world war was the decision to relocate the existing City Free Kindergarten in Exhibition Street (on the corner of Little Lonsdale Street) to Powlett Reserve in East Melbourne. The dis...
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We usually think of public buildings as large and imposing structures such as town halls or railway stations but in Powlett Reserve, East Melbourne there is situated possibly one of the smallest public buildings in Melbourne.
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East Melbourne from its earliest days was full of schools. The larger, purpose-built church schools eventually grew too big for the small parcels of land available and moved to more spacious suburbs; and the smaller privately run schools generally died a natural death when their...
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In 1946 Oscar Oeser, like many men who had fought in World War 11, migrated to Australia. His arrival had already been announced in an ‘Age’ article of 24 November 1945.
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Pandora's Box is to acquire some new contents. And it relates to you! The East Melbourne Historical Society has agreed to a request from the State Library of Victoria for our website to be periodically archived on PANDORA, the web archive of the National Library of Australia. Thi...
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There was an excellent attendance at our event on Wednesday 21 June 2017 when Phil Ruthven took us on a trip down Memory Lane looking back to Australia, Melbourne and East Melbourne in 1853 and 1953 to the present day. He also had the courage, audacity some might say, to predict...
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In 1883 the Police Department rented a house on a wide block of land in Darling Street, East Melbourne. This house would become the residence of the sergeant-in-charge of the new police station. Next door, on the undeveloped part of the land, a small two-roomed, wooden office was...