Places – Page 5 – Port Melbourne Historical and Preservation Society

Bridge Street

Places, Port Melbourne HistoryMay 7, 2021

by David Radcliffe Bridge Street is one of three streets that both traverse Port Melbourne from east to west, cross the light rail tracks and extend into Fishermans Bend, the others being Ingles Street and Graham Street. Originally it only ran from the western edge of Sandridge Lagoon to the Melbourne to Hobsons Bay Railway track. As there was no…

A Corner Shop

People, Places, Port Melbourne HistoryApril 23, 2021

In the days before supermarkets and large shopping centres the people of Port Melbourne and other inner suburbs shopped every day at small local shops located cheek by jowl amongst their own houses. One such shop was located on the corner of Esplanade East and Spring Street East. PMHPS has a digital copy of a photograph album compiled…

Fennell Street and Fennell Reserve

People, Places, Port Melbourne HistoryApril 1, 2021

David F Radcliffe Fennell Street and Fennell Reserve are both located at the extremities of present day Port Melbourne. This is ironic given that Melville Henry Albert Fennell, after who these are both named, was at the centre of community life in Port Melbourne for over 40 years. Fennell St runs between Bridge St and Boundary St, north of Williamstown…

Norma Barnett Lane

People, PlacesMarch 4, 2021

Norma Barnett came to Port Melbourne in 1953 to work at the Melbourne City Mission. The Mission had been established a century earlier to give aid to the thousands of immigrants who had flocked to Victoria in the gold rush, failed to make their fortune and were stranded, destitute. Just behind the Fountain Inn (now The Cornerstone) stood the…

James Graham: was Graham Street, Port Melbourne named after this man?

People, Places, Port Melbourne HistoryFebruary 5, 2021

by Margaret Bride Detail, Plan of allotments marked at Sandridge in the parish of South Melbourne / surveyed by Lindsay Clarke Assit. Surr., 1849. State Library of Victoria. In 1849 the government surveyor published a Street Plan of Sandridge showing a simple grid of streets with six blocks bounded by the newly named streets of Rouse, Graham, Stokes, Nott and Dow, names that have remained…

Ellinis Mews

Places, Port Melbourne HistoryDecember 4, 2020

Pedestrian access to Ellinis Mews from Beacon Road, Photograph by David Thompson Ellinis Mews is a short residential street in Beacon Cove but I'm not sure where the connection with stables is other than in the developers' minds. To me it is a Court or what we would have called in Ireland a Close or, if we wanted to be…

The Graham

Places, Port Melbourne HistoryNovember 19, 2020

Pubs have more lives than cats. The Graham Hotel is about to embark on a new one. The Graham Family Hotel was constructed on the shallow shore of the Sandridge Lagoon beside the Graham Street footbridge in 1872 for Alfred J. Johnson, a stevedore. The substantial, two storey brick structure in the Free Classical style was designed by architect Frederick…

Legon Street

Places, Port Melbourne HistoryNovember 6, 2020

by David Radcliffe Legon Street is one of those tiny streets in Port Melbourne tucked away off the main thoroughfares, not easy to find and doubtless a bane in the life of delivery drivers and removalists. It is a dead end street with relatively narrow entrances off Dow and Graham Streets. When the land bounded by Graham, Dow and Rouse…

Aircraft of Fishermans Bend

Places, Port Melbourne HistoryOctober 2, 2020

At the bottom end of Lorimer Street in the shadows of the Westgate Bridge there is a series of streets that reflect one the key industries that has occupied the area since the mid 1930s. Although now part of the City of Melbourne, these streets are named after aircraft associated with the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation and Government Aircraft Factories on Fishermans Bend and are…

Bain Street

People, Places, Port Melbourne HistorySeptember 4, 2020

There is no need to go looking on any 21st Century map for Bain Street, Port Melbourne, you won't find it. Bain Street was gazetted on 27 July 1898 and as you can see from the map from around the 1950s (below), it was west of Swallow Street and it wasn't quite 100 years old when it succumbed…

Acknowledgement of Traditional Custodians