Port Melbourne History – Page 27 – Port Melbourne Historical and Preservation Society

The Railway Reserves

Places, Port Melbourne HistoryMay 21, 2015

Sandridge was lucky. It was because of its significant position on the bay that the Melbourne and Hobsons Bay Railway was opened, and favoured with so generous a grant of land on which to lay its tracks. Along that short rail route between Flinders Street and the bay, a strip of Crown land one hundred yards wide was set aside as…

Sign of the Swallow

Port Melbourne HistoryMay 14, 2015

This Port Melbourne story is reproduced with permission from Stephen Banham's wonderful book Characters: Cultural stories revealed through typograpy . 'Real estate development can be unkind to signage. The urgency to convert a site from industrial to residential often promotes a 'scorched earth' approach - complete erasure of what once occupied a site. However, amid the crashing bricks and billowing dust there often lie…

Centenary Bridge

Places, Port Melbourne HistoryApril 30, 2015

Centenary Bridge c1949 It was not known as Centenary Bridge when it was built, but as the ‘Overhead Bridge at Station Pier’. It was constructed in 1934 to make the ‘disgraceful’ Port Melbourne waterfront more attractive in Victoria’s 100th year. For decades, complaints about our waterfront’s unsightliness had gone unsorted. The piers with their handsome gatehouses at least had been completed, but…

Sandridge Court House

Places, Port Melbourne HistoryApril 28, 2015

The Sandridge Court House on the corner of Graham and Bay Sts, was designed by Public Works Department architect John James Clark. It was built in 1862. He also designed the Sandridge Post Office (cnr Rouse and Bay Sts), now part of the campus of Albert Park Secondary College. It is on the Victorian Heritage Register. Together with the Police Station (now McClusky's lawyers)…

Anzac Day in Port Melbourne 2015

Port Melbourne HistoryApril 23, 2015

A wet Anzac Day in 2015 Anzac Day 2015 On Saturday 25 April, people gathered at the World War 1 Memorial Fountain in Port Melbourne to commemorate Anzac Day. The tradition has been upheld in Port for many, many years though the form it has taken has changed over time. The scene below is at once familiar and unfamiliar to current Port eyes. Anzac Day…

A crazy, crowded green pub in Bay Street

Port Melbourne HistoryMarch 17, 2015

Molly Blooms* was the place to be on St Patrick’s Day in the ‘nineties. Transformed into a ‘traditional’ Irish pub in the late ‘80s with its Joyce’s Restaurant, live Irish music, Guinness on tap and walls hung with Dublin memorabilia, it was one of the most popular Irish pubs in Melbourne. So popular did it become that on St Patrick’s Day Rouse…

An Invisible Woman

People, Port Melbourne HistoryMarch 6, 2015

Brought to light - the story of Janet Adams Margaret Bride writes: International Women’s Day is an opportunity to reflect on the many women who have influenced my life yet of whom there is little or no documentary evidence. Janet Adams is one of these women, though I never met her. In the early years of the 20th century Janet, a…

Swimming in the Yarra

Port Melbourne HistoryFebruary 27, 2015

Norman Barry, well known dairyman in Port, was also a swimmer. He trained with the Port boys between the Piers. He swam in the 3 mile 'Race to Princes Bridge' in 1928 and finished in 1 hour, 40 minutes and 13 seconds. He was awarded a certificate illustrated by Percy Lindsay from the famous Lindsay family. The swimming race was discontinued because of…

Beached – the SS Nairana

Port Melbourne HistoryFebruary 18, 2015

Beached! From a fighter to a tame commercial ship – the tale of one vessel Such indignity! Fighting the Germans, the Bolsheviks and followed by years of battling the treacherous Bass Strait. And where does the coastal trader SS Nairana end its life on 18 February 1951? Beached, like a stranded whale, on a Port Melbourne beach. And later cut…

“The Cafe at the Edge of the Bay”

Port Melbourne HistoryFebruary 12, 2015

Rita Price was born in Melbourne of Italian parents who had the kiosk at the end of Princes Pier. She told their story at the St Kilda Library as part of the 2015 Piers Festival. Mrs Antonietta Cilia (Where Pier St, Port Melbourne is today): image courtesy of Rita Price "My father worked initially at the Dunlop Tyre factory which used to be in…

Acknowledgement of Traditional Custodians