Bay Street – Port Melbourne Historical and Preservation Society

Back-to-Port Melbourne Celebrations 1932

Port Melbourne HistoryMay 5, 2023

by David Thompson After months of meetings, planning and a rearrangement of dates and events, April 30, 1932 marked the first day of the Back-to-Port Melbourne festivities. The Age that morning promoted the event with the inclusion of an illustration of the tent used by the Holy Trinity church in 1853 under the heading Glimpses of Old Melbourne.[1] Glimpses of Old Melbourne,…

Now and Then 2021 – Corner Bay and Beach Streets

Port Melbourne HistoryAugust 2, 2021

Bay Street at Beach Street (2021). Photo: David Thompson, PMHPS Collection. For more than 150 years Morley’s Coal Depot has stood on the south-east corner of Bay and Beach Streets. William Morley was a prominent local merchant in Port Melbourne in the years of the gold boom. In 1860 he was elected as the first chairman of the Sandridge Council. The…

Now and Then 2021 – Corner Bay and Spring Streets

Port Melbourne HistoryAugust 2, 2021

Bay Street at Spring Street (2021). Photo: David Thompson, PMHPS Collection. Bay Street has always been both a route and a destination. Vehicles now, as then, travel north and south, but in 1840 it was no more than a dusty track leading to Melbourne. Port Melbourne Town Hall (1883). City of Port Phillip Collection. By 1900 it was a broad thoroughfare lined…

Now and Then 2021 – 108 Bay Street: Bianca Apartments

Port Melbourne HistoryAugust 2, 2021

Bianca Apartments (2021). Photo: David Thompson, PMHPS Collection. A Hotel by many Names Scott's Hotel and National Bank of Australasia, Bay Street (c. 1878). Photo: Charles Nettleton, City of Port Phillip Collection. In 1854, Henry Charles Farrell opened the Sandridge Inn located on Bay Street where Bianca Apartments now stand. This early pub deteriorated and in 1871 it was described as…

I’m Glad I Was There

Port Melbourne HistoryJuly 31, 2020

On Tuesday 28 July 2020, unable to meet in person due to the COVID-19 restrictions in place in Victoria at the time, the Port Melbourne Historical and Preservation Society held its first ever online meeting via Zoom. The topic, 'I Wish I Had Been There', was conceived by Margaret Bride and resulted in eight PMHPS members each describing an…

The Freame Families of Port Melbourne

People, Port Melbourne HistoryJuly 24, 2020

by Ray Jelley ‘there was a sheep dressed up to represent Carbine II with his jockey; Bunny Hare all ready to run for the Port Melbourne Cup; saddles of mutton in fanciful designs; poultry and geese formed from the shoulders of mutton; pigeons, made of suet, flying about the windows …’ proclaimed the Standard on 18 May 1895 when describing the display in…

An Exciting Incident

Port Melbourne HistoryApril 3, 2020

by David Radcliffe On Saturday evening, 7th February 1903 a series of robberies took place in Esplanade East followed by a high speed chase down Spring Street East culminating in a dangerous collision with a cable drawn tram in Bay Street opposite the Town Hall. The unfolding drama was captured by an unnamed staff reporter at the Argus under the headline An Exciting…

Pool Street

Places, Port Melbourne HistoryMarch 27, 2020

Pool Street (detail) from Plan of the Township of Sandridge, 1855. PMHPS Collection. The early growth of Sandridge had to take into account several swampy areas, pools and, of course, the lagoon. From the 1855 Plan of the Township of Sandridge (above) where the lagoon is shown on the right, it is self-evident that Pool Street took its name from the…

The End of the War – Swallow and Ariell

Home Front Stories, WWI CentenaryNovember 12, 2018

‘On Tuesday morning [12 Nov 1918], before 8 o’clock, the 700 girls and 650 men and lads employed at … Swallow and Ariell assembled at the factory – but not to work’. They cheered the King, the Empire, the Allies, and Australia again and again. They then formed a procession with the company’s motor wagons and led by a car they…

The End of the War – Hostilities Cease

Home Front Stories, WWI CentenaryNovember 11, 2018

About 7.30pm on Monday 11 Nov 1918, around the time the Bay steamers were returning from their day’s excursion, the news that Germany had signed the armistice reached the port. Suddenly a 'powerful whistle on the Port Melbourne shore echoed across the Bay'1 and for the next half hour the Bayside resounded to the grand chorus of sirens and ship’s whistles.…

Acknowledgement of Traditional Custodians