transport – Port Melbourne Historical and Preservation Society

AGM 26 August 2025 @ 7.30 pm

MeetingsJuly 23, 2025

32nd Annual General Meeting of the Port Melbourne Historical & Preservation Society. Guest speaker Paul Fearon, “Victoria’s Colonial Railways”. The AGM will be held in-person at Port Melbourne Town Hall and online via Zoom. To join the Zoom meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84167945416?pwd=bzdBzUqwyZBgpPeCd28fBI1VktLREd.1 Meeting ID: 841 6794 5416 Passcode: 111111

Mitchell Crescent

People, Places, Port Melbourne HistoryFebruary 7, 2025

by David Thompson Mitchell Crescent is a private street that runs through the public housing estate between Nott Street and Bay Street curving towards Rouse Street at the back of the Exchange Hotel. The large block on the western side of Bay Street between Rouse Street and the beach served as the cable tram depot from 1890 until the tramway…

Memoirs of Port Melbourne

Free DownloadsJanuary 22, 2024

Memoirs of Port Melbourne is a collection of stories shared by seven people about their connection to Port Melbourne, either as workers or residents. These encompass a diverse range of stories: from a sixteen-year-old who arrived as crew on the maiden voyage on the paddle steamer Weeroona; humorous anecdotes from a bus driver; remembrances of growing up in Port Melbourne by a descendant…

James Garton: Hospitality and Horses

People, Port Melbourne HistorySeptember 8, 2023

by David F Radcliffe James Garton was granted the licence for the Pier Hotel in May 1853. Over the next decade or so, there wasn’t much that happened in Sandridge that did not involve him. Born in Bath, Somerset, he arrived in Melbourne aged 24 with his brother Richard in March 1850.[1] A brewer by trade, Garton is reported to have started out…

Now and Then 2021 – Bridge Street Light Rail Crossing

Port Melbourne HistoryAugust 2, 2021

Bridge Street Light Rail Crossing (2021). Photo: David Thompson, PMHPS Collection. The light rail service from the city to Port Melbourne opened in December 1987 replacing the railway that had operated along much the same route since 1854. In that year the Hobson’s Bay Railway Company opened the first rail service in Australia from the city to the beach. They were…

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…

Meeting 27 July 2021 @ 7.30pm

MeetingsJune 25, 2021

Steven Haby, Secretary Librarian at the Prahran Mechanics' Institute Library will be the guest speaker for our virtual July meeting via Zoom. Steven will speak on the topic of A 'standard' bus: the CAC / Comair. Camden Bus Service (11) JFF-416 a Bedford SB5 / Comair from 1965 at Chadstone. Image (c) Bus and Coach Society of Victoria. Following the end…

Victor Lane Uniacke and Family

People, Port Melbourne HistoryApril 9, 2021

Ray Jelley revised May 2024 Victor had an intriguing way of letting his mother know that he would soon be arriving close to home so that she could deliver his lunch to him without interrupting his work-day – he blew the train whistle. This oral history record was made by Margaret Naylon in 2006 and written into the Port…

Wool washing on the Yarra. Photograph by Charles Nettleton, courtesy State Library of Victoria.

Meeting – Mon 24 July 2017, 7.30pm

MeetingsJuly 5, 2017

Society member Margaret Bride will speak at our July meeting on the topic of "Melbourne and its Suburbs". Between 1851 and 1891 Melbourne experienced an amazing growth in population and wealth.”Melbourne and its Suburbs” will explore five factors that shaped this development: geography, land occupation, land sales, transport and municipal government. The period ends in 1891 when the depression of the…

Acknowledgement of Traditional Custodians