History Week - October 21 to 28, 2012

Celebrate History Week, October 21 to 28  2012, with these local events.   www.historyweek.org.au

Sunday, October 21
Fishermans Cottage Museum Open Day.
Visit the 1873 Fishermans Cottage Museum, fitted out with period furnishings, managed by the Cranbourne Shire Historical Society. There is also a collection of items relating to the history of Cranbourne and Tooradin in the old school room.
Free entry, refreshments available.  Foreshore Road, Tooradin, 10.00am to 4.00pm.
More information: Polly Freeman 5998 3454.

Wednesday, October 24
Berwick Mechanics’ Institute Open Day.
The Berwick Mechanics’ Institute has provided a Library service in Berwick since 1862 and to celebrate their 150th anniversary they invite you to their Open Day.
See some of the treasures of the collection including original 19th century books, the Lord Casey collection and silk paintings by Ellis Rowan.
Free, refreshments served. BMI 15 High Street, Berwick, 10.00am to 4.00pm. More information: 9707 3519

Friday, October 26
The Dovetons of Doveton.
Discover the exciting story of the life of John and Margaret Doveton, after whom the suburb of Doveton was named. Local History Librarian, Heather Arnold, presents some fascinating facts about the couple.
Doveton Library, 10.30am to 11.30am. Free. Bookings essential. www.cclc.vic.gov.au or Doveton Library 9792 9497.

Friday, October 26
Local History talk, Radio 3SER 97.7FM. 
Bryce Eishold joins local history enthusiast, Judith Dwyer, to present the Local History spot on Radio 3SER at 5.30 pm, on the last Friday of the month. This months guest is Chris Keys, the President of the Dandenong and District Historical society.

Sunday, October 28

Cranbourne Cemetery tour.

Join the Narre Warren & District Family History Group on a tour of Cranbourne Cemetery. Come and hear a few of the 3,000+ stories behind the headstones as they explore Cranbourne’s early history and the 

accomplishments and tragediesof some of the district’s early settlers. 

The 90 minute tour will cost $5 per person paid on the day – however bookings are essential.

http://nwfhg.org.au

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Aerial photos of Doveton, Eumemmerring, Hampton Park and Dandenong

These aerial photographs were taken on March 3, 1970. The label says they were taken at  a 'height of 1,500 feet generally, down to 1,000 feet'. That is 450 metres down to 300 metres.  All the photographs have 'Eummemmerring Bypass from end of Mulgrave Bypass to South Gippsland Highway" on the back.  I presume that they were taken along the route of the proposed road between Stud Road and the Princes Highway East, which would act as a by-pass to the City of Dandenong. This work started in 1969 and was finished in 1972. The photographs are from the Shire of Berwick and have been annotated on the front  at some stage by a Council employee. 

This is the Princes Highway at Hallam/Eumemmerring, showing Kays Avenue at the bottom right and the General Motors Plant in the centre of the photograph. The South Gippsland freeway now runs to the left of  Kays Avenue and the right of General Motors. It's page 91 of the Melway Street Directory.

Kays Avenue is in the centre, the Princes Highway bi-sects the photograph, Doveton Avenue is to the right and  you can see the General Motors factory, centre left. 

Looking west (or towards Dandenong) up the Prince Highway. Kays Avenue is just below centre right.

This is looking south, over Eumemmerring and  General Motors to Hallam/Hampton Park. Kidds Road is at the bottom, right. General Motors Holden is at the centre, towards the top of the photograph. Florence Street is in the centre. It doesn't exist in the Melway anymore.

Another view across towards General Motors Holden.  Power Road is bottom right.

This is the South Gippsland Highway and Pound Road intersection at Hampton Park, looking north to General Motors Holden factory. It's page 96 of the Melway Street Directory.

The same intersection as above, the corner of the South Gippsland Highway and Pound Road. If you have been along here recently you would know that there have been some massive changes since this photograph was taken. To see another aerial photograph of this area, click here.

 This is Gladstone Road in Dandenong, looking towards where it intersects with Brady Road and further on Halton Road.  It's Map 81 of the Melway Street Directory.

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Casey Airfield at Berwick

The Casey Airfield was established at Berwick in 1938 by Colonel Rupert Ryan, who owned the Edrington property with his sister, Lady Casey. Ryan's brother-in law, Lord Casey owned a Perceval Gull monoplane and flew to and from Canberra, where he was a member of the House of Representatives. Lady Casey was also a pilot. From 1948, until the early 1960s the airfield was also used by the Victorian Motorless Flight Group for gliding. In 1968, Colonel Keith Hatfield and Major Ron Kerrison took over the airfield and operated a flying school under the name Group Air P/L. Sadly, less than two years later, Major Kerrison and his passenger, Mrs Roma McLeod, were killed in  an aircrash at the field. Colonel Hadfield was born in 1919 and served in the British Army in World War Two, then joined the Australian Army after the War  and flew with the American Air Force in Korea. When the airfield was established in 1938, Berwick was a small country town, however by the 1990s, it had developed into a suburb of Melbourne and it appears that a small airfield had no place in Berwick anymore. The beginning of the end came in 1992 when the Berwick Campus of Chisholm TAFE was constructed and it finally closed in 1994 when it was announced that the Berwick Campus of Monash Universtity was to be built on the site.

 The Airfield, photograph undated, possibly 1940s.

This photograph of the Airfield is from the book, Berwick Nostalgia, published by the Berwick Pakenham Historical Society.

Aerial photograph of the Casey Airfield, taken December 27, 1963. The road bi-secting the photograph is Berwick-Clyde Road. The Railway line shows up as a curve from the top left to the bottom right of the photograph. You can see the criss-crossing of the runways. The hangars appear in the centre of the photograph, they are the white dots, the dark dots are the rows of cypress trees, still seen in the 1992 photograph further below.

 An air show at Casey Airfield. The Photograph is most likely from the 1980s.

 The photographs, above and below, were taken in October 1992.

This was also taken in October 1992 and shows the construction of the Berwick Campus of Chisholm TAFE in the background.

The official announcement that the State Government had obtained the Casey Airfield site for the Berwick Campus of the Monash University. Photograph dated January 6, 1994. Left to right are Federal Member for Latrobe, Bob Charles; Tertiary Education Minister, Haddon Storey; Monash University Deputy Vice Chancellor, Ian Chubb; City of Berwick Mayor, Cr Norma McCausland and the State Member for Berwick, Robert Dean.

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Narre Warren Library - 'turning the sod' 1992

These photographs were taken in February 1992  at the 'turning of the sod' for the new Narre Warren Library. The Library was opened November 21, 1992 and you can read more about the history of public library services in Narre Warren here. The Narre Warren Library has come a long way since 1992, in the 2011-2012 financial year the Narre Warren Library  had 766, 373 loans, nearly 27 per cent of the total loans for the Casey Cardinia Library Corporation and over 350,000 visits from our patrons.

This is Kirsty Lottkowitz, the Shire of Berwick Mayor, at the time, 'turning the sod'. As with many Government occasions, the 'official' function often happens after a building has been opened or, in this case, work has already started, because you can see in the photograph below, that Cr Lottkowitz and Neil Lucas, are standing in front of a  substantial hole. Mr Lucas, was the CEO of the City of Berwick. 

 These two shots show the excavation work for the Narre Warren Library, with Fountain Gate Shopping Centre in the background.

Finally, a view of the excavations looking towards the Civic Centre. If you are interested in construction photographs, then you may be interested in the post on the construction of the Endeavour Hills Leisure Centre which was opened in November 1990 (click here) or the construction of the City of Berwick Civic centre in 1978 (click here)

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Main Street Pakenham

Here are some views of Main Street in Pakenham. I don't have  a date for the first three photographs, but I would guess they were taken around 1900.

This is Main Street, looking towards McGregor Road. 

 State Library of Victoria Image H82.96/138

Main Street Pakenham, looking towards the Railway Station. The same view is below. The verandah on the right is the same verandah on the building on the right, below. This store was originally owned by Mr Crump, later taken over by McAfees, then sold to Robinsons.

You can see Robinson's SSW supermarket, in this 1980s photograph. It was later taken over by Safeways and is now the IGA. Safeways moved to its new building behind Main Street around 1984. This was the beginning, in my mind, of Pakenham's transition from being a country town to a suburb, when people no longer did all their shopping at small, independently owned businesses  in the Main Street.

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Hallam Regional Shopping Centre 1974

I came across a report for a 'Proposed Regional Shopping Centre' at Hallam. The report was dated June 1974 and was prepared by Hanover Holdings. The project was to 'provide outstanding regional shopping facilities in the location most appropriate for the people of Berwick, Hallam, Dandenong, Pakenham and surrounding districts and South Gippsland'. Commencement date was to be early 1975, however it was never built and 'regional shopping facilities' ended up being provided by the Fountain Gate Shopping Centre, which opened on March 11, 1980. It is interesting to think how much different both Narre Warren and Hallam would be if Fountain Gate Shopping Centre was not built and the Hallam Shopping Centre was.

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Concept plan by Architects Norris & Partners P/L

This map shows the proposed location - on the south side of the Princes Highway and the east side of Wedgewood Road. The Highway gave easy access to  Dandenong and Gippsland. It also had access to the Mulgrave Freeway (or Monash as it is now called), however we are still waiting for the completion of the Dingley by-pass and what they call the La Trobe Valley by-pass road (and we now call  the Hallam by-pass)  was only opened in 2003, nearly thirty years after the proposed shopping centre.

Some concept drawings - the tower over the main entrance  was a 'four sided symbol in the form of an "H" representing Hanover'. As the report goes on to say, 'it is apparent that this symbol would be  a dominant feature of the landscape and would become a landmark'. The Developers were prepared to replace the "H" symbol with 'a monument or another appropriate structure, such as a monument to the pioneers of the Gippsland district.' 

Other features of the Complex included a Community Hall, an Auditorium, a Creche and  a swimming pool with a  cabana.

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Pakenham - the early days

The Pakenham area originally formed part of the I.Y.U Estate, first taken up by Dr W.K Jamieson in 1839. The original town of Pakenham was on the Highway, near Toomuc Creek and grew up around the Latrobe Inn, established around 1850 by Michael and Kitty Bourke. Michael Bourke also acted as Post Master for nearly 30 years. Kitty Bourke kept the Hotel and Post Office from the time of her husband’s death in 1877 until 1910. The Latrobe Inn was a Cobb & Co. coach stop and for obvious reasons was later known as Bourke’s Hotel. The town, which developed around the Railway Station, was officially known as Pakenham East until the 1960s. Pakenham grew as the service centre for the surrounding farms, especially the orchards at Pakenham Upper and Toomuc Valley, but it also had a number of other sources of employment, such as Nestles who established their plant in 1960 and sold out to Simplot in 2009.

This is a picture of the Auction Mart, which was near the Railway Station, in fact you can see a train in the back ground on the right. The  Pakenham Gazette of October 7, 1917 told us that William Close opened his auction mart on October 11, 1917 and sold  a whole range of goods from live stock to farm machinery to 'useful sundries'.

Pakenham Gazette, October 7 1917.

Report of the opening of William Close's Auction Mart from the Pakenham Gazette of October 12, 1917. If you click on the image, you will get a clearer copy.

In 1901, the Shire of Berwick moved its headquarters from Berwick to Pakenham. The first meetings at Pakenham were held in the Mechanics’ Institute until the new Shire Offices were built in 1912.  This building was  on the corner of Main Street and John Street and remained virtually intact in spite of the modernisation of 1962. The building was moved its current location in 2004 and is the home of the Berwick Pakenham Historical Society.

The Shire of Berwick Offices, after their 1962 modernisation - it's the building on the corner with the brick parapet. The small building behind it is the original office of the Pakenham Gazette and beyond that is the (now demolished) bell tower of the Presbyterian/Uniting Church. This photo was taken in the late 1970s/early 1980s during a Yakkerboo Festival.

The Mechanics’ Institute Public Hall was opened by Mr James Gibb, M.L.A on August 8 1884. A report in the South Bourke & Mornington Journal of August 13 tells us that the Hall cost 200 pounds to build, plus fit-out costs and was built by McCartney and Delaney. It was 65 feet in length (about 19 metres) and 25 feet wide (about 7.5 metres). There was stage and dressing rooms. There were 250 at the opening and they were entertained by a concert and  a Ball.  The building was used as a Hall, a Library and a Court House, however its role as a Public Hall declined when the ‘new’ Hall was built in 1959 (which was demolished in 2010) and it was put up for auction by the Council in December 1960. It didn’t sell and was thus able to be used again in 1962 for Council Meetings when the Shire Offices were being modernised. It was finally sold by the Shire of Berwick in December 1962.

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