History At Work

04/12/2025

Today PHA (Vic & Tas) issued a statement protesting the proposed budget cuts to the State Library of Victoria. To find out what you can do too, visit our website today.
https://www.phavic.org.au/news-items

29/11/2025

There are so many important things to care about these days but this is pretty high on the list:
for research and learning,
provision of safe inclusive community hubs,
depositing and caring for our documentary cultural heritage,
and just for all the cool stuff libraries do for us!
Please sign and share

Save the State Library of Victoria!

18/05/2023

Happy International Museums Day!

This year we celebrate museums in all of its forms, from multicultural institutions to the humble house museum. One noteworthy exception to the title of 'humble' is the 1926 American Colonial style house: Mulberry Hill in Langwarrin South. Once home to the infamous Lindsay family (Sir Daryl and Lady Joan Lindsay), Mulberry Hill is now owned and maintained by the National Trust.

What makes a house museum you may ask? Quite literally it is a "dwelling, museumised and largely presented in its domestic function", which for the Lindsay's was an amalgamation of Joan's personal effects from her later years, her writing room where the likes of 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' as well as Joan's autobiography 'Time without Clocks', and a significant curated collection of Australian impressionism (think Sidney Nolan and Fredrick McCubbin). More than a collection of personal objects, Mulberry Hill is a time capsule of art, culture and society in twentieth century Melbourne.

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'Sir Daryl and Lady Joan Lindsay', 1925, accessed via the State Library of Victoria (a15655) http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/290866

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Linda Young, 2017, 'Historic House Museums in the United States and the United Kingdom: A History, Rowman & Littlefield, Maryland, p. 14.

26/04/2023

It's almost reached that time of the year where a rite of passage begins, a mass exodus of Australians travel to Europe for the summer. In fact it was legally ratified as part of the world’s first long service leave legislation, made right here in Victoria. On the 18th of June 1862, Victorian legislature passed ‘An Act to regulate the Civil Service’ that included a clause ‘Part V – Leave of Absence’:

"###VII. Where any officer desires to visit Europe or some other distant country if he have continued in the Civil Service of this Colony at least ten years and have not been reduced for misconduct or deprived of leave of absence under this Act the Governor in Council may grant to him leave of absence upon half salary for a period not exceeding twelve months..."

The Victorian Hansard records no questions or debate in the Legislature over this clause, adopting it with no discussion on 30 April 1862. So if you’re looking for a sign to book that trip, no questions asked, just remember it's historically accurate!

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Parliament of Victoria, 1863, An Act to Regulate Civil Service, pp. 289-293.

12/04/2023

We are delighted to hear the news this past week regarding the new funding allocated to the National Library of Australia.

Trove has had an immense impact on the way we tell your histories and types of sources we can use in this process, accessing thousands of nationally significant documents from right here in Melbourne.

In March, we wrote to our local MP about the importance of Trove, citing a few examples of how we extract stories of community, bravery, and justice from sources available on the online archive. To read more about the significance and impact of Trove on our work, see https://www.historyatwork.com.au/blog/2023/3/1/the-funding-threat-to-trove-australias-online-archive-hosted-by-the-national-library-of-australia?rq=trove

31/03/2023

Establishing their home and orchard on the Waldau plot, among the German ‘Friedensruh’ community in present Ruffey Lake Park, Doncaster East, the Thiele family were an influential part of Victoria’s orcharding history c. 1850. Although the range of introduced fruits from this era are often attributed to the men (namely Gottlieb, Frederick, and Alfred), with fields cascading with berries, apples, and pears [image 2], it was the matriarch, Phillipine, who would attend the bustling centres of Melbourne markets to sell their family’s fruits [image 1]. Believing her husband Gottlieb was too lenient with sales, not even being heavily pregnant stopped the successful vendor. As Joan Webster describes, ‘in 1868, as Phillipine Thiele was nearing the Hoddle Street end of Victoria Street, Richmond on her way to Melbourne market, she had to stop the horse and wagon for an emergency call at Gabrielle's Corner Dispensary. There the surprised apothecary helped her to give birth to Alfred.’ It was widely believed among women of the Waldau plot that the day-long walk from Doncaster to Melbourne was the ‘safer’ option during pregnancy than bouncing cart rides.

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Victor Cobb, ‘At Doncaster’, 31 December 1926, accessed via the State Library of Victoria (H97.262).

‘Eastern Market Scene’, 28 March 1867, accessed via the State Library of Victoria (1688873).

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‘Friedensruh’ Doncaster, Whitehorse Historical Society.

Joan Webster OAM, ‘The Gardeners’, Fruits of Their Labours: Orchard Empire to Urban Affluence: A Folk History of Doncaster, (Freelance Features, Castlemaine, 2012).

Irvine Green, Petticoats in the Orchard, Doncaster Templestowe Historical Society, (1867).

03/03/2023

NEIGHBOURHOOD POSTCARDS: TOP FACTORY at Pipemakers Park, Maribyrnong

Over the course of the mid-19th to 20th century, the peacefulness of the Maribyrnong riverbank was transformed into a dynamo of ground-breaking business ventures, technological innovation and mass-produced manufacturing and distribution. All that’s left of those years and the many buildings is the “Top Factory” high on the hill. This ramshackle site certainly looks industrial with rusty, long- neglected machinery, trolley tracks, concrete pipes, and a wonky "NO. 1 MOULDING MACHINE" sign. Of the many industries to call the Top Factory home, Raleigh’s Boiling Down Works (1840s-1852) was one of Australia’s first and Victoria’s largest such enterprises, followed by The Melbourne Meat Preserving Company (1868-1888). The latter would go on to pioneer the innovative vacuum cooking and canning processes on the site and was Australia’s first and largest cannery.
In 1912 the Hume Pipe Co moved in, owned by brothers Walter and Ernest Hume who invented centrifugally produced concrete pipes. They were stronger, cheaper, more reliable, and able to be produced in great quantities very quickly. In a post-1980 booklet the company claims “this Australian innovation is still the basic method used by a large part of the world’s concrete pipe industry”. Today Hume products remain a key part of the construction industry in Australia and helped give the surrounding parkland in Maribyrnong its name.

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‘The Hume Story’, Hume Pipes Ltd, c.1980s.
Snooks, G.D., 'Innovation and growth of the firm Hume Enterprises 1910-1940', Australian Ecoomic History Review, Vol XIII, No 1, March 1973.
Victorian Heritage Database Report, Pipe Makers Park; Living Museum of the West.

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Winston, C. E & Cooke, A. C. The Melbourne Meat Preserving Company's works, Footscray. (1873).

20/02/2023

Neighbourhood Postcards: BEACONSFIELD RESERVOIR: Beaconsfield Nature Conservation Reserve, Beaconsfield.

Melbourne features a diverse system of natural and manufactured waterways, reserving and transporting fresh water to the far edges of Victoria. In February 1917, a team of 60 workers and 50 draught horses began the construction of ‘Beaconsfield Reservoir’ to the south-east of Melbourne. It took just one year for the workers to complete the 200,000,000-gallon freshwater reserve, clearing and using horses to trench the reservoir and mud packing the dam walls to construct the footprint which remains to date [Image 2]. During this early construction period, locally sourced alluvial wash water-worn stone and gravel from Loddon River formed concrete pipes that began flowing the dammed water towards the Mornington Peninsula.

Beaconsfield Reservoir was proposed as a water supply to the parliamentary Mornington Peninsula Water Supply Scheme (c.1915). Responding to the need for freshwater to the seaside towns and newly established naval base, the reservoir transitioned the Peninsula away from roof catchments, wells and underground storage in shallow, sandy soils with little to no drainage; a system which was proven to be inadequate with the increase of annual summer holidaymakers, natural increase of resident populations, or prolonged drought. Opening in September 1920 as the Flinders Naval Depot (renamed the following year to HMAS Cerberus), the base provided training to Navy cadets and holdings for Naval fleet ships. In 1931, the base became home to the Royal Australian Naval College, where it remained for 28 years.

Along with the many early employees, including sustenance labour by former soldiers WWI, the reservoir has been a social hub since it’s construction. Many long-term locals have fond memories of the Reservoir [Image 1]. In the 1950’s, the reservoir was an excursion site for schools and a “restful place” where you could fish in a Reservoir “stocked with trout.” Today, the site is closed to the public on the Beaconsfield Nature Conservation Reserve, primarily due to conservation and proposed safety upgrades. Local community members of the Save the Beaconsfield Reservoir Action Group are passionate about conserving the historical site, which you can read more about on our website: https://www.historyatwork.com.au/blog/2022/10/7/what-is-a-community-a-case-study-in-heritage-action

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‘Berwick’, South Bourke and Mornington Journal, 1 Feb 1917, p. 2.
‘Items of Interest’, The Australian Worker, 8 March 1917, p. 23.
‘UP IN THE HILLS’, The Herald, 21 Jan 1926, p. 4.
State Rivers and Water Supply Commission, ‘Eleventh Annual Report 1915-1916’, Parliament of Victoria, 1916, p. 21.

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‘Beaconsfield Reservoir or Ponds’, Village Bell, Issue 213, September 2018, p. 1.

03/08/2022

NEIGHBOURHOOD POSTCARDS: YARRAVILLE RACING PIGEON HOMING CLUB: 23 Regent Street, Yarraville.
Since 1902, local pigeon racers and fanciers alike have flocked to Yarraville Racing Pigeon Homing Club. Community fundraising financed the Regent Street clubhouse, which was built in the late 1930s. The Yarraville club quickly became a hub for distinguished pigeon-racers in Melbourne’s West, earning numerous titles with the Victorian Homing Association and the succeeding Victorian Racing Pigeon Union. During World War II, the Yarraville club enlisted two homing pigeons to aid in naval communications (DD43 T139 to Madang, New Guinea & B.C.C. 1556 D-D:42:V to Jacquinot Bay, New Britain). DD43 T139 travelled 60km in an hour through severe tropical storms to deliver the ‘engine failed’ message to Detachment 55 Australian Port Craft Company. The blue bar c**k saved the boat, tonnes of ammunition, equipment, and stores for the Australian troops. Although both war-pigeons never made it back to the Yarraville club, DD43 T139 was awarded the Dickin medal for gallantry (like the Victoria Cross for humans) and is memorialised in the Australian War Museum [Image 1]. In 2013, Maribyrnong News considered the Yarraville Racing Pigeon Homing Club ‘the oldest club in Victoria still in its original rooms’. The pale-yellow weatherboard building still stands in Yarraville [Image 2], although no longer with the ‘Yarraville Pigeon Club’ nameplate. The clubhouse was sold due to high expenses in 2019, another casualty to the rapidly declining sport in Victoria.
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Mike Perso, ‘The pigeon kings of Regent Street’, Maribyrnong News, 13 February 2015
Victorian Racing Pigeon Union website, ‘History’ page, [accessed 27 July 2022]
‘Winner from Gift Egg’, Weekly Times, 19 March 1947, p.46.
Carolyn Webb, ‘Poor man’s racehorses’, The Age, June 9, 2019
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Australian War Memorial collection, ‘Portrait of mounted carrier pigeon, Blue Bar c**k DD43 T139’,
Thanks to !

24/07/2022

NEIGHBOURHOOD POSTCARDS: SPENCER STREET BRIDGE
Before this Bridge was constructed in 1930 ships sailed as far as Queen Street. Sailing and steamships were part of the CBD’s everyday life. [Image 2 & 3] They turned a fledgling village into a flourishing city in just a few decades. The Melbourne Harbour Trust had been transforming the Birrarung/Yarra for years – widening, deepening, removing debris & snags – and bringing ships into the heart of the city. But by the 1920s the port’s growth and evolutions in ship construction meant the Birrarung/Yarra was no longer able to support contemporary shipping. The new Spencer Street Bridge offered better access to Melbourne’s south bank and suburbs but cut the CBD off from the world of shipping for the very first time. Not everyone was happy. In ‘Yarra Bygone Days’ [The Age, 1929] the author was convinced "The closing of the River Yarra from Queens bridge to Spencer Street to all shipping … entirely changes one of the most historical places in the Commonwealth."
In a feat of nature, Spencer Street Bridge construction workers reached 20 metres below sea level searching for bedrock when they discovered a stump of red gum so big it took three weeks to remove. [Image 1] It was later carbon-dated at about 8,800 years old and had lived for over 400 years.
In 1975 the new Charles Grimes Bridge completely ended access to the old north wharfs, and today the heritage listed Goods Shed #5 is the only north wharf shed remaining.
This story is part of a project commissioned by the Melbourne Maritime Heritage Network to explore the maritime history of Melbourne on foot.



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Cupper, White & Neilson, Quarternary: ice ages - environments of change, chapter, January 2003, p.353
‘Yarra Bygone Days’, The Age, 27 April 1929, p.7
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‘Flinders Street looking west’, Kerr Brothers, State Library Victoria, H99.100/64
‘A scene that will never be seen any more’ Brodie Collection, La Trobe Picture Collection, State Library of Victoria, H99.220/279