Melbourne 1914 meets Melbourne 2014

The ABC wesbite features a terrific collection of digital montages by John Donegan that blend images of the major cities of Australia in 1914 with the cities as they are now.

Check out the Melbourne montage here.

This got me thinking about what places might be included in a similar montage of Coburg, which got me thinking about what those images might tell us about the character of the suburb and its people in both eras.

Over the next weeks and months, I’ll explore this theme a little more. I have some images in mind and when the weather’s kind to me, I’ll go and take another photograph of the same view from the same angle so we can see what a difference a hundred years makes. Just wish I had the skill to make a montage of the two images. Something else to work on!

Image courtesy Coburg Historical Society

The image I’m starting with was taken in about 1916 and is of the corner of Sydney Road and Bell Street, featuring the latest in modern public transport – the electric tram. It’s the north-east corner of the intersection and shows the fenced-in grounds of the Methodist (later Uniting Church) Church, with many conifers (I think) blowing furiously in the wind.

It was through this intersection that the first group of volunteers marched in August 1914, as they moved from Victoria Barracks to the newly established camp at Broadmeadows. And it was through this intersection that crowds rushed out to the Broadmeadows Camp on the following few Sundays to check it out for themselves. They created such a rush of traffic that extra police had to be put on duty to supervise.

I’ll admit to a sentimental attachment to this particular corner, as I lived in the Methodist Parsonage (corner Sydney Road and Urquhart Street) for seven years during the 1960s and used the Sydney tram often to take me to Saturday morning language classes at University High School and music lessons at the Conservatorium, as well as the occasional visit to the movies to see such favourites as 'The Sound of Music'. (Just don't ask me what I thought of 'Camelot'!)

This a rather unclear photo of Coburg Methodist Church that I took with my very first camera, a Kodak Instamatic, in January 1966. I was looking south-east(ish). The photo was taken about 50 years after World War One. Note that the fence has gone, as have the conifers. If you stand in the same place today, you'll see that the palm tree is no longer there. In fact, all the palms have been removed and replaced with gums.

Another photo taken with my Kodak Instamatic. It's some time in 1967 and I'm in Form 3 at Newlands High School. (That's me at the back). My little sister is on the right and the caretaker's children are next to her. This view is facing east and you'll notice behind us the Sunday School building that was destroyed by fire in the 1990s. I suspect that the brick Sunday School building in this photo was not built until after the First World War, so that would not have been part of the landscape when the 1916 photo was taken. 

So, even by the 1960s many changes had already taken place in this small corner of Coburg. The property was no longer fenced-in and the citizens of Coburg were free to use this green oasis in an ever-growing mass of shops and building developments. The conifers that were in evidence in 1916 were no longer there. The palms now dominated that landscape.

Bring yourself forward to 2014 and imagine yourself standing in the same place and you will see that trams still run along that busy route. There are cars banked up at every corner, the drivers waiting impatiently for the next change of lights. The church is still there, its bluestone exterior giving a sense of permanence to the scene, although it is no longer the Coburg Methodist Church (or even the Coburg Uniting Church) but it is still a church. The palm trees have gone, replaced by gums with beautiful white bark trunks. Best of all, though, the shared green space is still there. Let's hope it never disappears! 

And just to give you an idea of the view of that intersection facing south, here’s an image taken in about 1905. Note that trams were still horse-drawn. The electric tram was yet to come to Coburg. .

Image courtesy Coburg Historical Society

I can see Warren's Bakery on the right hand corner and that was still there when war broke out. It's now Ferguson Plarre, but in my day it was Ferguson's and a favourite destination of my father, who had a sweet tooth and was very fond of their vanilla slices and boston buns, so we visited the shop often.

On the left hand corner, you can just make out the Corner Hotel. It had been there forever and a day and went through a number of changes of name, but in my day it was Brown's Pub. (Being Methodists, of course, no one from my family visited the pub, but it was hard to ignore the men emerging when the pub closed at 6 o'clock. And I disliked intensely the smell of stale beer that emerged from the doors as you passed by.) Today, the pub's still there, known these days as Brown's Corner Hotel, so some things stay pretty much the same.

There will be more of these reminders of the changes time has wrought. 

Please let me know if you have suggestions for places to consider. And feel free to send me any images you have come across or have taken that might fill in this look at Coburg's changing landscape.

Harold Nicholls: returned serviceman and Labor Party member

252 Private Harold Nicholls, 7^th Infantry Battalion, A Company, enlisted early – on 19 August 1914. He was one of the first Coburg men to enlist and took part in the march from Victoria Barracks to Broadmeadows Camp in what the local paper described as a ‘living stream of volunteers’. This was just three days after he enlisted and although the recruits seemed something of a motley crew, they marched to the cheers of a large crowd. (Brunswick and Coburg Leader, 21 August, 1914, 18 September 1914) You can read more about that march here.

He left Melbourne on board HMAT Hororata (A20) as part of the first contingent on 19 October 1914.

 HMAT Benalla (A24) on the right. HMAT Hororata (A20) on the left. Port Melbourne. 19 October 1914.

Image courtesy AWM. Image C02793.

Harold was a 28 year old letter carrier (a postie) when he enlisted and lived with his parents Samuel and Maria at their home in Willow Grove, Coburg. His parents married in Walkerville, South Australia but Harold and his brother Jack (who also served in the 1st AIF) were born in Castlemaine. It would appear that the family moved to Coburg some time during the Depression of the 1890s, after Samuel Nicholls’ hairdressing business went broke. Their father died before the war began, so it was their mother Maria who farewelled her two sons as they set off for the war.

Harold's war was a short one. He was shot in the right arm in May 1915 on the Gallipoli Peninsula and was sent to England for treatment. Unfortunately, many fragments of metal had lodged in his arm and after three months of massage treatment he was returned to Australia in November 1915. His brother Jack returned from serving in New Guinea around this time but soon made his way to the Western Front, where he served until the end of the war.

Before enlistment, both Nicholls brothers were active members of community groups. They were members of the Coburg Rifle Club and belonged to the Coburg branch of the Australian Natives Association, Jack serving as a trustee, conference delegate and metropolitan delegate. (Brunswick and Coburg Star, 8 January 1915)

Image courtesy Coburg Historical Society

On his early enforced return to Coburg, Harold Nicholls tried his hand at local politics, standing for Coburg Council in 1917 and 1918. In his 1918 campaign, he stated that his aim was to ‘break up the monopoly in the Council and put in men who really represented the people of Coburg, which was a Labor constituency, as had been demonstrated in Federal and State elections and the Conscription referendums.’ He was reacting against what he saw as the ‘state of stagnation’ in the Coburg Council. (Brunswick and Coburg Leader, 16 August 1918, p.3) 

His bid was unsuccessful, which is not surprising when you consider that those who owned property could vote according to the number of properties they owned, so if you owned two properties you got two votes. Three properties gave you three votes and so on. This definitely worked against the working man having a say in local politics. And Nicholls’ politics were probably too radical for what was still a fairly sparsely populated, semi-rural area in the years immediately following the war.

Harold Nicholls was an active member of the Coburg branch of the Australian Labor Party . Carolyn Rasmussen, in her Master’s thesis, ‘Labor Politics in Coburg 1919-1940’, University of Melbourne, 1978 (and available in the local history room at Coburg Library and online through the University of Melbourne’s digital repository) notes that Harold Nicholls emerged in the second half of the 1930s as a left-winger. During World War Two, he was actively involved in the Victorian Anti-Conscription League, later known as the League of Freedom. (Argus, 11 March 1949, p.6) He was a long time anti-conscription advocate and much earlier, in October 1916 just after he’d returned home wounded, he had attended a heated anti-conscription rally in Sale with Maurice Blackburn MLA as the speaker. (Gippsland Times, 23 October 1916, p.3)

By 1945 Harold was acting in the capacity of Secretary of the Blackburn and Mutton Labor Supporters’ Committee (Williamstown Chronicle, 27 April 1945, p.2) and in 1952 acted as Coburg MLA Charles Mutton’s campaign secretary (Argus, 18 December 1952, p.5) when Mutton stood as Progessive Labor. (Mutton represented Coburg in the Victorian Legislative Assembly from 1940 to 1967 as an Independent Labor man.)

Harold Nicholls continued to live in the family home in Willow Grove, Coburg and remained in the employ of the Post Office. He married Ruby Fowler in 1921 when he 41 years old. Ruby died in 1963 aged 74. Harold died in 1975 aged 89. His brother Jack died in 1970.

Robert Holtham Hardy, blinded and badly injured in France

2384 Private Robert Holtham Hardy of Coburg enlisted in July 1915 aged 18 years and 11 months. He was a jeweller by trade and lived with his parents John and Jane Hardy in Tinning Street, Brunswick.

Robert Hardy was wounded in France on 10 August 1916 and ten days later was admitted to the 2^nd London General Hospital suffering from severe shrapnel wounds to both eyes, a severe fractured tibia and injuries to his side, neck and chest. His eyes were so badly injured that not only was he blinded but had both eyes removed before being admitted to St Dunstan’s Hostel for Blinded Soldiers in Regent’s Park where he remained until his injured leg turned septic and he was readmitted to hospital before being returned to Australia in July 1917. (Another great website featuring St Dunstan's can be found here.)

Immediately upon his return, the citizens of Coburg rallied to raise money for Hardy and the benefit (concert, supper and dance) held in November 1917 at the Coburg Town Hall raised £50.

Argus, 22 November 1917, p.8

Brunswick and Coburg Leader, 9 November 1917, p.3.

Brunswick and Coburg Leader, 30 November 1917, p.1.

Although the fate of a blind returned serviceman might seem dismal, Robert Hardy had benefitted from  an occupational massage training program set up at St Dunstan’s to help blinded soldiers rehabilitate and find a useful occupation and sense of purpose on their return to their home countries. It seems clear that Robert Hardy benefitted from this program, because on his return to Coburg (his parents were now living in Sydney Road) he set up as a masseur. (1924 electoral roll)

Robert Hardy after his return from the war. Found on The Stanley Low Legacy website.

In the middle 1920s Robert Hardy married a Coburg girl, Ada Clift, and they had a daughter Stella.  They lived firstly in Victoria Street, Coburg, but then moved to Caulfield where he died on 9 August 1931 aged only 34. True to his Coburg roots, Robert Hardy is buried at Coburg Cemetery. His father John predeceased him, dying in 1924. His mother Jane remained in Coburg and died there in 1952 aged 76. His wife Ada had a long life as a widow. She died in 1985 aged 93.

And just to show how one piece of research leads to another …

Recently a descendant of one of the Harder brothers of May Street, Coburg, contacted me to say that his grandfather was also a member of the Harder family, although he did not serve because of the end of hostilities. He was Dudley Grenfell Harder, known in the family as Dougie. He also told me that Dougie's brother Victor Harder had been persuaded to seek a commission with the British by his then-girlfriend’s father, William Hill. The girlfriend, Dorcas Hill, was a member of the local Red Cross Society and was there the night of the welcome home for Robert Hardy, as one of the entertainers. 

Being curious by nature, I wondered what happened to Dorcas. Like so many other young women of that time, her sweetheart did not return from the war. (Victor was killed in action on 26 April 1918.) However, she did marry – in the middle 1920s – a returned serviceman, Lieutenant Edgar Sherwen MC. He was a Wimmera lad, hailing from Kaniva near the South Australian border, and had been a State School teacher before he enlisted. He had by then completed one year of a Science degree at the University of Melbourne and on his returned gained his Bachelor of Civil Engineering, completed with Repatriation Department assistance. The young couple lived firstly with her parents in Champ Street, Coburg, but soon moved away from the area. Edgar Sherwen went on to work for the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works and was at one time President of Melbourne Legacy.

World War 1 in photos

A friend just sent me the link to an amazing collection of images from 'The Atlantic: World War 1 in Photos: The Western Front Part II and Armistice'.


Here are two of the photos from the collection:

A wounded British prisoner being supported by two German soldiers, 1917.

A French town on 31 October 1918. The bridge was built by New Zealand engineers.

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The images have no connection to Coburg and some are quite confrontational, but it's an amazing collection and if you go back to The Atlantic's home page and type World War 1 into the search, you will find plenty of other impressive images. I was particularly taken with those in the collection World War 1: a century later. 

Dunbar Carey, Don Bradman, Amy Johnson and connections to Coburg

Image found at Anzacs Online

http://anzacsonline.net.au/2012/10/carey-ernest-robert-dunbar/

5667 Private Ernest Robert Dunbar Carey sailed for the war with the 17th Reinforcements of the 5th Infantry Battalion in April 1916 as a nineteen year old.

At the time he had no connections to Coburg, but as is the way of things, there were at least three men on board the ship who did, three men who died on the Western Front: brothers William and Edward Ashcroft and Daniel Angland (a member of the Coburg Harriers Club). The Ashcrofts’ brother Walter suffered a double amputation trying to rescue Edward, returned and settled in Coburg and spent the rest of his life working for disabled soldiers.

On his return, Carey worked for the Federal Taxation Department, but his great love was music and in the early 1920s he began to compose songs and conduct various suburban orchestras and was the director of the Malvern RSL Orchestra at one stage, styling himself Dunbar Carey. He also acted as a musical editor, adviser and arranger for Allans, Collins and Medley Music House at various times.

As a composer, he published a number of songs about high profile public figures, none very successful.

One, Just Plain ‘Johnnie’ was about the aviatrix Amy Johnson, who visited Melbourne to such acclaim in June 1930.

Image courtesy National Library of Australia, http://nla.gov.au/nla.mus-an6160987

Another was Take Off Your Hats to Bradman! Also written in 1930.

Image courtesy National Library of Australia, http://nla.gov.au/nla.mus-vn3353781

In 1932 Dunbar Carey opened a music and radio shop at 112 Bell Street, Coburg, in the block between Sydney Road and the railway line. With the Depression beginning to bite, it was the worst possible time to start a new business dealing in what were essentially luxury goods, so it is no surprise that by 1936 he had closed up shop and returned to the Public Service where he remained until he retired in 1953. He later left Victoria for Queensland, where he died in 1960.

Image courtesy Coburg Historical Society. 

Interestingly, the producer of this publication, Herbert Rouvray, was also a returned servicemen. 

Dunbar Carey’s brief career in the music industry forms part of an academic study on the music written about the great Australian cricketer Don Bradman, so if you have any insights you can offer on Ernest R.D. (Dunbar) Carey or on music written about Don Bradman, please contact me and I’ll pass it on.