#blog12daysxmas Day 12 Epiphany

Today is the 6 January and the Feast of the Epiphany. And it means that this post should have been written yesterday to have been done within the 12 days of Christmas. The Feast of the Epiphany in the Roman Catholic calendar celebrates the visit of the Magi to the new-born Jesus Christ in Bethlehem.


The stained glass window above is to be found in the nave of the Immaculate Conception Church in Burwood Road, Hawthorn - on the eastern side, i.e. on your right as you look towards the altar. The beautiful 19th century glass shines like jewels in the sunlight. In the left hand panel is Mary, seated with the infant on her lap and the approbation of heaven shining down on her. The right hand panel shows the three Magi approaching richly dressed and bearing their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.


The window is dedicated to parishioner, Michael O'Grady (1824-1876), who was the first Mayor of the municipality of Hawthorn in 1860 when it ceased to be part of the Boroondara Roads Board. He was Mayor again in 1861/62 and 1870/71 and had previously been Chairman of the Boroondara District Roads Board in 1858. Also local member for South Bourke in the Legislative Assembly with a particular interest in Catholic issues such as the Education Act of 1872, he died suddenly on 5 January 1876 at his home Erinagh in Hawthorn. His requiem mass was attended by many priests and lay people, and the shops in Hawthorn closed as a mark of respect as his funeral cortege moved through Hawthorn on its way to the Boroondara Cemetery.

According to the South Bourke Standard, a meeting was held in the parish in August 1870 to decide on which windows would be allocated to those who had subscribed to their creation. Curiously Michael O'Grady was allocated the Visit of the Magi. The date of his death on the eve of the feast of the Epiphany made the subject matter of the window dedicated to him uncannily appropriate.

Next time you are going past, stop for a while and visit Immaculate Conception. The stained glass windows have so much to tell us about the history of the area.

#blog12daysxmas Day 11 Hawthorn Town Hall Beginnings #fp2012

Another topic that came to mind for the #fp2012 theme of Beginnings was the first town hall in Hawthorn. Most people, familiar with the 1888 Beswicke designed building, don't ponder where the Council offices were before. The municipality of Hawthorn came into existence in 1860 when a petition of residents successfully called for separation from the Boroondara Roads Board.


The Boroondara Roads Board met in a room attached to a shop on the north side of Burwood Road just east of Power Street, Hawthorn. And it was there on 26 July 1860 that the first public library opened in the area. The Boroondara Roads Board continued to meet there until 1861 but the new municipality wanted a permanent building which reflected its status. After much debate about the most desirable location for this edifice, eventually a block of land in the current Burwood Road next to Fletcher's Hotel was sold to the fledgling Council for offices which would incorporate municipal and police buildings as well as the courthouse.

The photograph at the head of the post shows the 1862 Hawthorn Town Hall built on the current location in Burwood Road and officially opened in February of that year. The extension to the east including the library and the tower were completed later in the year. The library then moved east to this location. The 1862 Town Hall was demolished in 1888 to make way for a new town hall more worthy of the municipality of Hawthorn which was declared a Town in 1887. The photo below shows the predominantly male gathering at the laying of the foundation stone for the new Town Hall on 7 August 1888. In this photo the partially demolished 1862 town hall can be seen.

#blog12daysxmas Day 10 Wurundjeri Beginnings #fp2012

One of the challenges we at the City of Boroondara Library Service have set ourselves for 2012 is participation in the Friday Photo 2012 (#fp2012) Flickr challenge. Each week of 2012 we will be given a topic to photograph and in that week we must submit up to three photographs on the Friday Photo 2012 Flickr group. We will be blogging about these photographs on this blog and our reading blog, Bookends, during 2012.

The first theme is Beginnings and we had lots of ideas of what we could do for that. We settled on two for Telling Tales and one for Bookends. And what more obvious topic could there be for beginnings of the Boroondara area than an acknowledgment of the Wurundjeri people as the traditional owners of this land? It is impossible these days to get a real sense of how many people lived in what became the Colony of Victoria and estimates vary between 15,000 and 100,000.

We do know that there were thirty-eight tribal groups and around the Port Phillip region five main tribes formed what was later termed the Kulin nation. These five including the Wurundjeri all shared the Woiwurring language which used the word "Kulin" for man. The Wurundjeri-baluk area extended out to the source of the Yarra and also included what became known as Gardiner's Creek.

Within Boroondara, along the Yarra scarred river red gums which were used for making shields and canoes provide one of the few tangible pieces of evidence of these inhabitants today. However, two projects both initiated by the former City of Hawthorn attempt to redress this imbalance. One is a creative work and the other is a physical space.


When you visit Hawthorn Library be sure to take a look at the stained glass window at the east of the building in the local history area. This work, Settlement of Hawthorn, shown above and one of our #fp2012 photographs, was created by artist Gerry Cummins with bicentennial funding in 1988/89 and shows Hawthorn as it would have been before the arrival of John Gardiner and his cattle in 1836. You can see a representation of John Gardiner's arrival midway down the right of the window. And you can see how small he and his herd appear in the landscape. Are they interlopers to an Eden? Yes, that is in itself a very non-indigenous concept but it is what Cummins appears to be representing.

The Wurundjeri Garden on the banks of the Yarra near the Wallen Road Bridge in Hawthorn is a successful effort to recreate something of the landscape as it may have been before the impact of Europeans. The project, initiated in 1990, was the brainchild of Dorothy Sutherland from the Hawthorn Historical Society, and was a joint venture between the Hawthorn Historical Society and the former City of Hawthorn. The Garden which continues to be managed by the Society and the City of Boroondara celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2010 and provides a great educative resource about Wurundjeri plants.

As part of Boroondara's celebrations for 150 years of local government in 2004, we held a Spring Planting at the Wurundjeri Garden and installed a commemorative seat as an acknowledgment of the traditional owners of the land. Pictured above at the planting are Wurundjeri Ian Hunter who provided the traditional welcome, Dorothy Sutherland and the Mayor of Boroondara, Councillor Judith Voce.


If you go down and visit the garden, you will be delighted by it. Sit on the commemorative seat and ponder the history of the Yarra and people who have touched it. Celebrate Dorothy Sutherland's vision that has led to the garden being there. You will also discover lots of information there on the display signage but, if you want something to keep, pop into Hawthorn Library and get your free copies of the Wurundjeri Garden Guide for Visitors and the Wurundjeri Garden Plant list.

#blog12daysxmas Day 9 Swimming training at Hawthorn Baths

With the current building works going on at the Hawthorn Aquatic and Leisure Centre, it is quite timely to have a look at this 1951 footage of Swinburne students doing swimming training. It is also very suitable for a steamy January day when the Hawthorn Baths would have been packed. Please note that the film has no sound.

We are familiar with Swinburne University today dominating the Hawthorn landscape but it is true to say that Swinburne (and its predecessor the Eastern Suburbs Technical College) played a significant role in the Hawthorn community from early in the twentieth century, and in fact its establishment dates back to a similar time to that at which the Hawthorn Baths were opened. This footage dates to 1951, almost half a century after both were opened.

#blog12daysxmas Day 8 Trove

Did you know that if you are searching for information about families or places in Boroondara that Trove is a great place to start online? Well, that is after you have checked the City of Boroondara Library Service catalogue, course! Trove is a portal developed by the National Library of Australia and provides access to a wide range of photographs, maps, digitized newspapers and magazines, books, archives and more.

Boroondara's local history photographic collection is available through Trove and in addition you will find material from other collections around Australia that relate to places in Boroondara or to people you are interested in. Trove also harvests from a group on Flickr called Picture Australia: People, Places and Events that many people on Flickr contribute to. So this is another source for material that may be relevant to your researches.

One of the most exciting things about Trove is its access to an ever increasing number of digitized newspapers. The OCR doesn't do a perfect job on these so searching can be a bit hit and miss but compared to scrolling through rolls and rolls of microfilm the digitized newspapers on Trove are sheer luxury. They say newspapers are covered from 1803 to 1954. The home page for the newspapers is here. Initially the papers being digitized were daily newspapers from the capital cities and for Melbourne that is the Argus which was published from 1848 to 1954. These entries are being added gradually so keep on checking back in case what you want isn't there.

More recently as a result of a joint project between Victorian public libraries and the State Library of Victoria a number of local Victorian newspapers have been added. At the moment the only Boroondara one available is the South Bourke Standard for the years 1861-1873. It is fabulous to have this available as it was Boroondara's first newspaper. It was edited by Apollos Slatterie who was the second Town Clerk of the municipality of Hawthorn and later in charge of Hawthorn's library. The earliest surviving issue is from May 31 1861. You can see an advertisement for Apollos Slatterie's printing office in the middle of page 1 where the Burwood Road address is given as "Main Road, Hawthorn, near Fletcher's Hotel". You can see Fletcher's Hotel in the centre of this photo looking west down Burwood Road.


The great thing about digitized records is that apart from scanning them, you can search. So if you search for Slatterie, you can find quite a bit of information about our Apollos including the deaths of his mother and father in England whose notices provide a bit of information about his background before coming to Australia. And other references make it known that before his arrival in Melbourne he was in Sydney in the 1840s in the bankruptcy court.

If you haven't tried Trove yet, do try it particularly for the photos and the newspapers. There is a wealth of stuff waiting to be found there.

#blog12daysxmas Day 7 New challenge for 2012

2012 is just around the corner and from the first week in January for the coming year the City of Boroondara Library Service will be taking part in a Flickr group challenge called Friday Photos 2012. Each Saturday we will be given a theme for the following week and can post up to three photographs on that theme in the Flickr group by the following Friday.

We will then be using the opportunity to write about those photographs in two of the library blogs, this one Telling Tales and our reading blog, Bookends. The theme for the first week has just been announced and it is, perhaps not unsurprisingly, "Beginnings". There are all sorts of possibilities with that theme for local and family history, so watch out for what we come up with!


In the mean time you might not be aware that the City of Boroondara Library Service has a Flickr account where you can look at photographs relating to the libraries currently. Check in here and see what you can find. Remember our historical photographs can be found on the web via the library catalogue, via Picture Australia or via Trove.

#blog12daysxmas Day 6 Radical Melbourne

It's not long now to January 6 when the voting for the National Year of Reading "Our Story" closes! For details of all the books to vote on and where to do your voting see the Telling Tales post on Bearbrass a couple of days ago or check out our Bookends blogpost today.


Another of the books on the list that people who are interested in local and family history might like to read is Radical Melbourne by Jeff and Jill Sparrow. Originally this book started as a walking tour that covered sites in inner Melbourne that had some link to political struggle and to Leftist history. 50 inner city locations are looked at and the events and incidents the book focuses on are from the beginnings of the city to the 1940s.

Maybe this is a book which typifies Melbourne for you?

#blog12daysxmas Day 5 Mimovich plaque

Mimovich plaque, a photo by Hecuba's Story on Flickr.

As a followup to the post yesterday about Alexandra Gardens in Kew here is a photograph of the actual plaque in the gardens commemorating the gifting of the Mimovich sculptures to the City of Kew.

It's a lovely day today so I hope some of you find time to visit and spend some time in Alexandra Gardens.

#blog12daysxmas Day 4 Visconti House

Visconti House is not strictly speaking a local history book or really anything to do with Boroondara. It is a young adult mystery novel written by Melbourne author, Elsbeth Edgar. It is a story about Laura (and her family) who have moved from Melbourne to live in a Victorian country town in a tumbling down mansion from another era.

Laura, whilst happy at home with her parents in the house, hates school where she feels different. Enter Leon, another person who is different. Leon and Laura gradually build up a friendship by tracing the history of Laura's mansion, the Visconti House of the title, and of Carlo Visconti, the man who built it. This is a great story about how to use local history sources: it is local history at work. There are plans and photographs and newspapers and the local public library and a cemetery as well as oral history gathered from older residents and relatives. There is even a bit of digging - of sorts.

I really enjoyed the book and read it from start to finish in one sitting. It is certainly a theme that is dear to my heart. I liked the way all the sources were covered and that there were frustrations and waiting times as there inevitably are when you are really tracing the history of a house or family. That being said, it did all come together rather neatly. But it is a work of fiction. It is a great book to use if you are wanting to encourage an interest in family or local history in younger people.

#blog12daysxmas Day 3 Alexandra Gardens

One of the most beautiful places in the City of Boroondara is undoubtedly the Alexandra Gardens in Kew. This oasis of calm and green is situated in Cotham Road between the Kew Library and Gellibrand Street. Visitors to the library can enjoy sitting looking from the western part of the building to these gardens and can wander through them on the way to the junction.


Alexandra Gardens are of historical significance and a "substantially intact park of the Edwardian period and for being one of the few formally landscaped parks in Kew" according to the City of Kew Urban Conservation Study completed in 1988.

Though a band rotunda had been erected locally in 1863 as a memorial of the establishment of the Borough of Kew, the Alexandra Gardens were an Edwardian creation and officially opened to the public on 8 April 1908 by the Governor of Victoria, Sir Reginald Talbot.


The bandstand was erected and opened on 14 December 1910 to mark the Jubilee of the Municipality of Kew and the establishment of the Town of Kew and provided a place for the Kew Band to play a series of moonlight concerts that summer.

The Queen Victoria Jubilee Fountain, formerly situated adjacent to the Kew Post Office in the junction was removed from its original site in 1924 to make way for the war memorial and relocated in the north-west corner of Alexandra Gardens.


Another pleasant feature of the gardens is the installation of sculptures by local artist Leopoldine Mimovich. The ten sculptures were given to the people of Kew "for their enjoyment" by the sculptor and were officially accepted by the Mayor of Kew, Councillor Michael Montalto, on 11 February 1990. Another of her sculptures celebrates the reopening of the Kew Library in its current location.

#blog12daysxmas Day 2 Bearbrass

In Australia in 2012 we are having a year long celebration of reading: the National Year of Reading 2012. One of the first activities is to get readers' views on what are the books that reflect what our sense of place and identity. So there is the Our Story competition going on across all states and territories to identify the one book people identify with most in their place. Shortlists have been compiled and circulated and the closing date is 6 January 2012. You can vote at your local public library, bookshop or online at the ABC website. You can get more information about the Our Story competition and the shortlisted books for all states and territories on the National Year of Reading site.

Among the six books shortlisted for Victoria is Robyn Annear's Bearbrass which was first published in 1995. It was awarded the A.A. Phillips prize for Australian Studies in the 1995 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, and was shortlisted for the 1995 NSW Premier's Literary Awards and the Age Book of the Year. Bearbrass was republished in a new edition in 2005.

Based on one of the early local names for Melbourne, Bearbrass reconstructs the early village as it might from been from 1835 when white settlers first appeared until the village was changed forever by the gold rushes of the 1850s and the resultant population influx. Annear overlays the nineteenth century village with her impressions and experiences of the modern city making an entertaining read that touches the reader on many levels.

Will you be voting for Bearbrass in the Our story competition?

#blog12daysxmas Day 1 Hugh Trumble

It seems appropriate at this time of the year to blog about one of Boroondara's cricket greats, particularly since one of our library borrowers sitting in the Hugh Trumble members' bar at the G did not know of his Boroondara connections.

Hugh Trumble (1867-1938) was born at the Collingwood Stockade on 19 May 1867, the third of four boys. His father, William was Head Warder at the Collingwood Stockade which was on the site of the current Lee Street Primary School in Carlton.The Stockade, opened in 1953, had by 1866 become an asylum. While young Hugh moved to Ararat where his father, William, was employed as a warden in the psychiatric hospital. William transferred back to Melbourne with his family after the Kew Asylum (Willsmere) opened in 1872, and Hugh attended school at nearby Hawthorn Grammar School while living at the Kew Asylum.

Hugh had a career with the National Bank of Australasia which he joined in 1887 and this included a stint as manager of the Kew branch from 1908 to 1911. He resigned this post in November 1911 to become secretary of the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) and the Melbourne Cricket Club (MCC).

He first played for Victoria in 1887/8 and made five tours of England. It was during the 1899 tour that he was described as "the best bowler Australia has sent us". Secretary of the MCC until his death in 1938, he oversaw the building of two new grandstands at the MCG and was well known as a raconteur. Trumble whose connections with Boroondara lasted until his death died at his Hawthorn Grove, Hawthorn, home on 14 August 1938.

Photo credits:
Hugh Trumble, photographer J. Bolland (in various collections including State Library of Victoria & Melbourne Cricket Club)
Metroplitan Lunatic Asylum Kew, c. 1880 (National Gallery of Victoria source: Wikimedia Commons)