#fp2012 Old Camberwell Library front door 52/22/2

Old Camberwell Library front door 52/22/2, a photo by Boroondara Libraries on Flickr.

This photo is submitted to the Flickr Friday Photos 2012 under the theme of "doors".

Like the previous photo, these doors also once had another use. They are now an emergency entrance fro mthe Council offices but previously were the front doors to Camberwell Library.

Beehive-road, Hawthorn 52/17/3

Beehive-road, Hawthorn 52/17/3, a photo by Boroondara Libraries on Flickr.

This photo is part of the City of Boroondara Library Service's contribution to the Flickr Friday Photos 2012 challenge under the theme of wildlife.

Wildlife and its use for the names of hotels also led to street names. In this case, the street which is now Barkers Road was originally called Beehive Road after the 1854 Beehive Hotel which operated from the corner of Beehive Road and Kew Road. This report from the South Bourke Standard on 4 July 1862 on the Hawthorn Council meeting on June 30, 1862 refers to correspondence with the neighbouring Kew Council in relation to changing the name of Beehive-road to Barkers-road as well as correspondence about road works on Beehive-road.

Red Lion Hotel 52/17/2

Red Lion Hotel 52/17/2, a photo by Boroondara Libraries on Flickr.

This photo is part of the City of Boroondara's contribution to the Flickr Friday Photos 2012 challenge under the theme of Wildlife.

The early settlers of Hawthorn (and Boroondara more generally) found lots of unfamiliar wildlife around them. But we don't find any hotels called The Wallaby or The Opossum. Instead they named their hotels as they had done in their places of origin, in this case the Red Lion, an entirely other kind of wildlife.

This 1936 photo of the then delicensed Red Lion in Church Street Hawthorn gives us an idea of the now demolished hotel which was of great local significance as a site for early political and social gatherings fron 1852.

#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 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.