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Talk of the dead.

John Laurens deserves to be remembered by people who live in North and West Melbourne. He was the first treasurer of the Hotham Mechanics Institute, which later became the North ...

First sixty years of the Temperance Hall (part 1)

James Munro was a temperance man. He represented North Melbourne in the colonial parliament and was briefly premier of the colony. His fellow member in North Melbourne, John Curtain, was ...

First sixty years of the Temperance Hall (part 2)

I don't know if Christian groups favour a particular colour. Blue or white seem like possibilities. Temperance 1 have always thought of as grey. despite its inclination to militancy. Whatever ...

Rich treasure trove of print

Trove is a true treasure. It is a free online search service that enables researchers to find information from digitised newspapers and other published sources. There, at the tip of ...

Happy one hundredth to The Lost Dogs’ Home!

One hundred years ago Australia had a population of 4,820,172 people. On 12 March 1913, Lady Denman, wife of Australia’s Governor General, named the capital Canberra. Lord Denman told those ...

At home and school in North and West Melbourne

One Saturday last November about 50 Hotham History Project members and friends gathered outside St Mary Star of the Sea to take a nostalgic walk along the streets of West ...

Recollections of great days at the old pool

Laurie Davies was born 100 years ago. He lived his early life in Munster Terrace and remembered spending many hours enjoying himself at the North Melbourne Pool. Years passed and ...

City of Melbourne Bowls Club celebrates 150 years.

The minute book proclaiming the formation of the West Melbourne Bowling Club, on 18 August 1866, begins with these words: “At the request of several gentlemen who are desirous of ...

The history of a West Melbourne streetscape.

Between 1853 and 1920, 1–11 Hawke Street, on the corner of King Street, had a number of small timber dwellings. After World War I, a Melbourne chemist, Samuel John Marshall, ...

Grate story of draining the swamp

Alluring, fascinating, intriguing. How, you may ask, can these adjectives be used to describe a drain? North Melbourne resident Geoff Leach has been interested in one 'particular local drain since ...

The M.C.C.’s Own “Watergate”

Described by a local estate agent as the Melbourne City Council's Watergate - Capel and Peel Street's future is shrouded with secrecy. Back in 1971 the Council began buying land ...

Plaque marks the site of wartime tragedy

0ne of North and West Melbourne's rare public reminders of World War II is a brass plaque on an industrial site near the Macaulay railway station. The plaque commemorates the ...

A wander through the historical records held in the North Melbourne Library.

Have you ever wondered where your great-grandfather is buried? (Look up CD ROM: Fawkner & Coburg Cemeteries.) Who was that relative born aboard ship on the voyage out to Australia? ...

A Walk Through Time.

The story of the first hundred years of St Michael's parish covers a lot of North Melbourne's history, which the Hotham History Project celebrated on 8 November with a walk ...

A walk along Victoria Street.

Victoria Street is one of my favourite suburban streets. It runs from west to east across the top of the city, forming the southern boundary first of North Melbourne and ...

On the Trail of Historic Hotham.

The Friends of St Michael's had a very successful fund-raising day on the 13th October. Despite very cold weather, approximately sixty people gathered in Chetwynd Street to commence a fascinating ...
Two historic North Melbourne Halls

Two Historic Halls Under Hammer

Two halls in North Melbourne which have been closely linked to labor history will be auctioned during September. One is the "People's Hall" at 456 Queensberry Street, and the other ...

Town Hall Hotel – old favourite plays new tune.

A pub that won’t say die. The Town Hall Hotel was ordered to close its doors in 1904 as a result of a Liquor Licensing Board assessment of all the ...

‘Time gents, please’ ended our old days at Mulcahy’s

I recently drove past the grand old Mulcahy's Hotel building at 700 Victoria Street, North Melbourne. I was curious to see it after noticing online that it now boasts "21 ...

The Silent Clocktower

No one was surprised when the North Melbourne Town Hall and Municipal Buildings were listed in the heritage register. They are among Melbourne's greatest buildings. But many must have been ...

The North Melbourne Football Club, The Shinboners’

The story goes that in 1869 some of the lads who lived in what is now North Melbourne had been playing cricket during the summer and wanted to keep active ...

The Dead and buried memories

James Long digs into some of Melbourne's records “It was nothing to see a kid with a skull under his arm...no respect (in) them days...,” recalls long-time North Melbourne resident ...

The Benevolent Asylum

Within the next couple of months the Hotham History Project is hoping to publish the first volume in its continuing series of small monographs on the history of North and ...

Street numbers have a history of their own

To allow for the development of Melbourne, a grid was laidout in 1837, which contained substantially sized blocks that were subdivided for sale. Whilst some thought went into planning the ...

Lola Russell, the queen of King Street

Melburnians rightly picture the architecture of the 19th century as ornate Classical. Yet there are very few remaining examples of what Georgian Melbourne looked like before the gold rushes. One ...

Hotham History Project AGM

During the course of the afternoon, three speakers gave an account of their research, which was varied in subject and approach. The North Melbourne Town Hall Bill Hannan reported on ...

Moving around: stories of a North Melbourne family

The Hotham History Project launched its 12th publication in grand style on 14 December last year when over 100 members and friends gathered in St Michael's Hall to hear the ...

A West Melbourne lad: Monash moves on.

For many of us certainly for me John Monash's fame as a soldier has eclipsed his record as an engineer and administrator. Monash in fact combined army work with private ...

Men of Hotham and other extraordinary people.

Launch of Annals of Hotham Vol 5 Pride of Hotham: A tale of North Melbourne and a red-headed architect, the fifth in the Hotham History Project's Annals of Hotham series, ...

Men and mountains of North Melbourne

Visitors to the North Melbourne Town Hall clock tower during the Spring Fling had a wonderful view of North Melbourne. The town hall is on the southern edge of the ...