Melbourne’s First Cemeteries

Many people assume the first Melbourne cemetery was the Old Melbourne Cemetery (under the Queen Victoria Market), but in fact it was actually located at Burial Hill, today’s Flagstaff Gardens. The first person to be buried in Melbourne, Port Phillip District was...

Losing the Blue Lake

THE 19TH CENTURY RECLAMATION OF THE WETLANDS OF WEST MELBOURNE David Sornig is the author of ‘Blue Lake – Finding Dudley Flats and the West Melbourne Swamp’. I haven’t as yet read the book, but I remember the Blue Lake area in the late 1950s. From Princes Pier...

Fleming House

  Fleming House, Park Street, West Brunswick Owned and lived in by John Wood and Mary Weir Fleming for over 50 years, Fleming House stood on the hill at the western end of Brunswick Road and Park Street, facing Royal Park, for almost 100 years from 1868 to the...

Chuck’s Mosaic and where some of the Pioneers Lie

A member of The Friends of the St. Kilda Cemetery, Elizabeth Hore, enjoys taking people on tours of the Cemetery which was set out by Robert Hoddle in 1851. The first interment was on 1 May 1855, with the burial of a young girl named Charlotte Green. Over time there...

Campbellfield – Who Named It?

1.Victoria. Department of Crown Lands Survey. (1884). Jika Jika, County of Bourke [cartographic material]Photo-lithographed at the Department of Lands and Survey, Melbourne, by J. Noone 22.2.84.(Haughton collection). (Melbourne: Department of Lands and Survey.(In...

Melbourne’s Planned Ship Canal

Planned Ship Canal and Docks, Melbourne (c1853)(State Library of Victoria Collection) During the 1840s a number of plans were developed to improve Melbourne’s port facilities, including a survey of the River Yarra by Messrs. Hatsell Mellersh Garrard and John...