SATURDAY BREAKFAST #6: BALLARAT ROAD, DEER PARK)

Visited 12 June, 2010

What was I expecting at Deer Park?  What was I expecting of Deer park?

Before the several route changes of recent years the journey to Ballarat, to points further west in Victoria, and to Adelaide, took you along Ballarat Road (the Western Highway), and through Deer Park. Those making that trip passed along the short and one-sided Deer Park shopping strip.  Today was the day to see whether the strip had some places of interest - in particular, whether we could find a breakfast spot nonpareil.

 There are few shops in the strip, and they are a sad bunch – a forlorn assortment, with two novelty/party shops (yes, two), a couple of night-time eateries, and one auto-teller only.  The newsagent was busy with customers collecting their Saturday dailies; and the most interesting business was a large liquor store cum greengrocer cum everything. 

The saddest feature of our brisk walk along and back was the Tattersalls agency - for once not part of the newsagent - where several people were impatiently awaiting its nine o’clock opening.  I doubt they were lined up to collect their winnings, more likely lined up to add to their losings. This gives a clue to Deer Park today. 

The location of Deer Park - some 17 kilometres from the centre of Melbourne and, these days, well within the ambit of the Melbourne suburban zone – takes its name from the deer that once roamed the district courtesy of the Melbourne Hunt Club.  This was until the 1890s; but prior to the Hunt Club and its prey moving further afield a somewhat less recreational activity was established at Kororoit Creek, as the area was then known:  in 1875 the Australian Explosives and Chemicals Co. Ltd began the manufacture of “explosive compounds”.  Eventually, the explosives and fertilizer business became part of the Imperial Chemical Industries world-wide empire; and the massive industrial estate that grew in the Deer Park area was a Melbourne landmark through to1980, for more than 100 years.

With the closure and demolition of the ICI complex significant parcels of land became available for residential development, and such has occurred.  But the stigma could not be erased; and the choice of Deer Park as the location for a prison had a certain inevitability.  The Deer Park Metropolitan Women’s Correctional Centre (later re-named The Dame Phyllis Frost Centre) opened its arms to 260 inmates on 15 August, 1996.

So Deer Park today is a curious mixture of light industrial, old and modest residential, new and overblown residential, the State’s largest prison for females, and a shabby row of shops on what was once the Western Highway.

The morning was cold, and the wind was bleak.  We were glad to pass up the only breakfast opportunity – pre-cooked sausages and cling-wrapped bacon and egg rolls, languishing in a bain-marie – and headed for Newmarket, to a known eatery, where the food and coffee were excellent and thoughts of explosives and fallen women had no place.  There was no venison on the breakfast menu.

Gary Andrews

SATURDAY BREAKFAST #5: MOUNT DANDENONG TOURIST ROAD, MONTROSE

Visited 16 July, 2011

Of course this will be easy, I thought.  The name “Montrose” is clearly Scottish, and I shall have no trouble in ascertaining how Montrose near Melbourne received its name.  But, once again, the words of course proved to be unreliable, even though I was merely thinking them. 

I was warned decades ago never to use the words of and course in conjunction. Often they are superfluous: the headmaster was of course embarrassed when he dropped his denture while addressing school assembly. Indeed he was, but of course doesn’t add anything.  Sometimes the words mistakenly assume that the receiver shares a common knowledge with the giver: the distance between A and B is, of course, more than the distance between C and D.  The inclusion of the words of course in the assertion creates an awkward situation for the receiver – it’s no longer easy to respond “Oh, I didn’t know that”, and the receiver is less inclined to go mute or to confess ignorance and more inclined to argue.  But by far the worst usage of the expression of course is when the giver is being obviously disdainful of the receiver: you’re of course aware that Mount Kosciusko is Australia’s highest peak; and the more obscure the purported gem of knowledge the more insulting the words of course become.

So for a lifetime I have been carefully watching my use of of course, and mostly resisting.  Occasionally the words get an outing, although typically in an ironic sense.

In reality there is nothing easy at all about finding the derivation of the name Montrose; but given that there are Montroses everywhere – two in Australia, one in Ireland, four in Canada and 26 in the USA - it’s fair to assume that there is a mother lode somewhere.  [I should interpose that the Montrose of today’s breakfast is within the Shire of Yarra Ranges and that the Shire website, although it has hundreds of pages, has none devoted to local history.]  Perhaps Melbourne’s Montrose is taken from (the one) Montrose in Scotland?  Dare I say of course?  Well, you’d better be correct, Gary, because there’s nothing more lonely than an of course attached to an incorrect fact!

The history of Montrose in Scotland is recorded neither on smoking stone tablets nor on yellowing ancient parchment.  It likely started as a Norse settlement; then as early as the year 980 it was sacked and razed by the Danes.  It revived, and had a succession of names in a succession of languages before becoming Montrose some time in the 1100s.  Its later history was colourful, usually the colour of blood.

Some less than riveting bits of trivia:  Montrose is the third largest town in the Scottish Local Government Council Area of Angus (there are 32 Areas in Scotland);  Montrose has over 20 statues “of note” scattered (!) around the town;  Montrose has the fifth oldest golf course in the world; and notable groups who have performed at the Montrose Music Festival, held each May, have been The Proclaimers, Average White Band and Deacon Blue.

So what of all this?   Actually, I had hoped that there might have been a serious challenge for the naming rights of Melbourne’s Montrose in the form of the Duke of Montrose.  The Dukedom dates from 1488, but was a life peerage and abruptly lapsed in 1495 on celestial orders.  Then it was re-established in 1707, as an hereditary title; it survives, and the 8^th Duke (born 1935) succeeded to the title in 1992.  Could our Montrose have been named after the Scottish person rather than the Scottish town? 

The family name of the Montrose peerage is Graham, and the encyclopaedias invariably have an entry on James Graham, who lived from 1612 to 1650.  James Graham, indeed the only one of his tribe important enough to claim an encyclopaedia entry, was the 5^th Earl of Montrose and the 1^st Marquess of Montrose - but never the Duke, because the Dukedom was in recess during his lifetime.  He was an important figure in Scottish history, and was doubtless famous long after his time, but it is beyond belief that a couple of hundred years after his death he would have been memorialised in the foothills of the Dandenong Ranges, no matter how earnest the early white settlers might have been.

We can be sure, I think, that Montrose town here is undoubtedly named after Montrose town in Scotland.  Their name is about the only thing the two places share. 

We arrived to find that one side of the street is parkland, and that market stallholders were setting up.  The market operates on the third Saturday of each month (except January), and as with the apocryphal Mr. Gorsky, today was the day.  Not a large number of stalls, and produce and craft goods rather than trash and treasure.  We bought some jams and lemon butter, and some hand-made soaps – reduced in price because they had been in the back of the cupboard for some time, and had lost their tempting odours.  It was a cold morning, and where the pale sunlight hadn’t yet penetrated there were patches of crunchy frost.

The side of the street that made up the shopping strip was quite meagre, no more than 20 shops.  A greengrocer and a butcher, but no supermarket, and the citizens of Montrose must attend to much of their provisioning elsewhere.  Our breakfast place bravely tried to cater to all wants – bread, cakes, a range of pies quiches and sandwiches for lunch, and some breakfast lines.  But no porridge or muesli, and we (not entirely reluctantly) accepted the need to have bacon eggs and sausages.  Unexpectedly, the sausages were huge Kranskys; but overall the “big breakfast” was disappointing.  The coffee, sadly, was rather bitter, and we chose not to have seconds.

Montrose is something of a sleepy hollow, even though busy Canterbury Road passes right by.  It has been passed by, too, by the mainstream religions.  The three churches in town are the Church of Christ, the Church of Scientology and the Spiritualist Church – no Catholic, no Anglican, no Uniting.  And its Wikipedia entry has one illustration only, a photograph of the local war memorial.

Rather pathetic, really…………..but there is a positive note on which to end.  Montrose’s most famous resident was Kevin Heinz, presenter for many years of the “Sow What” gardening programme on television.  In his time Heinz was the best recognised and most famous and loved gardener in the State, and he led a life devoted to good works.  For a short time his television show used to include a segment featuring his little daughter Kim, and Kim’s Garden; and when Kim died of cancer the explosion of public sympathy was unprecedented. 

Heinz died three years ago.  His property at Montrose has been gifted into public hands, and is known as The Peoples’ Garden.  Of course.

Gary Andrews

SATURDAY BREAKFAST #4: HIGH STREET, PRAHRAN (NEAR CHAPEL STREET CORNER)

Visited 2 July, 2011

Is it Prahran or is it Windsor?  Each is a named suburb within Stonnington, the mega-municipality that resulted from the 1994 merger of the municipalities of Malvern and Prahran.  Australia Post is of no assistance, because although it recognises both names as postal districts, they have each been allotted postcode 3181. I pose the question because, according to local lore, the south side of High Street is Windsor and the north side is Prahran.  And yet the extensive Prahran campus of Swinburne University (including the National Institute of Circus Arts) is located on the south side of High Street - ostensibly in Windsor, but badging itself as Prahran.

Does it matter?  Not a whit.

What matters is that there was plenty to see in the 200 metres or so strip of High Street that straddles Chapel Street, including one breakfast place – one only!  More of that later.

This stretch of High Street really does have much of interest: two car-wash premises (interesting only because there are two!);  a Peugeot dealership with so little attention-arresting display that we walked past its long frontage without noticing it, and whose existence didn’t register until we returned on the other side of the street;  some massive complexes of new residential units, and more being built;  a retailer of special interest DVDs;  a retailer of pre-loved long-playing records;  and a beautiful nineteenth century bluestone Anglican church, with occupancy latterly built into the loft space, and with a disfiguring metal fire escape clamped very visibly on to its side.

There is the Prahran Club on the south side, whose premises look very unimposing.  The Club’s lack of a website precludes me from establishing its history, but a quick phone call confirms that it has female members – so it’s at least struggled that far into the modern era.  On the north side opposite is the RSL Club, looking very solid by contrast. 

The organisation we know as the RSL was formed in 1916 as The Returned Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Imperial League of Australia.  In 1940, in acknowledgement of the changing face of warfare, and the changing mix of veterans, it became The Returned Sailors’, Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Imperial League of Australia.  There was a further name change in 1965, to The Returned Services League of Australia (was the change a move towards brevity, or was the word Imperial dropped because of the widely unpopular Vietnam War in progress at the time?); and finally, in 1990, to The Returned and Services League of Australia.  This most recent name change was blatantly opportunistic, in line with the new RSL decision to open membership “to all ex-service men and women who have not been on active service”.  In Victoria the RSL went even further, offering membership to “relatives and friends” of service men and women. 

So, albeit slowly, the RSL has accommodated itself to changing times.  Translation:  it has responded to the inevitability of declining war service-based membership. 

Having broadened membership to include potentially the whole population of the nation, the RSL says that with “59541 members in Victoria, the RSL remains as relevant today as it was in 1916”.  Surely they are kidding. Or maybe they are acknowledging that in 1916, newly founded, few people knew of the RSL, and hence it was at that time about as relevant as it is today!

None of this detracts from the Prahran sub-branch building in High Street.  It is a substantial pile, not fancy but solid.  And very large.  According to The Argus newspaper, reporting in 1920 on the laying of the foundation stone:  “it is of monumental classic design, two stories, and the accommodation comprises a spacious entrance hall……a large club lounge…..reading room…..billiard-room…..and a buffet”.  Provision was made for an extension, to include an assembly hall, with stage, dressing rooms and “other accessories”.  I expect that all this came true.  As we passed by we saw that the building was open, and through the imposing vestibule we nosed our way into the hall - a large hall indeed, with stage.  It could seat 500 people, and on this Saturday morning was being readied for a girls’ calisthenics class or similar.  Incidentally, the Prahran RSL Club website (mostly “under construction”) proclaims that their High Street building is “one of the oldest, if not the oldest, Memorial Halls in Australia”.

There is another building worth noting – it has already been noted by the Heritage people: the premises of the Prahran Mechanics Institute.  I’ll leave a comment on the Mechanics Institute movement for another day; suffice to say that the Prahran Institute was founded in 1854, nearby in Chapel Street; that the present premises were built in 1915; and that the Institute currently holds about 25000 books for loan, mostly books about the history of Victoria.  The building is described in its Heritage register listing as “a red brick building in the Federation style with an eclectic combination of Classical and Romanesque architectural motifs”; and there’s more: in short, the building “is of historical and architectural significance to the State of Victoria”.

Next door to the Mechanics Institute, to the east, is an extraordinarily grand and ornate two-storey building, the former home and professional rooms of Dr. Percy Wisewould.  Wisewould was born in Melbourne in 1861, graduated in medicine from the University of Edinburgh in 1887, practised as a general practitioner first in Bacchus Marsh, then in High Street from 1892.  He is said to have been one of the early adherents of homoeopathy – which he first encountered when he bought the High Street practice.  Perhaps the building already existed when Dr. Wisewould came to town.  The City of Stonnington archives have a photograph of Dr. Wisewould standing in front of his premises, circa 1925.  And there’s a photo of the Doctor with his two-door soft-top roadster, circa 1910, although the car is too modern for that era, and I would guess the photo should be dated about ten years later.

What price our good fortune in finding an admirable breakfast place along with such architectural riches?  Directly opposite the old Wisewould building is Piccolo, also known as Piccolo Espresso.  Dark verging on gloomy, a poky shop space and even pokier back room, and every centimetre of wall-space adorned with posters for performing rock groups - but coffee from the gods, delicious porridge served with honey, and a young team, enthusiastic and amiable.  On the net I have since read a review:  “Tiny in size, Piccolo is the quintessential local, cool yet cosy, it might just be the reason you move to Prahran”.  There could be no higher praise.

As we retraced to the car I absently reflected on the name Wisewould…………….and recalled Dr. Gweneth Wisewould, one of those “characters” remembered from younger days.  After residencies in three Melbourne public hospitals in the teens of the twentieth century, Dr. Gweneth was a surgeon at the then-named Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital for Women and Children from 1918 through 1936.  In 1938 she commenced general practice at Trentham. 

Publicly eccentric, Dr. Gweneth wore trousers and usually a large heavy overcoat.  She was always great copy for the newspapers, and she regularly featured in respectfully mocking reports.  But the people of the Trentham area loved her, and she continued to minister to them until the day of her death in 1972 at age 87.  Dr. Gweneth Wisewould was born in 1884, three years after Dr. Percy Wisewould.  I don’t know whether they were related. 

The year before her death Dr. Gweneth published a book of memoirs: “Outpost:  A Doctor on the Divide” (the “divide” being the Great Dividing Range that surrounds Trentham).  The book is a treasure, and has certainly been treasured by me these past 40-plus years.  I am moved to read it again.

Gary Andrews