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