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