Visited 24 September, 2011
At its simplest, a visit to an unfamiliar suburb can merely be a social occasion. But it can also - or instead - be a learning experience. Today was a learning experience, and the lesson for today at Lalor was exemplified by the set of four metal sculptures affixed high up the rear wall of the local Coles supermarket. The sculptures are named Pride of Place, and the dedicatory bronze plaque describes them as: “A relief mural comprising four metal sculptural elements which represent Lalor residents’ love of home, their journey and sense of community.”
At its simplest, a visit to an unfamiliar suburb can merely be a social occasion. But it can also - or instead - be a learning experience. Today was a learning experience, and the lesson for today at Lalor was exemplified by the set of four metal sculptures affixed high up the rear wall of the local Coles supermarket. The sculptures are named Pride of Place, and the dedicatory bronze plaque describes them as: “A relief mural comprising four metal sculptural elements which represent Lalor residents’ love of home, their journey and sense of community.”
The Coles wall is long, and the sculptures are spaced well apart. Beneath each, at eye level, is a descriptive panel, each panel inscribed in two languages; and each language being different there are hence eight languages in all. The words are the same on each panel, and in English they read:
The aim of the artwork is to represent the love of home and the great sense of community displayed by Lalor people.
The design features municipal boundaries comprising road, rail and Merri Creek. Each sculpture is framed by one of the four house plans from the Peter Lalor Estate. The Estate was established by Lalor residents in the late 1940s to provide low cost homes resulting in a significantly strengthened Lalor identity and sense of community.
Materials used in the artwork reflect the personality and strength of character of the people of Lalor – stainless steel is strong and durable, while the copper and brass sections will adapt to changing conditions, just as the local residents have done over the years.
Fairly mawkish words; but as I have reflected a bit more deeply I have come to see the words and the sculptures they describe rather differently. As works of art I expect that the sculptures are inconsequential, but as indicators of the local community – described, remember, in eight different tongues - they are powerfully significant……………for what we have at Lalor is a community that is culturally and ethnically very diverse – a community of people most of whom had their origins far away.
Lalor is a suburb within the City of Whittlesea, and there are census statistics available not only for the municipality but also for the suburb. The 2006 census indicates that 46.1% of Lalor residents were born outside Australia, 43.6% in non-English speaking countries – 8.3% in Italy, 7.1% in Greece, 7.0% in the Macedonian region of former Yugoslavia, 3.5% in Vietnam, and between 1% and 2% each in Iraq, Lebanon, India, Malta and Turkey [the figures don’t seem to add up]. An even more telling indicator to cultural diversity is the response to the census question: “Does the person speak a language other than English at home?” The answer for Lalor is that 63.9% of its residents, when at home, speak a language other than English – that language being 13.0% Macedonian, 12.1% Italian, 9.6% Greek, 8.3% Arabic, 4.9% Vietnamese, 2.5% Turkish, and around 1.0% each for Maltese, Samoan, Cantonese and Punjabi. Again, the figures don’t seem to add up but, regardless, this is in astonishing contrast to the Anglo monoculture of the south-eastern part of Melbourne that I inhabit.
Faced with these statistics I get an Election Day prickling of the scalp. On the day of each general election I am newly amazed at Australia’s political system, and its ability to embrace our ethnic and cultural diversity. This is the day when all citizens participate in the process of electing a government. We do it peacefully, we do it openly, we do it fearlessly, we do it without coercion, and we do it in the knowledge that there will be no fraud – and we have been doing it thus for more than 100 years…………….and the vote of each one of the citizens of Lalor who does not speak English at home is counted as one vote just like mine. Doesn’t that make the hair on your head stand up a little with wonder and pride?
So, against this backdrop I was not about to be too judgmental about Lalor. Nevertheless, I have to say that the shops and the products they offered were matched to the economic circumstances of the residents.
The Station Street shopping strip faces the railway line, and is one-sided. But there’s a street to the rear as well, May Road, and the whole rectangular area is known as Lalor Shopping Centre. It includes the aforementioned Coles. Half way along, connecting front to back, is an arcade, Peter Lalor Walk. Somewhat incongruously, the Lalor station is about half a kilometre to the north, consequently the Shopping Centre is about half way between Lalor and Thomastown.
The shops were not very “good”, but the prices for fresh produce seemed to be cheap. There was a large greengrocer in the arcade – really an emporium of fruit and veg - and three other greengrocers in Station Street; and unfamiliar produce on the footpath in front of several Viet grocers, although not what you’d call fresh.
There’s not much else to say about retailing in Lalor, except that we couldn’t find anywhere to have breakfast; or, at least, not our accustomed sort of breakfast. So we departed Lalor, heading south and a little west, and found a coffee shop in a small cluster of businesses in Spring Street, Regent a few kilometres away.
The coffee shop was a very recent enhancement to what is essentially a ladies’ hairdresser. The proprietor explained that he had been an interstate haulier for years, and that he and his hairdresser wife had made a sea change, and opened their own business. Once the hairdressing side had become established he had given up trucking, and was attempting to provide an adjunct service for his wife’s customers and all comers. The wife was not working on the Saturday morning, but the husband was on the job. Having told his story he then made two points – first, he makes the best coffee that money can buy; second, he wasn’t yet set up to provide breakfast! We weren’t left hanging, though, because he strongly recommended Jackson Dodds nearby in Gilbert Road, Preston, as “the best” breakfast place in the district. And so it was. The café was packed; and the Bircher muesli was arranged under a pointed pile of shredded green apple, with date puree and yoghurt, surrounded by toasted hazel nuts. Bliss! We headed back to the hairdresser coffee shop to thank our friend, and to sample his brew. It was good.
We did not complete the circuit and return to Lalor, but that won’t stop me from alluding to Peter Lalor, from whom the suburb’s name derives. Peter Lalor is a prominent figure in Australia’s history, a man who weathered a period of adversity to become a leading citizen [pronounced Lawler, by the way]. Lalor was one of the leaders of the Eureka Rebellion, when the gold miners of Ballarat rebelled against the Government’s mining licence fee, and fought the soldiers from behind the stockade built at Eureka.
The early history of the Australian gold rushes is colourful. There had been a number of discoveries by explorers and surveyors, but the news was suppressed. Governor Gipps, when shown a specimen in 1844, famously said: “Put it away, Mr. Clarke, or we shall all have our throats cut.” But transportation of convicts to New South Wales had ceased in 1840, and by 1850 the convict proportion of the population had substantially reduced. The discovery of gold in California in 1848 led to mass emigration from New South Wales, and coupled with a string of bad seasons and economic downturn, led to a reappraisal of the government’s attitude and the appointment in 1849 of a Government Geologist. So when Edward Hargraves found gold at Ophir near Orange in 1851 the rush was on – so much so that to encourage Victorians to return home a 200 pounds reward was offered for the finder of a payable field within 190 miles (320 km) of Melbourne. The situation was not only fluid but fast moving, and before the close of 1851 there were discoveries, and thousands of would-be miners, at Ballarat, Clunes, Mt. Alexander (Castlemaine) and Sandhurst (Bendigo). At the end of 1851 the Victorian population was estimated to be a little over 70000, but in 1852 nearly 95000 more arrived by boat. The population increased fourfold in three years.
Clearly no government or government service could cope with such growth. Specifically, the police and the military were undermanned and inexperienced - desertion to go prospecting was commonplace. Add to this the government licence fee, and you have the grounds for unrest. There was no way in which the miners (the successful ones) could be identified let alone taxed a proportion of their gains, so the licence fee was a reasonable enough response from Lieutenant-Governor La Trobe to the need for public finance. But paying for the right to mine was in effect a poll tax, but no miner had the right to vote. There was a Legislative Council in Victoria in 1851, elected courtesy of land-owners only.
The licence fee was initially 30 shillings (1 ½ pounds) per month, later reduced to one pound (twenty shillings). Non-compliance led to a fine of 5 pounds for the first offence, and up to six months imprisonment for the second offence. Miners were subject to arrest if they did not have a licence on their person. No wonder there was unrest. The police were the enforcers of the system, and there were frequent raids on miners’ camps. Under what was a piece of administrative madness, the arresting officer was entitled to half the fine (although, I surmise, not to half the jail sentence!). This was the backdrop to the insurrection, but there was a lot of lead-up to Eureka.
Early in November 1854 the miners formed the Ballarat Reform League. Peter Lalor was one of the prime movers. Among other things, the League stood for universal suffrage and voting by ballot, plus reforms to the administration of the goldfields and the abolition of the licence fee. The flashpoint occurred on 29 November when the miners made a bonfire of their licences; and next day the Goldfields Commissioner ordered a licence inspection. A riot ensued, and the military intervened. About 500 men took an oath to “fight to defend our rights and liberties”, Lalor was elected leader and commander-in-chief, a stockade was hastily built on the Eureka claim, and the blue flag embossed with the stars of the Southern Cross was raised.
The diggers drifted in and out to their campsites, and when the police and army attacked on 3 December there were fewer than 150 men in the stockade. The battle was over in 15 minutes, but the mounted troopers were brutal in the aftermath. There were about 30 deaths, including six on the government side. Lalor escaped, although shot in the shoulder, and stayed in hiding until after a general amnesty was proclaimed. The arm was amputated at the shoulder. Most of the captured miners were quickly released. Thirteen were tried for treason, and all were acquitted. The licence fee was abolished and replaced by an annual one pound miner’s right; and in 1855, within a year, Lalor was elected to the Legislative Council; then the next year elected to the newly-established Legislative Assembly, the house of universal suffrage (at the time male suffrage only). Lalor was eligible to stand for the Legislative Council because he’d been able to acquire 160 acres (65 hectares) of land near Ballarat with funds raised for him by public subscription.
Lalor was Irish, and educated. He was a civil engineer by training. He migrated to Victoria in 1852, and initially worked on the Melbourne-Geelong railway. His time at Ballarat was short, but influential - he staked his claim on the Eureka lead early in 1854, and was gone from Ballarat in December of that very year. He remained a parliamentarian until ill health forced his retirement in 1887. He was, not surprisingly, described as an enemy of injustice. What better role model for the people of Lalor?
While breakfasting at Jackson Dodds my mind turned to tramway employees and their bodily functions. The cafe is right at the terminus stop of the West Preston tram route, and I looked around – and couldn’t see – the lavatory “tramway employees for the use of”. I know there’s such a lavatory in Bridge Road where the (now discontinued) Richmond service used to terminate, and I know there’s one where the Wattle Park service terminates. But what about all the other end-of-the-line stops? Do the trammies have an exclusive dunny, or do they have to pop into a nearby coffee shop?
Gary Andrews
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