SATURDAY BREAKFAST #29: MAIN STREET, MORNINGTON

Visited 19 February, 2012 (between The Esplanade and Barkly Street)

Visited 24 November, 2012 (between Barkly and Cromwell Streets)

I think of myself as a “Mallee boy”.  This is because I was born in the Mallee region of Victoria, lived my early life there, had both maternal and paternal ancestors there, and have maintained an on-going connection.  But I lived in the Mallee for my first six years only, so I am really a city person.   I should probably think of myself as a “Richmond boy”, because it is in suburban Richmond that I spent my growing-up years, from six to twenty-one.

My folks ran a retail business in Bridge Road, opposite the Post Office, almost opposite the Town Hall.  The business was situated in a double premises, comprising a delicatessen (number 294 Bridge Road) and a cake shop (number 296).  My mother tended counter, and my father was a pastry-cook.  There were a number of other staff - counterhands and bakehouse workers.  My family lived above the shops.

Next door, at number 298, was a ladies’ clothing shop, operated by a Mr. and Mrs. Moffatt.  The merchandise was stylish - one would have thought too stylish for working-class Richmond (as it then was) – yet the Moffatt business was seemingly prosperous.  The Moffatts were stylish too, impeccably clothed and groomed, both of them.  They drove a stylish Wolseley saloon.

The Moffatt shop was in a single-storey building occupying the whole site, from Bridge Road through to the back lane.  Our premises next-door were double-storey, and from the upstairs quarters the Andrews could look down on the dress-shop roof.  While my parents never became intimate friends of the Moffatts, there was an amicable neighbourliness between them, and – for our part - an unexpressed vigilance over the unoccupied Moffatt shop outside business hours.  On one occasion we reported burglars trying to gain access through the roof.

This all came to mind as son, Dan, and I traversed Main Street, Mornington, in search of Saturday adventure and grub.  It came to mind because the Moffatts had lived at Mornington.

Imagine the grind of travelling the 55-odd kilometres from Mornington to Richmond six days a week – opening the shop doors each morning before nine, and not able to get away until after 5.30 on weekdays and 12 o’clock on Saturday.   On reflection, though, the poorer roads of the 1940s and 1950s, but with less traffic, may have made for a journey no longer in duration than today – with today’s better roads and freeways, but more suburban traffic lights and many more vehicles.  There is probably an answer to the question buried in the traffic survey files of the roads authority; and there may even be some Mornington old-timers who have been around long enough to remember how long the journey used to take.  The Moffatts themselves can be of no assistance, having surely retired to that great car park in the sky many years ago.

The Gary and Dan Saturday walks are habitually along or around shopping precincts of Melbourne, but in Mornington we were 60 kilometres from the city centre, and hardly in Melbourne still.  But were we?  It depends on one’s definition.  There is the “city” of Melbourne, the inner part of the metropolis, a discrete local government region, collecting rates from its inhabitants, with its own Mayor and Council.  Then there is the Melbourne “metropolitan area”, that embraces all the contiguous suburbs and the many local government districts that they occupy.  This is what most people would regard as “Melbourne”, that is, the metropolis that stops at the edge of settlement, continually growing none-the-less.  Finally, there is “greater” Melbourne; and this seems to include all points south-west to Werribee,  west to Melton, north to Craigieburn and Whittlesea, east to Lilydale, south-east to Packenham, and most of the Mornington Peninsula.  And, as if to put the matter beyond doubt, there is no town map of Mornington in the RACV Vicroads Country Street Directory; and, as if to complement that apparent oversight, full detail of Mornington is included in the Melways Melbourne street directory.  On this authority, breakfast at Mornington was not an aberrant escape to the country.  Moreover, so extensive was Main Street that we split it in two and visited it twice; and so affable was it that we were happy to do so.  Indeed Main Street, Mornington, is one of the most alive and prosperous-feeling strips we’ve visited.

This Mornington blog has had a long gestation, and at a remove of three years there’s no chance that I can recall the fare in detail.  But I do recall the Bircher muesli served at the Biscottini Café, and offer a rare rebuke.  The mixture contained macadamias, strawberries, blueberries and an oh so sweet syrup.  It was topped with vanilla yoghurt, and on the side was a whole poached pear, attractively served – peeled, with stalk intact.  So what’s to complain?   Birchers sometimes come with their dry mixture lubricated with fruit juice, although they’re better when stirred through with yoghurt.  Where the serve is sweet, that sweetness is typically neutralized by a topping of unsweetened yoghurt and/or shaved green apple.   Anyway, that’s my preference.  The Mornington dish, despite the yoghurt on top, was just too sweet.  Perhaps they thought we would move on to bacon and eggs for contrast, but they were wrong – we don’t do that any more!  In any case, the Bircher serving was huge, leaving no room for a second course.

There’s much of interest in Main Street.  For the length of the shopping strip there is attractive landscaping and paving, made possible for a later generation by the original town planning that provided the legacy of a wide thoroughfare.  Today’s pavements have ample room for the numerous eating places to have outdoor seating, adding to the amenity and the bustle both.  There is a substantial building, The Bay Hotel, with an interesting sign out front. 

The sign says that the building was “built in 1880 to house the Commerce Bank,” that in 1986 the then National Bank moved to new premises, and that the building was later “transformed into a hotel”.  The sign (which isn’t a bronze plaque) is a tad inaccurate.  The building was built for The Commercial Bank of Australia (as the faded lettering on its façade attests), not for the Commerce Bank.   And there’s an unexplained conundrum.  The Commercial Bank was taken over by the Westpac bank in 1982, so how come the occupants of the building in 1986 were the National Bank and not Westpac?   I’m not pursuing this any further, but suggest the proprietors of The Bay Hotel might spend more time on signage - and image generally: it wasn’t until I read the sign that I realized I was standing in front of an hotel.  It presents to the street as a coffee shop.

By contrast, there is no difficulty in identifying The Grand Hotel.  

Grand it is, with its imposing tower.  It dates from the 1890s boom times, and began its existence as a temperance hotel, the Grand Coffee Palace.  Its importance, then and now, is enhanced by it being a work of architect, William Pitt.  Pitt was one of Melbourne’s, indeed Australia’s, greatest architects, responsible for the Windsor Hotel, the Olderfleet Building, the Rialto Building, the Bryant and May building, the Federal Coffee Palace, the Princess’ Theatre, and numerous others.  The Grand remained temperance for barely a year: built in 1892, in 1893 it took over the business of the next-door Cricketer’s Arms hotel, thus acquiring a liquor licence.

Main Street is also the location of a peculiar and unique monument, the Westminster Bollard.  

This stone bollard dwarfs any functioning bollard seen today on the wharves around Melbourne.  It was given by the City of Westminster to the Mornington Shire in 1993, to mark the centenary of the Shire.  It was originally located on the River Thames opposite Millbank Prison from whence – up to 1868 - many convicts were transported to Australia.  Historically, though, the State of Victoria (and therefore Mornington) was settled by free colonists, not by convicts.  Perhaps the burghers of Mornington were so impressed by the monumental size of the bollard that they neglected to point out this anomaly to their Westminster counterparts.  The Millbank Prison is long gone, and the Tate Gallery occupies the site.  As an aside:  during a recent visit to London I encountered the sister bollard to the Mornington one – still opposite the Tate, and also with a plaque commemorating its convict history.

The Westminster Bollard sits on the footpath in front of the former Mechanics’ Institute, now occupied by Shire offices.  The Mechanics’ Institute building, financed by public subscription, was built in 1885, and was the community’s cultural and entertainment focus for more than 70 years.  It had a public library and reading room, and a hall with seating for 300 people.  It was used for concerts, dances, theatre, and public meetings.  For some years it was the town’s cinema.   The Institute closed in the 1950s, but the building has been incorporated into the municipal offices because it backs on to them.  So the structure, at least, has been preserved.

By way of postscript, the image that forms the backdrop to the Pieces to Share blogsite is a reasonably recent photo of Theobald’s Buildings, where the Andrews family resided and worked in Richmond, from 1946 to 1960.  The present-day Heritage report, accessible on the net, advises that the buildings were “built in 1909 by the distinguished Richmond builder Clements Langford for Richmond Theobald, tea merchant.”  The report continues: “A most unusual pair of Edwardian shops designed in a Flemish baroque style.  Notable features are the parapets, bartizans, art nouveau sign and rococo shells above the windows.  No. 296 has its original shopfront.  The original post-supported cast iron verandah and shopfronts (sic) have been removed.  Significance:  An outstanding pair of Edwardian shops, intact above verandah level.” 

I can attest that the original cast iron verandahs, and their fluted pillars, were removed by edict of the Richmond City Council early in the 1950s……on the grounds that they were a hazard lest some errant motorist mounted the footpath!  This vandalizing of the streetscapes swept all of Melbourne, with – from memory – only the ornate Oggs Pharmacy in Collins Street in the city escaping the wreckers.   When the Ogg’s business later relocated to South Yarra the verandah was saved by gracing the entrance to University House at the University of Melbourne, where it stands today thumbing its nose at mindless bureaucracy, and reminding us of how much of Melbourne’s Victorian-era elegance has been lost to “progress”.

In Bridge Road, the hundreds of cast iron shop verandahs were replaced with a hotchpotch of cantilevered ones. 

The accompanying Bridge Road streetscape photo shows the upper grandeur of Theobald’s Buildings, with the Moffatt shop premises adjacent to the left, the narrow one with the scalloped upper façade.  All traces of the Moffats are gone from Richmond, the Andrews too for that matter.

Gary Andrews