New book by historian Robyn Annear reveals wild early days of Melbourne CBD
In an 1874 photograph, there is a huge fish market on the corner of Flinders and Swanston streets, the site of Flinders Street Station.
In a familiar image, there is a coffee stand out front, but Annear points to oyster shells on the ground and says the stall probably also sells oysters, a popular street food.
Coffee and oysters were sold outside the fish market where Flinders Street Station is now located.Credit: Charles Bayliss
A remarkable photograph taken in 1860, looking northwest from the corner of Flinders and Spencer streets, near today’s Southern Cross Station, shows colonist John Batman’s 1835 house standing atop Batman Hill.
Clothes fly off the clothesline.
Annear says the hill was Melbourne’s “beauty spot” but was soon flattened to make way for railway stations. Today the Grand Hotel stands there.
The street view from an 1860 photograph taken by John H. Jones from the north side of today’s Bourke Street shopping center eastwards towards Swanston Street is unrecognisable.
Stereoscope photograph of Batman Hill taken from the corner of Spencer and Flinders streets, showing John Batman’s house on the far left.Credit: John H Jones
It includes a saddlery, an American bowling alley and the Royal Mail Hotel, which was built in 1848 but demolished in 1960.
“I don’t think anything that was there then is there now,” Annear says.
The book was inspired by slides about early Melbourne that Annear showed to community groups. He noticed surprising details that required further investigation.
There are very few women in the photographs; says Annear, because back then public toilets were for men only.
Snitching advertisement on the Butchers Arms Hotel, published in Bell’s Life magazine, 17 November 1859.Credit: Trove -National Library of Australia
When women go to the city, she says, they know there’s nowhere “to go.”
“Some historians refer to this fact as the ‘toilet collar,'” says Annear.
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“The lack of public toilets for women was, for some, keeping them closer to home, allowing them to do their shopping locally, because then they could go home and go to the toilet.”
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