4. The Gippsland Railway
- Aboriginal Views
- Early White Views
- Straight Lines
- The Gippsland Railway
- Civic Pride in Oakleigh
- Land Use and Industry
- Endnotes
Australia has been described as a suburb of Britain. Lionel Frost has argued that most migrants to Victoria in the gold rushes would have come with an idea of suburban living as an ideal, something they could not afford in Britain. There, by the mid-nineteenth century, the comfortable classes lived in suburbs. Most of the rest lived in inner city slums or damp and decaying rural cottages. No-one surveyed those migrants on the subject as they got off the ships and put up tents at Emerald Hill. Some may have come with the sort of aspirations to the landed gentry that were the background to squatting in the 1830s and 1840s. Davison argues that this was the case. [20]
Many of those who bought blocks of land in the Shire of Mulgrave did not have to make a living from them. They liked the idea of a house in town and a farm in the country. But Frost and Davison would probably agree that the subsequent behaviour of the majority of migrants indicates that a detached house on its own block of land was what they were after. Developers built narrow terraces for other people to live in Prahran and Richmond. Migrants to Victoria with enough money to build for themselves chose detached houses and because land was generally in greater supply than building materials, they built them one storey high. Frequently, this building where they lived was not the same as the one where they worked.
Very soon, land began to run out - not any land, but land where people wanted to live, close to their place of work. Walking distance dictated the size of the city until trams and trains expanded the area where people wanted to live.
Melbourne exploded in size from the 1850s and the gold that brought all those people also helped to pay for the huge investment in rail lines and tram lines that allowed Melburnians to continue to live in detached, single storey houses, rather than cramped multi-story tenements such as the ones they had left behind in Birmingham and Liverpool and Glasgow. [21]
Because the rail lines were Government enterprises, Melburnians also invested huge amounts of effort and money in persuading the Government to build rail lines where it would benefit them as individuals.
Early on in this saga, Oakleigh leaned it was to get a railway. The track would run from Melbourne to Sale and it was to open up Gippsland to settlement (which it did). However, only the route from Oakleigh to Sale could at first be agreed and this was built and opened in stages during 1877 and 1878. Oakleigh to Bunyip was the first stage, opened October 1877. Meanwhile the politicians and developers continued to argue about the route from Oakleigh to Melbourne, which didn't open until April 1879. [22]
A side effect of this saga was that Oakleigh could convincingly be portrayed as a future hub of a rail network. The railways bought considerable land near Oakleigh Station and had workshops there. Locals enjoyed the sight of steam engines being towed to Oakleigh, there to be put on the rails. As might be expected for something so heavy without a sealed road surface, they frequently got bogged 'generally somewhere about where the cricket pavilion is today. Sometimes they would be there for three weeks before they were finally moved to the railway workshops, which were close to the Oakleigh railway station.' [23]
Meanwhile, argument raged about many potential rail lines besides that from Oakleigh to Melbourne. Rails to Glen Iris and Darling, The Outer Circle Line, Elsternwick and Ferntree Gully were all proposed. Some of those lines were actually built. The Waverley Road to Oakleigh section of the Outer Circle line opened in March 1890, although the trains mainly ran past deserted platforms. It closed in 1895. [24] T.G. Newton, an Oakleigh estate agent, has described how the Elsternwick to Oakleigh railway was built by Murray Ross. He had a plan to grow sugar beet and process it at Grange Road, Ormond. However, although the railway was constructed between 1883 and 1891, only one train ever ran on it and it became known as Ross's Folly. It was dismantled in 1915. [25]
Oakleigh also had its tram schemes. In 1888, for instance, a tram was proposed from Oakleigh to Ferntree Gully.
' A Deputation of the Fem Tree Gully Steam Tramway Company introduced by Cr Wilkes, waited on the Council to ask permission to use the Warrigal Road, to lay their tramways on.' The Council moved the route be changed to Drummond Street. [26] The line was never built, a victim of the crash which followed the boom.
Although the Gippsland railway was completed in 1879, the peak year of the land boom was not until a decade later. Feverish planning and building of metal rails was accompanied by feverish subdividing and selling of land around the tram lines and rail stations. Oakleigh came in for more than its fair share of this railway fever, as Oakleigh estate agent T.G. Newton described:
'During the land boom, which was in its "height" in 1888, buildings were being erected very quickly. Land sales were being held two and three days in a week. Special railway trains were engaged for the sales. Free railway passes, including luncheon, were issued to prospective buyers. Blocks of land sold by auction and re-sold again in the same afternoon. Builders could not build quickly enough and amongst them were a number of small brick single fronted cottages built in Grant Street with bricks from Scott's brick yards which were at the corner of Tamar Grove and Dandenong Road.
These cottages were known as "Wilkinson's Folly", afterwards known as Goat Terrace. Also another lot of weatherboard cottages built in Darling Street, South Oakleigh, and known as "Beech's Folly". These and many others were sold after the collapse of the boom for 40 pounds for removal. Private subdivisional land sales were taking place just after the Government sales and when the railway first ran to Melbourne, viz: Burlington Square subdivision, Central Park, Tramway Estate, Mrs Bowman's Ferny Knowe Estate, Sea View Estate, Oakleigh Heights, Centennial Estate, Chester Street Estate, New Oakleigh Estate and many others.' [27]
The New Oakleigh Estate was divided up by roads with names clearly designed to encourage buyers to think that Oakleigh was a future Crewe and the advertising material produced by the agents hammered home the same message. [28] The Junction Hotel was built in this era and with its tower was long among the grandest buildings in Oakleigh. Photographing the town from the tower became quite popular.
Clayton's station buildings were not erected until 1891 and the area did not share in the 1880s boom. Hughesdale station opened on 1 February 1925 and East Oakleigh (Huntingdale) didn't open until 1928.
One side effect of the rapid growth of Oakleigh in the 1880s boom was the separation from the rest of the Shire. The Borough of Oakleigh was proclaimed on 13 March 1891, when the population stood at about 1200 people. It is also interesting that despite all this growth, the modest scale of building was maintained. The Oakleighshire Council Offices were built in this era, councillors feeling that continuing to meet in the pub was inappropriate. (The council called itself 'Oakleighshire' in the early minute books). The shire offices were almost domestic in scale, and within the boundary of the Borough proclaimed shortly afterwards.