Reforming Local Councils in Metropolitan Melbourne - the Possibilities for Better Planning and Heritage Outcomes

Local Councils have been in the news again, with a new poll from polling firm RedBridge published in the Herald-Sun this week, showing a majority of Victorians are dissatisfied with the current Council structure, and large number would like to see Councils abolished altogether.

The findings cannot be easily dismissed, but they can of course easily be parlayed into nonsense by a paper that's been waging various ideological wars of its own against particular local governments at what it deems the "woker" end of the spectrum.

So, the Herald-Sun was of course all out to draw qualitative conclusions from research that was ostensibly quantitative in nature, and a few related issues should be dealt with in detail before we look at the actual implications of the data.

The Herald-Sun ran with the implicit spin that Victorians don't want their precious rates being spent on things like public art initiatives, and innovative children's playground forms. Something of a hobby horse for the paper, especially in the inner city where Greens representation on those councils can be used as evidence of some brand of crazy "wokeism" at work which can be railed against.

The thesis is apparently not borne out in any of the research, and in the big poll which matters - namely Council elections, there is zero evidence that residents and ratepayers in the inner city reject "wokeism" in any form - they keep voting for "woke" candidates.

The City of Melbourne's new "Boulder Park" at Southbank, and example of Councils enacting best practice, evidence-based and innovative ideas and then having even ABC Radio journos try and override discourse with their feelpinions  

The HUN's Barabarian War on Public Art

In particular the Herlad-Sun should be cautioned by its own data reflecting these anti-Council sentiments are most stronly held by milennial respondents. And if anyone out these has some conception that milennials are out there raging against "wokeism" and don't want public funds spent on public art initiatives, they probably need to conduct a little of their own research.

What milennials ARE deeply concerned about is being able to make their way into the property market, and the fact that relatively smaller and declining numbers are doing so, means that a lot of people who aren't actually ratepayers are having words put in their both by both Ratepayers Victoria and the Herald-Sun in order to fit their own narratives.

Milennial Vibes

The perception amongst milennials most likely stems from the not inconsequential impost of council rates is yet another barrier to home ownership, and a perception that Councils act to artificially constrain the new housing supply, which when you look at the way the Neighbourhood Residential Zone, restricting residential development across the geographic majority of Melbourne to in most cases two storeys, is a readily supportable argument.

So, let's not allow any perception that councils enacting things like public art initiatives or innovative playspaces for kids is the problem. 

You might be able to make folks who don't live in the area laugh at a skeletor banana sculpture, but the residents of Yarra, who actually paid for the thing are the ones whose feedback actually matters, and it matters most every four years when the entire suburb is polled at election time. And inner city voters are not voting at any scale for "focus on taking my bins out" candidates. 

In fact it is LONG since overdue for the City of Melbourne to revive the sort of large-scale public art programme that was enacted at the time Swanston Walk was created, which  gave the city some of its most-loved public artworks, and much of its contemporary character and brand values. 

Retaining that kind of point of difference relative to suburban shopping malls is critical to the revival of the CBD in a its new post-COVID challenges. So, enough with the barbarian raging against  public art, and let's deal with the real issues.

Local Government and Economies of Scale

I actually began writing this blog many years ago but never really finished an investigation into the challenges that are faced by suburban coucils relative to the City of Melbourne. 

Having spent enough time involved in the planning space, as administered by various councils, I think the inescapable conclusion is that suburban Councils, in spite of the agglomeration effects achieved via the Kennett reforms in the early 1990s, which amalgamated 200 Victorian councils down to 78 still lack the critical mass and resources to deal with planning matters specifically in a timely and effective manner.

I based this conclusion on seeing the effectiveness of Melbourne City Council in being routinely able to assess and process planning applications in a timely manner, and in no small part because they have an exponentially higher number of actual planning staff and departmental budgets relative to suburban councils, and the very obvious conclusion from this is that the Local Government Areas (LGA) covered by suburban councils are too small for those bodies to be effective.

And what's true of planning is true of really all other areas of council to some degree or other. Activities are being replicated - the wheel is being constantly being re-invented at several places and to several varying degrees of effectiveness, and learnings about such effectiveness remain silo-ised in a local geography rather than rolled out as best practice at an urban scale.

So, here's what I would do - 

The Wombat Plan for Reforming Local Government in Metropolitan Melbourne 

We are leaving out any changes to regional councils, as I think regional Victorians would most likely tell us that they see the need for a body that operated with a level of local knowledge and capable of a level local advocacy, such that doubling the size of the LGA would not afford.

And we are setting aside the idea that it would be most effective for EVERYTHING that local governments currently have responsibility for would be more effectively handled by being rolled up Victoria-wide into the State Government and its already task-bloated public service bodies.

I think an "abolitionist model" would absolutely rolled-gold guarantee that when RedBridge did a follow-up survey in 10 years time, that even higher numbers of people were dissatisfied with how the government for instance handled planning issues, and people would wind up feeling more dissatisfied, unrepresented and that their rates were just disappearing into a giant consoloidated revenue cauldron, and they had zero sense of getting any value for money.

I think it still does and always will make sense for there to remain a separate elected tier of government that specifically has responsibility for local-level administration, and which depelops capabilities and critical scale in effectively delivering local-level government functions, and I don't think the whoelsale abolition of local government would deliver positive outcomes for anyone. 

I am guided here by the principle the Melbourne is and should be moving to establish a series of major local activity centres in the suburbs

1. Planning for greenfields estates and metropolitan activity centres should be taken (somewhat in the vein of the legislation accompanying the Suburban Rail Loop) out of the hands of councils entirely. Those planning powers should be handed to a new body within the already-far-too-bloated Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, that is ACTUALLY (and that emphasis is there to suggest that the backgrounds and expertise of the people we routinely see pumping planning assessments out of DELWP are just pen pushers and yes-people with no genuine policy expertise in effective planning outcomes, based on the content of the majority of those assessments "oh yes, we need to greenlight the demolition of the supposedly protected Jack Dyer Stand because the government has already committed funds to the project). The new body should be staffed by people with actual expertise in placemaking and EFFICTIVE (whereby the metrics are actually around design quality and "20 minite city" type outcomes rather than just volume of development) tactical urbanism, and its KPIs should be mostly derived from the qualitative, rather than the quantitative domain.

2. Similarly, responsibility for the LISTING of heritage overlays, should be taken away from local government and handed to a properly-resourced Heritage Victoria, which then moves to undertake a series of Melbourne-wide thematic studies that ensures that ALL the important typologies are univerally protected to the same methodology across the entire state of Victoria, rather than the arbitray swiss cheese hodge-podge that has arisen under the current "system". Planning applications for those properties can still go through the regular planning processes, but the actual application of heritage overlays needs to be taken out of the political/council domain, where Councillors have shown themselves far too responsive to the supposed needs of a small number of affected residents when they squeal about having their award-winning mid-century modernist building listed.

3. The State Government should go completely back to the drawing board with zoning - reform the Neighbourhood Residential Zone to allow as-of-right development to FOUR storeys, and set targets for the application of zoning typologies across municipalities that significantly reduces the places where NRZ zoning winds up being applied. So, we rely on HERITAGE protection to retain neighbourhood character in important locations, while saying those places can then also be signifcantly densified (demolition, not redevelopment being the enemy - and that's specifically what heritage practice gives effect to).

4. Amalgamate all Councils in Metropolitan Melbourne to just FIVE. One Greater Melbourne Council, covering All of the current Cities of Melbourne, Port Phillip and Yarra, plus the innermost areas of Stonnington, Boroondara, Maribyrnong, Hobsons Bay, Merri-Bek, Moonee Valley and Darebin, and then four outer suburban councils - North, East, West and South.

5. Simultaneously remove the business gerrymander in the City of Melbourne, which was only ever instituted by the Brumby government because they were scared of giving the Greens some sort of permanent role. Which IS the same principle by which republicans try and disenfranchise the votes of people of colour in the US. No matter how much you dislike the Greens, it's as pathetic and immoral (albeit not actually racist) for the ALP to disenfranchise inner-city voters in the same way. The expanded boundaries should have similar dilutionary effects, anyway.

Case Studies from the Heritage Arena

I may as well publish a slightly redacted form of the original article I was writing on this which coincided with the State Upper House's 2022 enquiry into heritage protection in Victoria. That process ultimately turned out to be pointless, as the Commitee seemed to be working to a brief that it wasn't going to even countenance any sort of revision of the system - one in which every stakeholder from Councils through to Heritage Victoria was apparently more interested in defending their own vested interests than actually looking at the wholistic (or even potentially best) operation of the system. 

Giving the pollies easy cover to dismiss anything through "well Heritage Victoria don't see the need for any change, and so neither do we" ...

So, let's take a SECOND CHANCE to seize some initiative to deliver better outcomes across myriad areas of planning and let's take a look at shaking up the entire planning regime, at the same time as we look at addressing voters' concerns in relation to the operation of local councils.

Apologies if the next section which looks at some of the failures in council heritage management is a little disjointed from the rest, but that's how it was born, and its pointless having it all sit there in draft format when the topic seems so pertinent to currently-open policy windows.

Graffiti spary painted across temporary hoardings outside the recently demolished 1880s mansion at 34 Armadale St, Armadale, left unprotected by Stonnington Council

Heritage in the State of Victoria can be a confusing beast. It's a mish-mash of responsibilities ascribed variously to every level of government in Australia.

A handful of sites are protected under Federal legislation. The Heritage Council of Victoria also maintains a far more extensive inventory of buildings deemed to be of "State-level significance" called the Victorian Heritage Register (VHR).

But confusingly for many, the Heritage Council also mainatains an online database called the "Victorian Heritage Directory", which also lists many "local-level significance" sites, and records sites which have actually been demolished and have no ongoing heritage protection - usually on the basis that the site may still have some archaeological significance, sometimes just by way of the fact that the site may once have had a National Trust listing, but the significant building has been long since demolished.

Many Victorians are surprised to learn that a National Trust listing has absolutely no weight in law whatsoever. The National Trust is a private organisation that has both a lobbying role, and which owns and maintains a large number of sites throughout the State, which it manages effectively on the public's behalf, but it has absolutely no formal role in the heritage protection process.

Further confusing the matter, nominations to the VHR are actually made through a separate body - Heritage Victoria.

The recently demolished 1880s property at 34 Armadale St, Armadale

But for anything which is deemed to be of "local-level significance" - which is upwards of 80% of all heritage sites in Victoria, responsiblity falls on local councils to commission heritage professionals to conduct heritage surveys which provide reasonably in-depth assessments of all applicable properties within their municipal boundaries.

It is then up to Councils to use those recommendations to advise the State Planning Department which sites deserve a formal Heritage Overlay, and the Planning Minister then has final veto on all of those listings.

Once a heritage overlay has been approved by the Minister, it then appears in the Melbourne Planning Scheme, which is actually the only definitive reference for all protected heritage sites in Victoria.

To complete the mish-mash, the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) sits across all of this as an avenue of appeal, in practical terms virtually exclusively for developers, who may appeal any rejection of any development proposal by any Council (or indeed even by the Minister) directly to that body, and which has in the past shown itself willing to set aside Council heritage listings if they are able to find anything which they deem to be flawed in the process (and that can include simple failures by Councils to retain the necessary paperwork).

It is the belief of this author that the very existence of VCAT is profoundly anti-democratic. An unelected body comprised exclusively of a handful of elite lawyers (definitionally NOT therefore representatve of anything but de facto pro-development, process-driven, well-to-do individuals) sits above every single decision ever made by every level of government in Victoria - including the Minister.

This is "shadow democracy" stuff. How can there possibly be any higher body than our elected officials, who are accountable to the community for every decision they make, every four years when we all come together to express our collective will at a general election where every eligible citizen has a formal say? But this is veering off-topic for this particular blog, I'll dish out a more extensive critique of VCAT in a forthcoming post.

Heritage Chalk and Cheese 

- Melbourne City Council vs Local Suburban Councils

I began my heritage activism days involved with Melbourne Heritage Action (MHA), which is actually part of the National Trust, but which the Trust established in 20##, following the appalling decision of Robert "Demolition" Doyle's Melbourne City Council to approve the demolition of Lonsdale House on Lonsdale Street for the entrance to a flipping shopping centre. MHA's role is to undertake lobbying exclusively of Melbourne City Council on heritage issues affecting largely only the CBD and Southbank.

MHA has had a commendable degree of success in lobbying Council variously for the protection of individual sites, and for a comprehensive review of its heritage inventory. So much success, in fact that it can be stated with some confidence that probably something north of 95% of the sites which the community would expect to be protected by a local heritage overlay within the boundaries of the City of Melbourne Local Government Area (LGA) now in fact have that protection.

And it is based on that success that I decided to set up an equivalent body within my own LGA - the City of Moonee Valley. But it is based on my contrasting experiences in lobbying the two very different bodies that I now delare that local suburban councils are categorically not up to the task of maintaining our local heritage inventory, and it is for this reason that we have seen the slew of recent media headlines around outrageous demolitions of clearly significant heritage properties in our suburbs.

Wreckers move on the former Idylwilde mansion, built in 1915 in St Georges Road, Toorak

Victorian Council budgets range from the lowest resourced, with an annual budget of just $11.7m all the way up to Melbourne City Council's massive budget of $660m. Rural councils have an average budget of just $69 million, while metropolitan councils have an average budget of $201 million available to them.

Considering how much of the state's valuable heritage is actually situated outside metropolitan Melbourne, where former goldfields cities like Ballarat, Bendigo and Castlemaine are important heritage hotspots in their own right, the resource issues as applicable here  to suburban Melbourne councils are obviously even more dire in regional areas.

Put another way, Melbourne City Council has over three times the resources of the average Melbourne suburban council and fully ten times the resouces of the average rural borough. By my own very basic intuitive estimates, that would also approximately reflect the disparity in resources allocated to planning between them.

This is reflected on a practical level in many different ways which I will delve further into below, but the real effect of this disparity in resources is that within the Melbourne CBD, 95% or more of the heritage properties which the community rightly expects to be protected do have some protection.

While in the suburbs which form the built environment where the majority of the community makes its home, where families are raised, and daily life is most usually lived - our LOCAL communities, the heritage coverage level is extremely patchy at best. And all the recent headlines have shown that coverage to be on average FAR below community expectations.

And this failure has wider practical implications. In that community support for the present levels of population growth that are largely the driver of all our recent economic growth (and which are necessary to sustain an aging population) is being seriously eroded by a sense that the character and nature of the built environment in our suburban neighbourhoods, that in many cases represents the very reason why families have chosen to situate themselves there at all is being too severely compromsed, and generating unnecessary anxiety about population growth overall.

The property at 5 Tiuna Grove, Elwood, which Port Phillip Mayor Dick Gross stated "should have been protected by a heritage overlay, but appear(s) to have been mistakenly left out." (my emphasis)

It has been put to me by several little birdies recently that the State Planning Department is extremely irritated by the recent slew of piecemeal, ambulance-chsing, wise-after-the-event requests from suburban councils for one-off, case by case interim heritage listings only once a demolition proposal is active on a particular property. The very strong implication is that councils are actually using these requests as a proxy anti-development measure, and so the Department is pushing back against these requests, and only granting them in the most rigorous of circumstances.

In one breath, I understand the Deprtment's frustration. One needs to remember that all the Department's decisions still have the spectre of VCAT looming over them, and it needs therefore to necessarily be very process driven. It's a waste of everyone's time and scarce resources to go through all these processes if developers are still going to get the outcome they are seeking through the expense and rigmarole of a VCAT hearing.

The 1885 Currajong House at 337 Auburn Rd was saved by the Planning Minister's inetervention, after being left unprotected by Boroondara Council

And the reality is that local Victorian councils have very specifically had responsibility and power for protecting local level heritage in this state since 1984, fully 35 years now. Where the brickbats tend to fly in the media at the Minister for not intervening in a lot of these cases, it's actually councils who truly deserve to be copping it most directly.

Neither the Department nor the Minister have any history of refusing the findings of council heritage surveys if properly conducted (VCAT's record on this is patchier, but again that's for another day).

The roles and responsibilities of the various parties are very specifically outlined under the current regime. All the unprotected 19th century properties that are cited in this post have all been standing there unprotected, every single day since 1984. Every iterative day of those 35 years has been another opportunity missed for local councils to commission the necessary heritage studies to dial adequate protections into the Planning Scheme.

The 1890s house at 55 SEYMOUR RD ELSTERNWICK was recently demolished, after being left unprotected by Glen Eira Council

If the finger should systemically be pointed anywhere, then it is definitely at our local councils. There have recently been a series of strident and overly politicised calls for the Minister to, for instance remove the planning "loophole" which prevents the application of an interim heritage overlay on a property where a demolition permit has already been issued.

I would strongly suggest that this "loophole" does in fact revert onus too strongly back in favour of developers, and should be removed. But as I am fond of saying, the great thing about having a rigorous and comprehensive heritage regime is that it provides absolute certainty to all parties.

Developers and purchasers are able to act knowing exactly what can and cannot be demolished, and make a proper assessment bearing that in mind when looking at any property aquisition. In this sense, a comprehensive heritage regime actually performs a vital economic function.

But our elected representatives also exist at every level to stand up for the community's needs in the face of the necessarily highly process-driven machinations of governance. However you may wish to apportion blame, it is DEFINITELY NEVER the community's fault that their local council has been derelict in their responsiibility to protect the heritage within its remit.

This four-bedroom Hawthorn brick Victorian at 4 Victoria Avenue, Canterbury, has no heritage overlay. Photo: Jellis Craig

While it remains the irreplaceable fabric of our neighbourhoods that is ultimately on the line in these decisions, it is not good enough for the Department to be knocking back requests for interim protection merely because of a lack of timeliness in the request. The Minister and the Department must act both systemically and in response to individual requests to collectively protect the community and our heritage from these serial failings at a Council level.

I will look in more detail below at some better suggested Departmental responses which could easily be enacted today in order to better improve the operation of the system overall. But to address those in-depth requires first  a deeper analysis of the myriad ways in which our local councils are routinely failing to uphold their end of the bargain.

It was put to me recently in some discussions on the Moonee Valley Heritage Action Facebook page that there really ought to be no issues around council resources owing to the strength of the present development wave because they should all be receiving an equally large uplift in rates received. There are several reasons why this is not the case.

Firstly, the one routinely and necessarily lags the other. Heritage studies are relatively in-depth processes, and as we shall see shortly are in many cases taking several years to deliver what would otherwise seem like relatively simple and readily self-contained reports. Whereas the new ratepayers don't spontaneously appear as soon as a new development proposal is received.

Furthermore, there are only so many qualified heritage professionals practicing in Victoria, and the demands on their time have never been higher.

But most importantly rates only represent on average 55% of councils' annual budgets, and have been capped in their growth (and you as ratepayers yourselves of course actually applaud this) by the Andrews Labor Government to approximate CPI increases.

Suburban Councils Lack the Reseources to keep their heritage inventory up to date in the face of the largest development and growth wave that Melbourne has ever seen.

• studies are not performed often enough
• there is no imperative for Councils to have conducted reviews of all periods
• the scoping process for inclusion in heritage studies is inadequate
• the studies take far too long to deliver, owing to lack of resources
• the studies that are performed are constrained in scope

Moss, White & Co Factory/Salvation Army Gill Memorial Home for Men, A'Beckett St, Melbourne - 1889, PROTECTED

Welcome, readers, to what I intend to become a regular series of potted Melbourne urban histories - heritage tales distilled at a somewhat greater length than social media will ever allow, and I do hope people enjoy the new format ...

I'm going to kick things off today with a heady mix of noxious substances, addictions and their consequences. It's the tale of a building which, unusually for most structures in such a young city as Melbourne, has lived three distinct and separate lives. 

It's in many ways a case study in class divides, and its very much a tale of the changing nature and utilisation of the one-time industrial spaces at the fringes of Melbourne's CBD. Spaces which in my younger years were distinctly separate to the bustling business end of town, but which have now been mostly subsumed under the bustle.

It's in no small part a tobacco tale, but as any regular reader would expect, woven throughout is the subject of heritage protection - what we foolishly lose forever without it, and the absences we create when we're robbed of the opportunity to engage with the physical past in our modern lives. 

It's about the people we leave in history's shadows. The places that we permanently void of significance and meaning. Our failure to protect what matters. 

Because heritage is at its heart not really about buildings - it's about people and culture and placemaking, and its preservation is a patriotic duty. Moreso if, like myself, your chauvanistic nationality is "Melburnian".

So, settle in readers, pop on your comfiest slippers, and stuff yer pipes with an aromatic twist of finest Melbourne heritage blend ...

A'Beckett St 1890s - Tobacco Burned at Both Ends...

This fabulous structure we know today as "The Gill" apartments at the SE corner of A'Beckett and Wills Sts, Melbourne (just east of the William St intersection) was initially built in 1888-9 as a tobacco manufacturing factory for the firm Moss, White & Co. (as seen below) for an estimated £20,000 (one source suggests the figure was closer to £30,000, but this number possibly also includes machinery).

The buiding was constructed at six storeys (including basement) to an early design by influential, innovative and prolific Melbourne architect Nahum Barnet

The completed Moss, White & Co Factory, c.1889
Source: State Library of Victoria

An earlier draft of this post had me waxing lyrical about the design being an archetypal example of Barnet's eager adoption of and advocacy for the American Romanaesque style then just coming into vogue in commercial construction in Melbourne - marking an important cultural shift away from imported derivative Victoriana to a more uniquely indigenous architectural form.

It's no accident that these shifts were taking place at the exact moment in history when Australians had just begun seriously contemplating the prospect of their imminent nationhood.

BUT ... and that's perhaps a bigger but than is warranted, but in the course of my research I was looking at the building's citation in Graeme Butler's 1984 CBD Conservation Study (which formed the basis of the first formal heritage overlays in the Melbourne Planning Scheme), and not for the first time in my life I have been schooled in my error by Mr Butler.

A'Beckett St frontage of "The Gill" Apartments c.2020
Source: City of Melbourne

Let's face it, I am not actually an architectural historian. Suffice to say that none of the following really gainsays the essence of the above, but I think at this point it is better to hand the microphone over to Mr Butler (click here for link to original) to explain some of the subtleties;

Appearing remarkably like a Salvation Army designed building, this red brick and stucco factory has the tall arched fenestration associated with later Barnet designs and the main stream of warehouse designs, commencing with Royston House in 1898.

Rather than the Romanesque origin of this latter group, this building probably derives from the British Queen Anne interpretation of Italian Renaissance examples like S. Andrea at Mantua and S. Francesco Alla Vigna, Venice, which have tall arched fenestration usually below a parapet pediment and between giant orders. Absence of the foliated ornament to capitals and spandrels, and the oriel window bays, combined with the presence of the architrave, keystone and impost mouldings show the style difference from Barnet's later Romanesque revival designs.

Despite these subtleties of ornament, the tall arched form seems archetypical for revivalist factory designs, needing large window areas associated with undivided internal spaces. The American Sullivan led influence may have simply added an embellishment to the continuation of an appropriate eclectic form for the purpose which perhaps places the Moss - White factory at the vanguard of the form's use in Victoria.

The Barnet signature, shared with the nearby Spiers Crawford warehouse, is the long trailing consoles beneath the entrance pediment and its repetition in the joinery of the grand level windows.

Tobacco was evidently a nice gig for Barnet - he would design another four storey tobacco factory for WM Cameron Bros cigar makers on the west side of Swanston St, just north of A'Beckett Street's eastern extremity in 1901.

As the images below clearly indicate, that building's form owed no small debt to Barnet's earlier work for Moss, White & Co., albeit leaning more towards a more standard interpretation of the American Commercial Romanesque style.

That building was demolished for grade level carparking (seriously, Melbourne!🙄🤪🤬🤬) c.1970 - a few years before the introduction of the first heritage protections - and is today host to the RMIT Swanston Academic Building.

WM Cameron Bros cigar factory, 435-445 Swanston St, Melbourne, seen on its completion in 1901
Source: Melbourne University Archives 

British Australasian Tobacco Offices and Factory, Swanston St, Melbourne with 1901 Nahum Barnet building on left (Oxford Scholar Hotel far left) and BAT's newer 1925 extension on right (demolished c.2010 for RMIT)
Source: State Library of Victoria

The new building represented a significant expansion for Cameron Bros from their initial base around the corner in A'Beckett St, as seen below.

That building evidently became conjoined with Barnet's new Swanston Street structure upon the latter's completion, and suffered the same ridiculous fate of demolition for grade-level carparking which blighted both streetscapes for nearly 40 years prior to the new RMIT development.

Looking west along A'Beckett St, Melbourne from Swanston in 1966 with the original 1890s Cameron Bros factory/warehouse prominent. Although built slightly later than Moss, White & Co., the style is far more that of a more standard late Victorian warehouse. To the right of the building is the now-defunct Havelock Place, which was sold to RMIT in 2009. "Havelock" was one of Cameron Bros' best selling American tobacco brands.
Source: State Library of Victoria

The British Australasian Tobacco Company was formed in 1903 via a merger between WM Cameron Bros and the Dixson Tobacco Company, and the new firm adopted the Cameron property as its Melbourne headquarters.

1878 Label for Moss, White & Co's tobacco produce, featuring five of the firm's prize medals from various sources - including Victoria's Intercolonial Exhibition in 1866 and 1873.
"Caution: no cigars are genuine from our factory unless bearing this label intact"
Source: State Library of Victoria

Moss, White & Company

Returning again now to the other end of A'Beckett St, in 1889 the imposing six storey edifice of the Moss White factory, with its enormous 13 foot ceilings was amongst the tallest structures in its day outside of the Hoddle grid proper, and it would remain an imposing presence on the city skyline at the northwest end of town until the rest of the city began catching up in the 1990s - a solid hundred odd year reign.

Moss White & Co. was founded in 1863 by three English emigres - Messrs Moss, White and Cherry - the three of whom had been childhood friends in the 'mother country', where they had all been involved in the tobacco indutsry from an early age.

Initially the firm had started out exclusively making cigars, before moving in to tobacco production in 1877. By 1889, the firm was employing a range of tobacco leaves imported from Havanna, Manilla, Sumatra and Florida augmented by some local production (particularly in its budget "Gordon" brand) to make a variety of cigar, cake tobacco and snuff products.

A Waygood elevator was installed in the building, which was something of an innovation for its time - Waygood would open a factory in Melbourne in 1890 (at the time, the city was Australia's home of the commercial "skyscraper"), which was later bought out by Peter Johns (founder of Johns Hydraulic & General Engineering Co.) to become Johns & Waygood in 1892.

Looking east along A'Beckett St towards the Gill memorial Home, early 1980s
Source: Graeme Butler

Another unusual feature is the bell cote visible on the top of the building's Wills St frontage (top right in the image above), which may or may not have had a functional purpose (the building would have made an ideal fire lookout thereabouts, but I've not been able to unearth any evidence of it ever being used as such).

Two floors and a ground floor office were let to the American Tobacco Company of Victoria, who took the address 217 A'Beckett St, and Moss White occupied the rest of the building, taking the 219 address. A variety of state-of-the-art machinery was installed, along with a ten horse-power steam engine to power them.

Unfortunately no photographic eveidence has survived of the interior of the Moss, White & Co floors, but numerous images of the American Tobacco Company floors taken c.1900 are held by the State Library (see below).

The Cigar Making Room at the American Tobacco Company of Victoria c.1900 - note the redgum columns and beams (discussed in more detail below).
The cute line of almost identical hats and jackets on the rear wall is also a nice detail.
Source: State Library of Victoria

A highly successful local enterprise, the Weekly Times relates that the company's ground floor showroom was "hung with a profusion of prize medals in gold, silver, and bronze, from Milan, Amsterdam, London, Dublin, and many other capitals, awarded to the firm, including one gigantic affair from Amsterdam about a foot in diameter."

The Toscin (a short-lived socialist newspaper, published from 1897 to 1906) was pleased to advise its readers in 1900 that "this firm works under Trade Union conditions. These goods are made under Trade Union labour, paid for at the Trade Union rates, and under the Eight Hours system."

Moss White & Co. Snuff Packaging, 1875.
"None Genuine Unless with Band Round"
After suffering two significant burglaries at their previous premesis, and with the culprits never caught, one gets the sense the firm was particularly sensitive to the threat of their product being illicitly hocked
Source: State Library of Victoria

The Fire of 1898

The building survived a massive fire in February 1898, which must have produced a delightfully intoxicating aroma across the western end of the city. The fire began on the sixth floor which was used as a maturing room, destroying that floor and the building's roof and severely damaging the fourth floor.

The Argus informs Melburnians of the fire, Wed 9 Feb, 1898

The fire was a perhaps counterintuitive vindication of the builders' choice to employ redgum columns and beams in the factory's construction in place of what would more usually in its day have been the use of iron (see earlier image).

Experts concluded that iron columns would have snapped in the heat and compromised the building's exterior, but the redgum - although severely charred by the event, essentially maintained the building's structural integrity.

Moss White had suffered serious financial loss through two major burglaries at their previous premesis at 63 Queen Street, so this building was designed to be largely burglar-proof at street level, a factor which severely hampered the local brigades in fighting the fire.

Moss, White & co. Factory at 63 Queen St (west side, with Collins St to R of image), seen 1880s. 
The Building was taken over by Guardian Fire and Life Insurance after the tobacconists decamped and was later demolished c.1900 for the second stage of AC Goode House.

1910s-1928 - Various Uses

At this point in the tale, I fear I am now going to fail to meet the interests of the more avid historians. If anyone out there has done a thesis on the history of the Victorian tobacco industry, by all means get in touch and help fill in some of these blanks...

At some point during the 1900s, both the American Tobacco Company of Victoia and Moss White and Co. disappear entirely from the historical record, never to return. 

It seems likely that the firms were taken over in a process similar to the agglomeration that was occuring at the other end of A'Beckett St around the same time, as both firms were repudetly highly successful and demand for nicotine products remained high in an era before the health consequences were appreciated, try as I might I'm unable to provide anything more than speculation at this point in the tale.

 By 1910, the building had been taken over by the Commonwealth Bulk Stores, and again later that decade by Thomas Frame & Co. box manufacturers. 

They then moved to a new premesis in Bedford St, Nth Melbourne c.1928, and some certainty returns again to the tale at this point, as the building was then purchased for £24,000 by the Salvation Army via a £350,000 bequest (spread equally across three Salvation Army branches in Melbourne, Sydney and Goulburn) from the late Mr Joseph Gill. 

Jospeh Gill was a wealthy woolbroker and shipping agent who passed away in April 1926. He had his city offices at 440 Little Collins St, Melbourne, and was the owner of Winderradeen Station in Goulburn. The Salvation Army had to wait until 1928 before gaining access to the bequest as Gill's will was disputed, with the matter eventually being resolved in the Army's favour that year.

A Gill Memorial Home for Men was established under the bequest via an extensive refurbishment of the former Moss White factory, which was opened by Melbourne Lord Mayor H.D. Luxton on 17 September 1929, and a Gill Memorial Home for boys was opened by Prime Minister Jospeh Lyons in Goulburn in 1936.

The refurbishment involved the removal of all existing wooden flooring (deemed a fire hazard), and its replacement with concrete.

The William Booth Memorial Home Tragedies

The Salvation Army at the time already had an existing men's shelter - the William Booth Memorial Home in operation at 462-4 Little Lonsdale Street. Built in 1915 just east of Bright St (today the rear western extremity of the Commonwealth Law Courts), it was named for the English founder of the Salvation Army movement, who had died in 1912. 

Homeless or unemployed men (only men, a separate William Booth home for 'girls' operated in East Camberwell, but that was more of an orphanage) could get accomodation and a decent feed for well under a dollar a day, and the place was run as a not-for-profit operation. Some men stayed for a day, others were residents for the home's entire 50 year lifespan.

The Lt Lonsdale St facade of the William Booth Memorial Home following the 1966 fire

In 1966 it would become the site of Australia's worst ever fire tragedy, when 30 people perished in a blaze started by a resident knocking over an illegal heater after the Army delayed in calling the fire brigade, believing they could handle the conflagration themselves (I suppose if you're on a divine mission ...). 

The 15 unclaimed coffins from the William Booth Memorial Home Fire, 1966
Source: Kim Raineby Snr via The Age

The building housed mostly alcoholics at the time of the fire, many elderly. Nobody came forward to claim 15 of the 30 bodies. 

A plaque was placed by the Metropolitan Fire Brigades at the rear of the Commonwealth Law Courts in 2015 to commemorate the 50 year anniversary of this largely forgoten event. 

Geoff Plunkett, who authored a book on the fire "Let the Bums Burn" notes that Australia's worst ever fire tragedy isn't even mentioned in The Australian Book of Disasters (Larry Writer, Murdoch Books, 2011). 

It's a question, as always, of which lives matter to us. It's surely no accident that it was the fireys whose members actually experienced the trauma first-hand who wound up laying the plaque.

Aerial View of the William Booth Memorial Home in 1938
Source: State Library of Victoria

The building actually survived the fire, but was absurdly demolished in the 1990s for the Commonwealth Law Courts development, where a sheer blank wall now exists facing the streetscape instead of incorporating what was a readily repurposable structure of significant aesthetic qualities and with an important embedded social history. 

Again, it's a question of who and what matters. 

The Lt Lonsdale St site today - Google Street View

Thankfully no such tragedies, by fire or by wrecking ball occurred at the A'Beckett St home.

The Salvation Army Gill Memorial Home for Men 1928-c.2000

The converted Moss White factory building housed over 300 men in four large dormitories of 69 beds each at the time of opening (plus a smaller one of 25 beds reserved largely for the very elderly) across its six floors, with prices similarly stratified. Prices at opening ranged from fouprence through to a shilling a night, depending on the location.

Beds on the most desirable first floor (it seems residents were debarred use of the elevator) went to the "toffs" who by 1948 were paying an exorbitant rate of up to 1/9 (one shilling and ninepence) per night, where the standard nightly rate had by then risen to 1 shilling.

The Gill Memorial Home, A'Beckett St frontage, early 1980s
Source: Graeme Butler

In the same year, a three course meal would set a man back a shilling, while two courses could be secured for merely ninepence.

As with the William Booth, the establishment was run as a not-for-profit venture, and the Salvation Army reported an operational loss of around 18 pounds ten shillings a week associated with the institution in 1932.

A sixth dormitory was reserved for the home's staff, who numbered 22 at the time of its opening.

The policy was always to refuse nobody shelter, provided there was room to supply it, and consideration was always given to men who could not pay, provided they had some prospect of doing so shortly.

Hopeful entrants would line up each night at a window in Wills Street "which resembles a theatre box office", and attendants were stationed by the dormitories on each floor of the building to collect tickets (described in one report as "lodging discs").

"Mulga" Bill, described by The Argus as "a well-known and kindly old client" queues at the ticket window of the Gill Memorial Home in 1948
Source: The Argus

Many of the residents actually held regular employment, including large numbers at the nearby Victoria Market - whose proximity was a significant factor in the Army's choice of location for the venture. It was these regulars with some means of self-support who largely comprised the "toff" segment.

Tradesmen, laborers, wrestlers, boxers and even a singer were reportedly amongst the insitution's denizens in 1930, when beds could be secured on the less desirable levels of the building for a mere threepence.

The home had opened just in time for the Great Depression to hit, when demand for the organisation's services was routinely strained by people who had erstwhile been ordinary contributing members of society looking for either accomodation or an affordable feed.

By 1932, the home was reportedly serving over 5,000 meals per week "at prices ranging from one penny to sixpence". That's a figure in excess of 700 meals a day - a figure that would swamp most restauranteurs.

The Gill was thus arguably the most important culinary establishment in all of Melbourne as the city approached it's hundredth year of existence, although its menu awash with mince meat, stew, sausages, bread and cocoa would have done little to inspire most gastronomes.

Mealtime at The Gill Home, c.1967
Source: State Library of Victoria

In the same year, the "user-pays" regime somewhat came apart as the State Government began paying the Army 5 shillings a week to house recipients of its "Susso" sustenance payment - welfare instituted in the Great Depression and reserved exclusively for the long term unemployed who had no assets of their own.

In 1932, fully 270 of the building's incumbents were reportedly on the Victorian government "susso" payment.

Queues forming at the Gill Home as recently as 1995
Photographer: Mathias Heng - Source: State Library of Victoria

In 1930, the same paper reported that between 50 and 100 men were regularly being turned away from the home every night. In 1937 the home elected to make 50 beds a night completely free of charge in a bid to ease the city's homelessness crisis.

Winters were said to be the busiest times for demand, although major events such as the Melbourne Cup would also see an influx of visitors from country towns and interstate which would equally strain the facility.

The depression of course eventually subsided, but still The Argus reported in 1948 that the building was "always full", and the "house full" signage was routinely displayed by 11pm on most evenings, although 6pm was considered "peak hour" for most "bookings".

The links between homelessness and substance abuse are of course long established and inevitable. The head of the organisation, Brigadier Herbert Sheldrick, advised the paper that "drunks cannot be barred, because 90% of our clients arrive every night in some stage of inebriation".

The house rules at "The Gill" c.1967
Source: State Library of Victoria 

Alcohol itself was strictly prohibited on the premesis, although the tenants reputedly made every creative attempt imaginable to circumvent the regulation.

Behavioural issues were thus something of a given at the institution, and a record was kept in a big black book of resident misdemeanours, with many being permanently debarred from the place for their infractions. A police patrol payed a routine nightly visit to the home. The top floor of the building was reserved for "casuals and difficult customers".

Brigadier Herbert Sheldrick, a one-time butcher from country NSW, toils away in the kitchen of the Gill Memorial Home in 1948
Source: The Argus

Every effort was made to include facilities for the edification of the residents. The ground floor of the newly refurbished building boasted a reading room, a washroom and a smoking room equipped with a fireplace. Voluntary "Divine Services" were held from 6pm on Tuedays and Sundays, accompanied by a good old Salvation Army brass band comprising members of the Home's staff.

Cleanliness was strongly emphasised as a virtue at the home, and the building was refitted with its own state-of-the-art laundry, daily churning out crisp white bed linen for its denizens, which was changed weekly. The dormitories were cleared of all occupants by 7.45 each morning, and a check of all bed linen for unwanted pests was made. The price of bringing such vagrants into the building was a mandatory bath and fumigation of all belongings.

Those who arrived in a less than desirable state of sanitation were issued with a "blue ticket", which meant they needed to pass through a special showering facility and, as their clothing required fumigation, they were then sent off to bed completely unrobed to sleep "raw". The practice of issuing such men with nightgowns had to be discontinued owing to a tendency for the gowns to disappear, concealed beneath the men's clothing the following day.

Queues form of homeless men for the Gill Memorial home outside the former 1884 telephone exhchange (Melbourne's first) on the opposite (west) side of Wills St c.1966
Source: State Library of Victoria

The same location today - a sterling example of how NOT to do facade retention, and further evidence that the planners at City of Melbourne have well and truly drunk the developers' Kool Aid
(Google Street View)

We are indebted to photographer Mathias Heng who has provided history with probably the last lot of documentary evedence of the Gill Home, through a set of photographs taken in 1995 - just a few years before its eventual closure.

Time and property prices eventually mitigated against the accomodation model employed at the Gill Home. The practice of housing large numbers of vulnerable people - many with long term mental health issues in large dormitory style accomodation fell out of favour in the welfare sector.

The Gill was closed in the late 1990s in favour of newer accomodation forms that housed people in single bed rooms, although that model of course required a much larger floorspace to accomodate the same number of people.

Dormitory at the Gill Home with dutiful penitent, seen in 1995
Photographer: Mathias Heng - Source: State Library of Victoria

The Age in 2002 quoted The Salvation Army's then general manager of adult services, Jane Barnes as stating "disgusting and archaic night shelters are a thing of the past". But highlighting the difficulty in replacing the scale of accomodation they could supply, continues;

"The old Gill Memorial Home for Men ... which housed 200 people a night in dormitories containing 50 beds, has been replaced with the Flagstaff, which comprises 64 beds in separate rooms, and the Open Door in North Melbourne, with 44 separate rooms."

Some of the fabulous hair sported by residents at the Gill Home, seen in 1995
Photographer: Mathias Heng - Source: State Library of Victoria

"The Gill" Apartments

In another dramatic change of purpose for this highly storied building (storeys of stories, no less), the former Moss, White & co factory was subdivided and converted to 20 luxury apartments by architects Nation Fender Katsalidis in 2000. The redevelopment added a communal gym, spa and heated pool to the complex.

The benefits of residential densification to central Melbourne are of course real, but they are perhaps not universal - when you consider an institution once capable of catering nightly to over 300 of society's most needy (200 by some estimates at the time of its closure) is now home to no more than three dozen of the almost definitionally wealthiest.

A'Beckett St frontage of "The Gill" Apartments c.2020
Source: City of Melbourne

As conversions go, it must be said that the developers have been faithful to the building exterior, excepting that the distinctive white paint applied to the stoccoed areas seems historically inaccurate. 1980s photos indicate the scheme was more of a cream-yellow hue by that time, but the building would certainly have been repainted over the course of 100 years, and it's impossible to know how the 1880s scheme would originally have appeared purely from black and white photos.

The retention of the original six storey building plan behind the retained facade is a welcome degree of compliance with sound heritage practice - and a practice that all too regularly goes unenforced on other sites (hello, Emporium).

The "sleek interior" of apartment 302 at "The Gill" Apartments in 2017
Source: Melcom Real Estate

The sales spiel for apartment 302 waxed ebullient in 2017;

"Originally built in 1888 by Nahum Barnet as a tabacco (sic) factory ... the sleek interiors feature a spacious lounge and dining, boasting ceiling heights up to 13 feet and large original timber windows (EDITOR'S NOTE: The windows are NOT original to the factory) with a sophisticated kitchen appointed with stone benches, glass splashbacks and European stainless steel appliances, master bedroom with walk in robe and ensuite, second bedroom BIRs and sparkling central bathroom.

The three bedroom apartment 501 at "The Gill" sold in 2015 for $1.52m, which is a lot of shillings per night, even if you live to be the next Methusalah.

But at least the building is still there, facade wholly intact and without a giant new tower sticking out of the top of it, and barring no further intervention by flames nor similar acts of "God", should still be there as a prominent remnant of the city's 19th into 20th century working class and industrial heritage in another 140 odd years.

Thanks for staying with me this far, readers.
If you're into this sort of content, we'll be ramping up this blog in a big way in 2023.
Make sure you don't miss out on future posts from the Wombat - stay in touch on social media via one of the million or so links in the sidebars ...

REFERENCES

'Central Activities District Conservation Study' - Graeme Butler, 1984

'Messrs Moss White & Co's New Premesis', The Age, 26 October 1889

'The A'Beckett Street Fire', The Argus, 9 February, 1898

'Messrs Moss White & Co.", The Weekly Times, 14 December, 1889

'Manufacturing Enterprise in Victoria', The Toscin, 19 April, 1900

'Salvation Army has its "Grand Hotel"', The Argus, 23 October, 1948