For many years the two large gasometers (gas holding cylinders) on the south side of Banksia Street stood as distinctive Heidelberg landmarks.
The Heidelberg Gasworks was bounded by Banksia, Dora and Yarra Streets and started in 1887as a private enterprise by Messrs Tipping and Wright. It was bought by the Shire Council in 1899 then transferred to the Metropolitan Gas Company (later to become the Gas and Fuel Corporation Victoria) in 1947. The works closed in the late 1950s.
The Gasworks produced domestic gas from coal. Coal trucks would weigh in at the weighbridge and office in Dora St, near Banksia Street. After the coal was dumped it was hand shovelled into the coal furnaces. While in the 1940’s and earlier, the Heidelberg Shire extended from Clifton Hill to Kinglake, the gas these works produced was available only to the immediate locality; Heidelberg, West Heidelberg, Ivanhoe and Fairfield. Rosanna first received gas from an alternative source in the 1950’s.
Local men, as well as some who lived further afield, had full time employment in rotating shifts; day, afternoon and night shift, with perhaps a dozen men on each shift. Bill Agnew often rode his pony from Diamond Creek to his job at the Gasworks.
A decommissioned Gasometer stood near the weighbridge. The Gasworks also owned some single fronted brick houses on the north side, facing Yarra Steet. The closure of the Gasworks saw quite a number of young and not so young men become jobless.
Source: Looking back: Heidelberg and Rosanna in the 1920s and 1940s by Bonnie Banfield, Joan Hope, Bill and Dorothy Lemin Watsonia, Against the Grain publications, 2006
Image: Heidelberg Gas Works, 1900. Heidelberg Historical Society in partnership with Yarra Plenty Regional Library
