Most readers will be familiar with the popular Croxton Park Hotel in High Street and what is now regarded as Northcote, but most will not be aware of the rich sporting traditions of the hotel and its grounds. Like others in Melbourne – Epsom, Ascot and Sandown – it was another track that took its […]
Racecourses of the north – Heidelberg
The exact location of the Heidelberg course – or courses – is generally accredited to be at the Heidelberg Cricket Ground and one report from 1880 has jockeys weighing-in in the cricket pavilion, but whether this represents today’s layout of Warringal Park is uncertain. . Today’s cricket ground is to the north of the Warringal […]
Racecourses of the north : Eltham
The site for a village at Eltham was first gazetted by the Colonial Secretary’s Office in Sydney on 9 January, 1851. The first race meeting noted came on 24 December, 1855 – like most of the early meetings, prizemoney was determined on the sweepstake basis with the entry fees providing part of the prize and […]
Racecourses of the north – Thomastown
Occasional race meetings at Thomastown to the north of Melbourne were noted along with others at Preston, Heidelberg, Ivanhoe in the late 1850’s, the first at Thomastown itself noted in 1858. (Both Mill Park and Lower Plenty had annual races as early as the late 1840s) In January, 1889, a long letter to the weekly […]
Racecourses of the north : Ivanhoe
The Ivanhoe Racecourse is noted from the late 1850’s, one report suggesting the course was on the Heidelberg-road, then a rough affair built by convicts, Heidelberg itself along with Brighton one of the first settlements established outside of the early Melbourne settlement. Most of the early references to the “Ivanhoe racecourse” actually refer to hunt […]
The thriving Darebin shopping centre in the 1940s
In the 1940s the small group of shops clustered around the Darebin Station on Heidelberg Road was a thriving shopping centre, in the days of one car and no car families. The trek to the Ivanhoe shops from the Fairy Hills-Darebin area was a major exercise up the hill and beyond – especially for people […]
A refugee journey from Africa to Australia
Amongst other things, Baraka Emmy is employed as a casual library officer at Moreland City Libraries. This is a personal account of his journey from the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo to Australia. By Baraka Emmy
Duplication of Railway Line across Darebin Creek 1950-4
The year was some time between 1950 and 1954 in the days when I was catching the train to Northcote High School from Darebin to Westgarth Stations. The then single line across the Darebin Creek, through Darebin Station to Ivanhoe Station, was to be duplicated over a single weekend. A miracle, we thought at the […]
Fairy Hills between 1940-1950
Every day between 1940 and around 1950 my life was full of activity due to a constant stream of people who were like shops (before supermarkets) coming to our front door with just about everything we needed. They came in trucks or carts of all shapes and sizes. Most of them were drawn by horses. […]
Farming in the Shire of Eltham
by Ross MacMillan This article first appeared in the Eltham District Historical Society May 2015 newsletter and is reproduced here with permission of the author The area known originally as the Shire of Eltham lies on the wooded southern slopes and along the valleys of the Great Dividing Ranges. It is drained by the Plenty and […]