I think I found the North Essendon Board Track, its near the current Strathmore Secondary.
I may be wrong, there was also a greyhound track nearby but this looks alot like a velodrome, what do you think?
Think you are spot on, looks the goods too.
Excellent work.
Talbot Rd in Strathmoe is where it was. No traces left though, it was sold and moved to Sydney.
My Dad who grew up in essendon in the 40,s 50,s talks of being taken to the races at the velodrome. He also said that crayfish was cheap working class food which they ate most weeks I wonder what we will be telling our kids.
yep. more here…
Colac eh. Do you know Don Forsyth? he’s your gen.
i will be busy denying knowledge of mine.
In the centre of the left half of the Parkville map you can see how much space was taken up by visiting American troops during WWII*. They also had full use of the Royal Melbourne Hospital for two years. After the war the buildings were used as emergency public housing and it didn’t sound too pleasant.
In August 1945 the war in the Pacific officially ended. Americans were no longer required for occupation and returned home. Royal Park became a principal demobilisation centre for service personnel and a cheerful disassembly point as troops packed up operations. Camp Pell was decommissioned in December 1945. After the war, Camp Pell was used by the Housing Commission for emergency public housing. In 1946, 3,000 people were moved into what became known as ‘Camp Hell’. This emergency housing was intended to last one year. However, the last inhabitants moved out in 1956 - after ten years of hardship and poverty. In 1956, the tin huts of Camp Pell were demolished and the site cleaned up. Royal Park was returned to public parkland in time for the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games.
Looks like whitewashing the homeless situation is a long standing Olympic tradition … wonder what happened to them.
- among whom lurked the Brownout Strangler.
“The trial was convened by the US military, and Leonski was convicted and sentenced to death. It was the first time that any person has ever been tried in this country by a military tribunal for a crime which violated civilian law.”
– and hanged at Pentridge.
bump for radness, and because i was doing some research and needed to find these maps, and because i found this as well:
Awesome. - Walking Melbourne also has some good threads with old photos of stuff. Like this one for example.
hey chaz, you know any links to old aerial photos for country areas?
Good link! Any idea what year #1 was published? Looks right around the change to decimal currency given it has both for the price.
(BAM, wikipedia sez May 1966 ;), mere months after the change )
I like the fact that drive-in theatres get marked on the key map, while the list of hospitals and police stations are tucked away on map 85.
I found 1945 images of country here.
There not as high resolution as the Melbourne ones.
na, country areas basically look the same as they do now, but with slightly more people.
…depends where you go
True, if your town is lucky enough to become a hangout for the Inner North bourgeois set to grow organic kale on their 100 acre ‘farms’ then your town might be growing. Otherwise it’s a steady, depressing and inevitable decline.
Ah ha sounds like Castlemaine? All those hipsters and RMIT Architecture lectures living up there would be surprised to know there used to be a big bill board proclaiming Castlemaine as the hot-rod capital of Australia. Gee, growing up in Bendigo in the 90’s Castlemaine didn’t even have hippies just poor white bogans working at the bacon factory by day, pullin cones by night and catching the train to Bendigo on the weekend for a bit of petty crime and trying to pick up underage chicks in the mall.
so you enjoyed penshurst, then?
Was pretty good. But every time I go back there seems to be less and less going on. If only we had a 3 hat restaurant and some killer views of the Grampians.