Category Archives: Latest Posts

Cycling Communities: Cycling clubs in Sydney, 1860s-2000s’

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HOSTED BY THE MARRICKVILLE HERITAGE SOCIETY

Cycling Communities: Cycling clubs in Sydney, 1860s-2000s’

Date: Sat 24 Nov at the Herb Greedy Hall, Petersham Road.

Time: 10:30am -12:00pm

Speaker: Dr Marc Rerceretnam, Cyclo-historian
 The formation and popularity of bicycle clubs in Australia closely reflects the costs of purchasing a bicycle. In the 1860s it was largely a pastime for the rich and affluent, and by the 1890s it widened to include the middle classes. However by the turn of the twentieth century, with the rich and middle classes smitten with new motorized transportation like automobiles and motorcycles, opportunities to own a bicycle opened up for the first time to the working classes. As a result bicycle clubs flourished throughout the Australian social landscape. The decades following the Second World War saw growth in wealth and the growing affordability of personal motorized transportation. By the 1960s and especially in the 1970s, bicycle users turned away from the low tech bicycle towards the now affordable automobile. However by the 1990s and 2000s the bicycle acquired new meanings, practicalities and charm of bicycles were discovered yet again by new affluent professional classes.

 

Waratah Rovers Club 1 – Frank Walker glass slide collection, RAHS

From coughing to coffins: digging into council archives

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To celebrate History Week 2018, Inner West Council hosted a fascinating presentation by well-known local historian Chrys Meader, about the worldwide pandemic of the pneumonic influenza in 1919 and how the local community dealt with the crisis.

The pneumonic influenza was one of the worst catastrophes of the 20th century. Widely known as the “Spanish flu” in 1919 its deadly reach eventually crept through the doors of Sydney homes.

This engaging presentation brought to life the social impact of the pandemic on the community. Travel outside of Sydney was restricted, church services were cancelled and theatres were closed.

The wearing of masks in public was compulsory. The Council responded by setting up inhalation chambers and the community was actively involved in managing the outbreak.

Attendees were shown rarely seen original correspondence and records from the former Marrickville Council archives, photographs, newspaper clippings and contemporary accounts of people who lived through the deadly, terrifying days of the pandemic.

Marrickville Council Infectious Diseases Register [photo courtesy Dr Peter Hobbins]

Marrickville Council Infectious Diseases Register [photo courtesy Dr Peter Hobbins]

Dr Peter Hobbins, a medical historian at the University of Sydney, said “it was really impressive to see how such a diverse range of records were brought to life, telling us not only about the disease, but how it affected the entire Inner West community a century ago”.

The effects of the Pneumonic plague in the Marrickville area.

History Talk: Callan Park Hospital for the Insane

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To celebrate the 140th anniversary of the founding of the Callan Park Lunatic Asylum, Sarah Luke has published Callan Park, Hospital for the Insane (Australian Scholarly Publishing).

Sarah’s book explores the early history of the old Callan Park Lunatic Asylum, using Victorian-era medical files to explore the lives of its patients and staff. Discover the workings of the madhouse ­– from the tiny mansion originally used to house Sydney’s insane – to the magnum opus asylum that was the Kirkbride Complex.

Sarah will present a lecture at Leichhardt Library on Tuesday November 6th 6pm for 6:30pm start exploring the lives of the first patients of Callan Park.

Book here

Louisa Lawson’s Old Stone House

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Louisa Lawson’s Old Stone House

Recently, I’ve focused on the big corporations like General Motors-Holden who set up along Carrington Road Marrickville, but what about individuals in the area? Louisa Lawson was one important local: a publisher, journalist, inventor, women’s activist and also Henry Lawson’s mother. She lived in this cottage from around 1893 to 1919 near the frequently flooded eastern end of Renwick Street and Richardsons Cresent. The cottage was close to the Gumbramorra Creek (now a stormwater canal lined during the Depression).

Louisa Lawson set up her printing press here and according to a 1931 article by George R Reeve (a history writer who lived in nearby Newtown), published two of her own books of verse and one of Henry’s from the cottage. The cottage was originally a lodge on Thomas Holt’s estate, The Warren. It was described as small, but Louisa Lawson was eager to greet visitors and entertain with stories of publishing The Dawn. Her eldest son, Henry Lawson also knew her cottage well enough to describe it while he was in Darlinghurst gaol in 1909. He needed bail and hoped Louisa would help:

The case seems desperate but do all you possibly can. I’d soon go hopelessly out of my mind here. Do anything to raise the money and I’ll take care this business will never happen again. You might even go to my mother. She has plenty. Her address is Mrs. Lawson, ‘Old Stone House’ Tempe (near Railway Station) . . . Her property is near the railway gates. She’d tell you of some friends anyway. It is real gaol this time, you know, and the loneliness is terrible . . . Yours in Trouble, Henry Lawson (Henry Lawson Letters, 1890–1922, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1970, p 175).

In addition to women’s right to vote, Louisa Lawson was active in addressing the working conditions of women and girls in factories. I wonder what she would have thought of her own cottage being demolished to make way for the area’s factories sometime after 1943?

Thanks Sue Castrique, another local writer and historian, for providing much of the above research into Louisa Lawson’s life in Marrickville.

 

History Week 2018: Broughton Hall: Brought to life

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Image:Henry King, courtesy Mark Turnbull and Keep Family Collection

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History Week 2018: Broughton Hall: Brought to life
When:

Saturday, 1, September, 2018
What time:

10:00 AM to 4:00 PM
Where:

Broughton Hall
Church Street
Lilyfield NSW
More about this event:

Outdoor exhibition

A self-guided, outdoor historic exhibition that explores the cycles of life at this colonial mansion and its gardens. Discover how it became a military hospital in WW1 and its subsequent regeneration as the first voluntary psychiatric hospital.

Today Broughton Hall is a place of contemporary therapeutic care.

Enter at Church Street, Lilyfield, between Wharf Road and Glover Street

 

General Motors-Holden Assembly Plant Restarts 1934

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General Motors-Holden Assembly Plant Restarts 1934

The General Motors Australia assembly plant on Carrington Road Marrickville shut during the Great Depression. One of its main suppliers was also struggling. That company was Holden Body Builders in South Australia.

But General Motors spotted an opportunity to secure its future in Australia. Acting quickly for fear rival Ford might act first, General Motors snatched up Holden for £1.1 million. At about $100 million in today’s terms, this seems pretty cheap now!

General Motors-Holden’s Limited (GM-H) started on 1 March 1931. GM-H made a further loss of £341,914 in 1931-32, but according to a 1935 GM-H report money from wool sales in 1933-34 improved spending, including on cars which were now a necessity in Australia. This brought the Marrickville assembly plant on Carrington Road back to life. It opened again on 3 April 1934, marked by a visit by Lieutenant Colonel Bruner, the NSW Minister for Transport.

This 1936 photo of the Marrickville plant shows cars of the 1930s to be more streamlined and enclosed. The signage says “General Motors Holden’s Limited” with the distinctive GMH on the pediment above. And a row of newly planted Canary Island Date Palms lines the road. If you’re out for a drive along Carrington Road today, come and see how they’ve grown!

 

The Great Depression in Marrickville

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Boots, shoes etc, the world-famed Marrickville tweeds, porcelain baths, basins, sinks… famous Marrickville blankets, rugs, clothes, motor bodies wonderfully constructed bodies of superfine grace, beautifully streamlined…furniture, hardwood, toys, machinery! Some marvelous machinery – made in Marrickville. That is the point sought to be driven home by the Marrickville manufacturers “Made in Marrickville” (Australian Made, Labor Daily, April 1930, p 7)

1930 began with a hope. Could the depression be avoided through the manufacturing excellence, showcased at Marrickville Town Hall?

But it was not long before factories slowed due to low sales. General Motors on Carrington Road Marrickville shut in 1931 as Australian car sales declined to just 5 per cent of the previous year. Unemployment in Marrickville reached 29 per cent. Other areas were worse-off (nearby Newtown reached an unemployment rate of  43 per cent).

The NSW Government scrambled to create Relief Schemes to provide work for the unemployed by fixing roads and drainage. A particular focus was to “improve” low lying land in Marrickville, Tempe, Wolli Creek and other parts of Sydney by filling and draining swamps (SMH, 28 July 1930). This included work on the Sydenham pit and drainage of the former Gumbramorra Swamp to the Cooks River.

Relief work was low paid and hard. Those who complained about the conditions were threatened with being cut out of food rations and further work. It is no surprise that strikes and industrial disputes became common. And Marrickville Town Hall once again became an important meeting place, this time for the Unemployed Workers’ Movement, Women’s Vanguard as well as hosting fundraising events to help the unemployed.Next time we’ll find out how General Motors survived the Great Depression.

You might also like to read about Made in Marrickville now.

 

Duly & Hansford: nuts and bolts to daredevil speedsters

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Remember all those nuts and bolts General Motors used on Carrington Road Marrickville? These could have come straight from the Duly & Hansford factory two doors down.

Duly and Hansford opened its factory on 1 February 1927, when Mr Duly boasted the firm was “now in a position to supply the wants of the whole of Australia with bright nuts and bolts.” This impressed Federal Minister for Trade and Customs, Mr Herbert Pratten, who officially opened the factory. Pratten was a supporter of local industry and Australian-made products. He said, “if you buy the home-made article you keep both your goods and your money. If you buy outside all you get is the goods.”

Duly & Hansford soon expanded to springs and shock absorbers including Duofor and Personne-Reed brands. These were used by racing hero Wizard Smith in an attempt to break the land speed record according to an ad taken out by Duly & Hansford in the Sunday Times on 3 November 1929.

The Mystery Car (also known as ANZAC) was a 18.7 litre aircraft engine made by Rolls Royce mounted on a Cadillac limousine chassis with a streamlined racing car body (Eric North, 2004). Wizard Smith set the Australasian record at 90 Mile Beach near Auckland with a speed of 239 km per hour in January 1930. For more on Wizard Smith, see Clinton Walker (2012) Speed, Modernism and the Last Ride of Wizard Smith.

Duly & Hansford continued manufacturing automotive parts on Carrington Road Marrickville until 1968 when taken over by US automotive firm, TWR Inc, which operated the factory for another three decades. Duly & Hansford’s factory buildings are still used by the automotive industry today through repair and body shops.

 

AH Peters: 125 years making trucks & vans

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General Motors Australia weren’t the only automotive manufacturer on Carrington Road Marrickville in the 1920s. AH Peters had also set up next door at No. 16. The AH Peters factory (without its brick façade) can be seen to the right of General Motors Australia on its opening day in 1926. Inside, the building’s impressive first floor trusses suggest heavy machinery may have been used on the first floor. The building is now occupied by Sydney Prop Specialists but AH Peters is still operating today after moving to Condell Park and is proud of its 125-year history.

In the early Twentieth Century, AH Peters made motor vehicle bodies, particularly trucks, vans and utility vehicles, adapting General Motors models for more specialised uses. AH Peters supplied commercial vehicles including to Kellogg’s, MacRobertson’s, Cadbury’s Chocolate, Dairy Farmers, Colda Fruit Salad Delicacies, J. Gadsden, Anderson’s Smallgoods and Steelo, according to archives in the State Library. These commercial vehicles were well-known around Sydney and AH Peters had their bodywork photographed by our favourite photographer, Milton Kent. If you look closely, you can see the Steelo photo was taken out the front of AH Peters premises on Carrington Road!

AH Peters also transformed General Motor’s Buicks into ambulances used across NSW. See more historic Buick ambulances in a collection put together by John Gerdtz.

Carrington Road: So what is an assembly plant?

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In the 1920s, the General Motors assembly plant in Marrickville was described an engineering marvel and fascinated Sydneysiders. Visitors to the plant included Charles Kingsford Smith, world-champion golfer Walter Hagen, singing organist Julia Dawn, the Master Builders Association, the Millions Club, the 2UW Radio Club, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Radio Movie Club. An illuminated scale model of the plant was a hit at the 1929 Sydney Motor Show.

But what is an assembly plant? It is a factory with an assembly line, where work is separated into a sequence of tasks. Henry T Ford developed a moving assembly line in 1913 and it cut the cost of automotive production. Cars became affordable so more people could buy one. Assembly lines made household goods cheap and readily available in the Twentieth Century, something we can still appreciate 100 years on.

General Motors on Carrington Road was possibly the first purpose-built assembly plant in New South Wales with moving production lines. Ford had only just opened its plants in Geelong, Adelaide and Brisbane (Sydney came later in 1936). Here’s a description of the General Motors assembly line from the 1930s:

Bodies are hauled by electric hoists into the body storage area, where they are fitted with electric wiring harness and dashboard instruments, later assembly begins with the riveting of the chassis frame. Red hot rivets are tossed from the furnaces to the riveters with seemingly reckless abandon. Each man is ready to collect and the hot rivets are hammered into place with pneumatic hammers. Petrol tank, axles, steering wheel, steering column, transmission and springs are then fitted, and the chassis moves on to a trestle. Mechanics fit spark plugs and prepare the engine. The chassis frame is treated with anti-corrosive, the engine lowered into the chassis frame, and the unit is ready for its journey along the conveyer line. Fenders and other parts are fitted and a body is gently lowered to the frame… An army of men swarms over the unit… the engines are started and the cars roll off under their own power to checking pits. Here every bolt and nut is inspected, steering and wheel alignment are checked, the ignition system is inspected to see that everything is functioning perfectly… The car goes on its first journey…

Speaking of nuts and bolts, we’ll bring you more on where these could have been made soon (hint: it’s just down the road!)