People – Port Melbourne Historical and Preservation Society

The Whitaker Family: Braidwood to Montague

People, Port Melbourne HistoryMarch 21, 2025

by David F Radcliffe Allan Whittaker, a stevedore, was shot by police at Hogans Flat, near Princes Pier, on 2 November 1928. The injuries he sustained resulted in his untimely death on 26 January 1929. He was 38. These events have been commemorated annually since 2013. A short film, An Ordinary Life: The Story of Allan Whittaker, released in…

Ada Polson

People, Port Melbourne HistoryMarch 7, 2025

Margaret Bride writes about her mother, Ada Florence Bellion, born in Port Melbourne in 1891. A very early photograph of Ada, aged about 3, shows a sturdy child with a mass of curls. Her deep auburn coloured hair led to her nick-name of Bluey when she was a young woman. Ada, circa 1894 My Mother, Ada Florence Bellion, was born in…

Meet the Borowski Family

People, Port Melbourne HistoryFebruary 21, 2025

by David F Radcliffe When writing Changing Fortunes in 2020, I could not find any photographs of the many people and families featured in the book. Through writing their stories, I came to know them, even though I had never ‘seen’ them. Just before Christmas 2024, Rudolph and Mary Borowski, who lived at 47 Spring Street East for nearly fifty years, suddenly…

Mitchell Crescent

People, Places, Port Melbourne HistoryFebruary 7, 2025

by David Thompson Mitchell Crescent is a private street that runs through the public housing estate between Nott Street and Bay Street curving towards Rouse Street at the back of the Exchange Hotel. The large block on the western side of Bay Street between Rouse Street and the beach served as the cable tram depot from 1890 until the tramway…

The Pumping Station – The Beazley Family Connection

People, Places, Port Melbourne HistoryDecember 13, 2024

For many years the Beazley family were fisherfolk, working the Bay and selling their catch from the garage next to their home in Dow Street. Leonard 'Dugga' Beazley was the last of the fishermen retiring in 2016 after participating in the buy-out of the Port Phillip Bay commercial fishing licences. But the Beazley family also had a close association…

Bigamy and a Good Turn 120 years later

People, Port Melbourne HistoryNovember 22, 2024

by Robyn Watters Last year my daily walk took me past the walls of memorial plaques in the Springvale Botanical Cemetery and I would look sadly at the bright orange ‘expired’ stickers on many of the plaques. This ominous warning sticker meant the deceased estate had only paid for a limited tenure for the plaque to be displayed. When the time was…

Frank Winwood, the Wizard of the Lamps

People, Port Melbourne HistoryNovember 7, 2024

by David Thompson At the meeting of the Port Melbourne Citizens’ Patriotic Committee held on the evening of Monday, 23 Sep 1918, a vote of thanks was accorded “Mr Frank Winwood, ‘the wizard of the lamps’, and his company of electrical craftsmen”.[i] On the previous Thursday, the Committee had held “a Night in the East”, a fund-raising event at Port…

McCormack: A Slender Street in Two Parts

People, Places, Port Melbourne HistoryNovember 1, 2024

by David F Radcliffe In her 2014 article on McCormack St, Robyn Clinch sketched the life of publican Thomas McCormack, after whom the street was named. The McCormack family lived on the southern part of this slender street between Bridge Street and Esplanade East. McCormack Street also extends northward from Bridge Street to Spring Street East. Each part has a distinct…

Growing up in Port Melbourne

People, Places, Port Melbourne HistoryOctober 18, 2024

Jim Sinclair extracts from an interview conducted by John May and Janet Bolitho on 30 June 2020. Where and when were you born Jim? I was born in 1924 in Cruikshank St, in Port Melbourne. My father was a fireman at Eastern Hill Fire Station. I don’t know what my mother did when she was working. She must of…

A Modern Woman from Garden City

People, Port Melbourne HistorySeptember 20, 2024

by Robyn Watters Norma Madeline Watters Born: 7 June 1924, Albert Park (at home) Died: 23 April 2021, Brighton We often imagine that women born a century ago saw their destiny only as wives and mothers fleshed out only by the necessity to bring in money if they were from the working class. My aunt Norma Madeline Watters born in 1924…

Acknowledgement of Traditional Custodians