Growing up in Port Melbourne in the middle of the 20th Century
by Albert Caton
I was born in 1942 in the maternity ward of the Women’s Hospital in North Melbourne, the son of Edward Harold (‘Ted’) Caton and Muriel Lily (Reed) Caton. Soon afterwards, my mum and I moved to Sydney where my father was stationed in the Navy…
The rows of modest, cheek by jowl, Victorian cottages, in many streets in Port Melbourne, provide a glimpse of what it would have been like to live here in the mid-to-late 1880s. What was then is now intermingled with 21st century vehicles and a growing city skyline.
Albert Street (2021). Photo: David Thompson, PMHPS Collection
This intermingling of then and now…
Norma Barnett came to Port Melbourne in 1953 to work at the Melbourne City Mission. The Mission had been established a century earlier to give aid to the thousands of immigrants who had flocked to Victoria in the gold rush, failed to make their fortune and were stranded, destitute.
Just behind the Fountain Inn (now The Cornerstone) stood the…
Albert and Alfred Streets are two narrow streets formed west of the railway in the 1870s.
Both streets run from Farrell Street towards Graham. Alfred stops mid-block after Union Street while Albert is split by Graham Street and continues to Poolman Street.
Albert Street. Photo by David Thompson
Albert Street was named for Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's Consort and due…
It all began with a mistake. Dr Robyn Clinch, member and guest speaker at the July meeting, was surprised to learn that her interesting house in Port was not mapped as significant whereas her neighbour’s 1980s house was. She later discovered that it was an error in the original mapping software, since corrected.
26 McCormack Street
This puzzling circumstance as well as…