Spring Street – Port Melbourne Historical and Preservation Society

Now and Then 2021 – Corner Bay and Spring Streets

Port Melbourne HistoryAugust 2, 2021

Bay Street at Spring Street (2021). Photo: David Thompson, PMHPS Collection. Bay Street has always been both a route and a destination. Vehicles now, as then, travel north and south, but in 1840 it was no more than a dusty track leading to Melbourne. Port Melbourne Town Hall (1883). City of Port Phillip Collection. By 1900 it was a broad thoroughfare lined…

A Corner Shop

People, Places, Port Melbourne HistoryApril 23, 2021

In the days before supermarkets and large shopping centres the people of Port Melbourne and other inner suburbs shopped every day at small local shops located cheek by jowl amongst their own houses. One such shop was located on the corner of Esplanade East and Spring Street East. PMHPS has a digital copy of a photograph album compiled…

An Exciting Incident

Port Melbourne HistoryApril 3, 2020

by David Radcliffe On Saturday evening, 7th February 1903 a series of robberies took place in Esplanade East followed by a high speed chase down Spring Street East culminating in a dangerous collision with a cable drawn tram in Bay Street opposite the Town Hall. The unfolding drama was captured by an unnamed staff reporter at the Argus under the headline An Exciting…

Spring Street – North, South, East and West

Places, Port Melbourne HistoryFebruary 7, 2020

David Radcliffe For Victorians, Spring St is synonymous with the seat of government. Similarly, Spring St in Port Melbourne runs past our historical seat of local government, the Town Hall. What makes our Spring St unique is that it has four parts each named after one of the cardinal directions. However over the years the names of these four parts have…

A Builder’s Signature?

Port Melbourne HistoryAugust 22, 2019

Decorative Eaves on Workers’ Cottages A constant delight of Port Melbourne is the avenues of workers cottages built during the real estate boom of the late Victorian era. Yet there is much more to these small wooden homes with their pretty iron lacework than first meets the eye. If you look up at the eaves between the main roof structure…

Watery names: A cluster of Floodgate, Pool and Spring

Places, Port Melbourne HistoryJune 19, 2013

It is shaping up to be our wettest June in many years. It prompted a look at the place names that reveal Port Melbourne's watery foundation. A particularly flood prone spot was, and remains, the area around Ingles and Crockford St. In December 1863 "... a flood of unexampled severity occurred, which overwhelmed the low-lying land along the river course…

Now and Then 2021 – Corner Bay and Spring Streets

A Corner Shop

An Exciting Incident

Spring Street – North, South, East and West

A Builder’s Signature?

Watery names: A cluster of Floodgate, Pool and Spring

Acknowledgement of Traditional Custodians