42 C O N T E X T 8 7 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 4 campaign, the association proved to be highly effective in liaising with local groups. It enlisted the support of the National Trust to register South Parkville as the first urban area of significance. The association sponsored publicity media: Benjamin’s 1968 book on the suburb; a short film, Parkville, was made in 1970. Local residents Brian and Hilary Lewis were formative in the Trust; Hilary compiled a book, South Parkville. Their son, Miles, bought a house in Carlton, on the other side of the university, in the late 1960s, only to find it under threat of demolition by the HCV. He was later to become a prominent player in heritage debates in subsequent decades, and remains so today. South Carlton had already been substantially reclaimed by the HCV and high-rise units built in its southern section. In 1969, the HCV laid claim to the northern section of the suburb and began to acquire housing compulsorily for demolition. A core group of locals – the majority of them affiliated to the university, although some were also city-based professionals – formed the Carlton Association. The Carlton News, an activist publication grown from a traders’ newsletter, became the association’s mouthpiece. When the News broadened its circulation to become the (inner-city only) Melbourne Times, other groups such as the Fitzroy Residents’ Association and the Emerald Hill Association (in South Melbourne) found it receptive. The conservation concerns of residents’ action groups were multi-pronged and depended in part on the interests of key players. In Fitzroy, heritage was a premium. As Melbourne’s ‘oldest suburb’ and one in which numerous buildings arguably of national significance were under threat, this small suburb was the site of many battles between the HCV, residents, and a newly ‘democratised’ Fitzroy Council. As in Sydney, where the Builders’ Labourers’ Federation was imposing ‘green bans’ on inappropriate development (using its union power to block developments it judged to be socially irresponsible), the federation’s Victorian branch instituted ‘black bans’ on demolition and building work that it deemed inappropriate. ‘By 1970,’ remembers Jane Lennon, a founding member of the Fitzroy Residents’ Group, ‘we were very busy, starting to document things – buildings, street changes.’ Lennon says that one HCV demolition in particular mobilised locals: ‘a wonderful Methodist chapel and it had a magpie stained glass window and they demolished that… That made everyone just so angry. This was a real symbol… very rapidly, we started to get a lot of Fitzroy’s property acknowledged as having value and I think that helped stop some of the Housing Commission activities.’2 In South Melbourne, Barbara Niven of the Emerald Hill Association (Emerald Hill had been the area’s original name) formulated a programme by which local enthusiasts could catalogue and document the area’s streetscapes. For Niven, ‘everything stemmed’ from conservation: ‘You couldn’t build a freeway without demolishing the houses, you couldn’t build Housing Commission flats without demolishing the houses.’3 The pressure was eased somewhat in 1973 when government began to respond to inner-city residents’ heritage concerns. The state Liberal government, which had long engendered pro-development policies under the conservative and paternalistic former farmer Henry Bolte, saw a change of leadership. Bolte handed the reins to the urbane and cultured Rupert Hamer in late 1972. One of a group of ministers avowedly committed to community consultation, Hamer saw both an intrinsic cultural value in conservation of both built and natural environments. He also saw political realities that the ‘old school’ Bolte had been unwilling to grasp. Within months of coming to power, Hamer made clear his empathy with heritage issues. He demonstrated very publicly his approval of the National Trust (‘a treasure in this community’4) and, responding to both the wishes of the electorate and the political reality of a drop in federal funding for major roads, cut back significantly on planned freeways. In 1974, the Hamer government instituted the Historic Buildings Act, in consultation with the National Trust, allowing for a system whereby buildings were graded and their demolition or alteration subject to arbitration and appeal. In a city as car-dependent as Melbourne had become at this stage, freeways did not, disappear as an issue. The later Hamer years included bitter fighting – including the building by residents of a wall of refuse and old car bodies – over the planned route of the Eastern Freeway which, in its original conception, cut through Collingwood, Fitzroy and Carlton. Although the freeway was built, it now terminates on the border of the residential area. Melbourne was not to see major public works – or a revival of strong pro-heritage activism – for another 20 years, when a new government reminiscent of Bolte’s gained power. Jeff Kennett had sufficient electoral support to be comfortable in revoking consultation stipulations in legislation and instituting a large-scale freeway plan, one section of which travelled over a bridge named in honour of Bolte. Although Kennett was defeated at the polls in 1999, his broad-brush legacy on Melbourne’s built environment remains. A consciousness of the value of built environment and community involvement in planning decisions is also now entrenched in the mind of the Melbourne public – not only in the inner city, but in the city across its breadth.The urban activism of the 1970s continues to be mirrored not only in social values respecting the 19th-century built environment of the inner city – a respect which, incidentally, is reflected in escalating real estate prices for this area – but also in a respect for community rights and requirements in the political, social and cultural arenas. This article draws on research undertaken for ‘Community and Governance: urban activism in Melbourne in the 1960s and beyond’, a joint project under the aegis of Deakin and Monash Universities, Melbourne. Renate Howe is a historian and member of the Heritage Council ofVictoria, and visiting research scholar at the School of Social and International Studies at Deakin University. David Nichols is a lecturer in Australian studies at Deakin University. References 1 Environment’ folder, Richmond Association PA 99/25 Box 3, State Library of Victoria 2 Jane Lennon interviewed by David Nichols, 31 July 2003 3 Barbara Niven interviewed by Jane Yule, 9 December 2003 4 ‘Terrace saved – but barely’, The Age, 3 April 1973
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjgyMjA=