i 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FOOTSTEPPING TO FEDERATION 

 

An alternative approach to analysing Australian Society at the beginning of the 

Twentieth Century. 

 

 

 

 

Eric Carpenter  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy  

Through the Research School of the Humanities and the Arts  

The Australian National University 

October 2016 

 

 



ii 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to the best of my knowledge 

it contains no material previously published or written by another person and no 

material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at any 

educational institution, except where acknowledgement is made in the thesis. 

Any contribution made to the research by colleagues during my candidature is fully 

acknowledged. 

 

I also declare that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work, 

except to the extent that assistance from others in the project’s design, style, 

presentation and expression is acknowledged. 

 

 

 

 

Eric Carpenter  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



iii 
 

CONTENTS 

 

Abstract    iv 

 

Acknowledgements   v 

 

Preamble     vii 

 

Introduction      1 

 

Sydney Federation Parade  50  

 

Melbourne Federation Parade           148 

 

Conclusion             243 

 

Bibliography            270 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



iv 
 

ABSTRACT 

 

On 1 January 1901, the first day of the twentieth century, the six colonies of Australia 

federated in Sydney to become a single united country.  On 9 May of the same year this 

symbolic inauguration became a practical reality when the first Federal Parliament was 

opened in the Melbourne Exhibition Building.  Both these significant events were 

accompanied by equally significant processions through the two respective colonial, 

then state capital cities.   

 

Much has been written about the kind of country Australia was at the time of Federation 

and what manner of nation Australia consciously and subconsciously intended to 

become.  However, our appreciation and understanding of these issues today tends to be 

determined, as do most historical studies, by an analysis of the written documents of the 

day, and subsequent written academic commentary.  I would contend that such texts 

have, to some degree, always been restricted by the social and cultural limitations of the 

written documentary process, of those writing the work, and even the social and cultural 

limitations of those for whom such work is intended. 

 

Is it possible therefore, to analyse historical events by utilising other methodologies; 

other research materials and other approaches in collating evidence?  And will such 

processes provide new insights, or simply re-iterate what has gone before?  To this end I 

have adapted the techniques of Richard Holmes’ footstepping and Gilbert Ryle’s and 

Clifford Geertz’s thick description to undertake such an evaluation by retracing the 

routes of these two principal Federation parades and recording what additional evidence 

could be gained.   

 

This methodology has comprised a visual description and interpretation of the routes of 

the two Federation processions through the cities by referencing back to both the written 

record of the day through the press, and general historical commentary on these cities’ 

culture and society of the time.  The primarily visual aspect of my analysis has been 

supplemented by a visual photographic documentation that provides both an historical 

record of the sites and locations along the parade routes as well as an added source of 

interpretation of the Federation process.  Through this process, I have analysed the 

concept of national identity and the imagined Australian community as it was expressed 

at this specific period of Australia’s history.   



v 
 

Finally, I have evaluated this methodology itself to determine the degree to which these 

techniques are a valid means of translating to the wider sphere of general historical 

research.  Are footstepping and thick description effective processes for researching 

other previously inaccessible sources of historical evidence? 

 

  

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

 

A work of this magnitude has only been made possible through the invaluable 

assistance and support of many people. 

 

I would like to begin by thanking my supervisor; Professor Paul Pickering from the 

Australian National University’s College of Arts and Social Sciences, whose constant 

guidance and personal and academic support enabled me to complete this work.  

Professor Pickering’s own enthusiasm  and professional expertise not only provided a 

guide towards the formulation of the research themes and methodology into a form that 

would be acceptable as an academic project, but also greatly extended the development 

of my own competence as an historian. 

 

I am also indebted to Dr Maria-Suzette Maria Fernandez-Dias from the Centre for Cross 

Cultural Research at the ANU, who first approached me with the idea of undertaking 

post-graduate research in this field of Australian history.  My application was supported 

by Dr Linda Young from the Deakin University School of Humanities and Social 

Sciences, who as my initial post-graduate lecturer in Cultural Heritage Management at 

the University of Canberra had awakened an interest in the history and heritage of my 

own culture.  Other members of the ANU Research School of the Humanities and the 

Arts at the Australian National University who have assisted me include Dr Stephen 

Foster who provided initial feedback on my submission.  The staff of both the ANU 

Library and the Australian National Library provided continued support and the 

guidance necessary to access both primary and newspaper resources and secondary 

sources and commentary. 

 

Many people from my current place of employment, the Australian War Memorial, have 

also been most supportive of this work.  Ms Robyn van Dyk, head of the AWM 

Research Centre, generously provided the study leave necessary for me to undertake 



vi 
 

post-graduate research, while Ms Jennie Norberry and my colleagues from Information 

Services have not only supported my part time study over the last eight years, but have 

also offered enthusiastic encouragement to a staff member who, at times, no doubt 

appeared a little stressed.  In particular, I would also like to acknowledge Dr John 

Connor, current lecturer at ADFA and previous historian with the Australian War 

Memorial, who fostered an interest in the wider study of Australian political and 

cultural society at the time of Federation. 

 

Finally, none of this work would have been possible without the constant and 

enthusiastic support of my wife and photographer Patricia Casnave.  As well as offering 

her professional services as a heritage and geographical photographer, Patricia’s 

ongoing support for the wider social concept of the thesis, and her encouragement with 

the everyday practicalities of living with a part-time academic researcher, have been 

instrumental in my work reaching fruition.  I happily dedicate this thesis to her. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



vii 
 

PREAMBLE 

 

The genesis for this thesis can be dated to February 1959 when a young seven year old 

boy enrolled in 2
nd

 class at Camdenville Public School in the inner Sydney suburb of 

Newtown.  The boy’s parents had come from a culturally aware background with a 

politically active inner-city industrial heritage, but had absorbed the post Second World 

War ideal of the outer urban idyll and the quarter acre block.  They survived for a 

decade in the bliss of Menzian suburbia but eventually missed the social and political 

stimulation of the inner city.  And so at the end of the 1950s they moved back.   

 

However, the inner-west of Sydney to which they returned was evolving into an 

environment that was quite different from the one that had existed prior to the war.  

Newtown, Marrickville and their surrounds had always been multifaceted communities, 

with Irish, Chinese, Western European and North American minorities;
1
 however, the 

post-war migration boom was now changing the district to a far greater degree, and in a 

far shorter period of time.  Baltic and Dutch northern Europeans escaping the legacy of 

the Second World War, Greek and Yugoslavian southern Europeans fleeing the poverty 

and political upheaval in their own lands, and Maltese using assisted migration to 

escape unemployment through the British withdrawal from the large naval base on their 

island, were all making their homes in Sydney’s inner west. 

 

Both these newly arrived migrants and the original Anglo Celtic Australians were 

suddenly forced to come to terms with vast changes in culture, often without the 

advantages of a common language, common religious affiliation or common patterns of 

social and familial support.
2
  They were also accommodating to these changes with a 

conspicuous lack of interest from those sections of society which would later become 

                                                           
1
 Richard Cashman and Chrys Meader: Marrickville: Rural Outpost to Inner City, 1997, Hale & 

Iremonger, Sydney, chapt. 3.  Note the concept of the four main waves of migration into the district, 

beginning with the original English gentry (who supplied the suburb and road names), followed by 

Methodist and Non-conformist engineers and trades folk peppered with Chinese, German, Jewish and 

North American minorities up to the First World War. Between the wars, the third wave consisted largely 

of Irish railway and factory workers moving “out” from Surry Hills, the Haymarket and the old Wexford 

Street area.  The fourth wave following the Second World War was part of the massive post-war 

migration boom that affected most working class districts in Australia, with Newtown and Marrickville 

becoming strongly Greek, Yugoslav, Maltese, and later Indo-Chinese, Middle Eastern and even 

Portuguese. 
2
 The Sydney Morning Herald: 22 March 1951, p. 2. The complexity of the situation for those living close 

to the issue.  Note the letter to the editor of from the Rev S W McKibbin, from Newtown, criticising 

Italian migrants and supporting German settlers, who had restrictions placed upon them after the war. 



viii 
 

the most vocal in their newly found patronage for the concept of multiculturalism.
3
  

Schools in the area, too, were thus becoming multicultural well before the term gained 

common currency.
4
  As that young boy, I became aware through the broadsheet press 

and the broadcast media that my experiences and the experiences of those in my class 

were far removed from those being aired across the wider Australian community.
5
 

 

Attitudes conveyed in the press toward Greek, Maltese and Yugoslavian migrants, and 

their Australian hosts, were rarely positive.  Families that I saw struggling to eventually 

adapt successfully to a quite different way of life were pilloried as being less than 

civilised and intrinsically ignorant by those with a quite dissimilar societal heritage.  In 

fact, both sides within the local district, the newly arrived non-English speaking 

Europeans and the original Anglo Celtic working class were too often presented as 

problematic; unsuccessfully adapting and being unwilling to accept the other.  However, 

it struck me that those of British and Irish heritage who actually resided in the district 

tended to be far more tolerant in their day to day interactions with the newcomers than 

pundits who lived far away in both distance and culture.
6
  The only times media and 

press reporters were seen in the area were during the relatively rare instances of strife.
7
  

And most of the tension that did occur had less to do with racial and cultural conflict 

than with the issues of poverty and lack of opportunity that were common to all.
8
  For 

                                                           
3
 The Canberra Times: 10 April 1987, p. 10.  Multiculturalism no ‘fad’.  “People should not be misled 

into perceiving multiculturalism as the latest sociological fad or as simply a ‘warm inner glow; or middle 

class self-indulgence,’ the Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, Mr Young, said yesterday.” 
4
 Andrew Jakubowicz: Racism, Multiculturalism and the Immigration Debate, 1985, The Institute of Race 

Relations, London online. “By the early 1970s, ‘multiculturalism’ was entering common discourse within 

the fields of immigration and ethnic affairs.” Quoting Al Grassby’s 1973 paper A Multi-Cultural Society 

for the Future.  Many inner-city working class people may well have argued that they had already been 

living in a multicultural society for a quarter of a century. 
5
 Rockhampton Morning Bulletin: 12 August 1953, p. 1. Note the Minister for Migration, Mr Holt 

claiming in 1953 that “in the last five or six years, 3,000 migrant children of school age had settled in 

Australia, and he believed that these presented a real problem to the State educational authorities.” 3,000 

pupils would have been the sum complement of 10 Primary Schools, or 4 Secondary Schools, Australia 

wide.  The Argus: 25 July 1956, p. 4. “Let’s Stick to the Job.  Today in Australia, we hold the key to the 

door of future expansion. That key is our immigration program.”  By 1957 both Harold Holt and The 

Argus recognised the significance and necessity of migration, although still no mention is made of the 

source of these migrants. 
6
 Richard Cashman and Chrys Meader: Marrickville: Rural Outpost to Inner City, pp. 74-76.  Note the 

later example where the local Marrickville RSL club sponsored the 1987 and 1988 Vietnamese Moon 

Festival Celebrations. 
7
 The Sydney Morning Herald: 12 November 1988, p. 76. “The latter paper [The Glebe] quoted a police 

source suggesting that some Cabramatta and Bankstown hoodlum gangs’ activities are directed from 

Marrickville.”  Although two decades later, and this time relating to Vietnamese migrants, the issues, 

even in a minority, were always real enough. 
8
 William Dick: A Bunch of Ratbags, 1965, Penguin Books, Melbourne, chapt. 10.  Although a work of 

exaggerated fiction, William Dick’s book, describing a Bodgie upbringing in the equivalent suburb of 

Footscray in Melbourne, presents an attitude to migrants quite at variance to the one I experienced in 



ix 
 

those other times when life went on as normal and old and new Australians were slowly 

but inextricably becoming bound together in the creation of a fresh and unique society, 

commentators were most conspicuous by their absence.
9
 

 

Since the early 1980s, partly as a result of world-wide trends, and partly as a result of 

conscious government policy, Australia has entered a post-industrial age where most of 

the occupations that provided newly arrived migrants with entry into the work-force, 

and therefore the wider society, have been exported overseas.
10

  At the same time, 

migrant matters were becoming promoted more widely through the media.
11

 

Consequently, complex social issues often became politically polarised and degraded 

into excuses for superficial point scoring by people who, in the main, still had little 

contact with migrant communities.
12

  

 

Part of my intention in this thesis was to discover whether social and cultural attitudes 

toward non-British migrants at the time of Federation were similar to those experienced 

through the rest of the twentieth century.  These attitudes can perhaps be summed up by 

the observation that the discourse on migration principles and the development of 

governmental policy on immigration, assimilation and multiculturalism has generally 

taken place at one level of society.  However, the implementation of these policies has 

habitually been left to members of a wider population who actually reside alongside and 

within migrant communities. 

 

                                                                                                                                                                          
Newtown and Marrickville.  Perhaps I was insulated, but I saw very little of this anti-migrant violence 

described by Dick as common in the 1950s. 
9
 The Sydney Morning Herald: 7 November 1987.  Journalist John Stapleton was one later exception, who 

found that in Marrickville “Greeks, Italians, Portuguese, Yugoslavs, Indonesians and Anglo-Celtic 

Australians live side by side and, from the evidence yesterday, very harmoniously.” 
10

 Mark Hearne and Greg Patmore: Working the Nation, 2001, Pluto Press, Sydney, p. 34.  “The 

[Commonwealth Clothing] Factory has since gone, the work sent off-shore where cheaper labour 

produces lower quality garments for the modern military.” 
11

 To see how attitudes change over the course of two decades, note the article in the Australian Women’s 

Weekly of 15 November 1978, p. 6, where considerable sympathy is afforded to migrant children 

attempting to cope in Australian Schools: “Blaming the migrant child rather than the system is seen to be 

unfair and unrealistic.” 
12

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 19 February 2003 online. Muslims the new bogeymen of racist Australia. 

“Dr Dunn [Professor Kevin Dunn, Dean of the School of Social Science and Psychology at the University 

of Western Sydney] writes that Australia has a ‘hard core of racists’ and that some of the country's worst 

racism is found in working-class pockets of Sydney.”  Dr Dunn’s findings:  Fifty-four per cent of those 

surveyed would be concerned if their relative married a Muslim. About seven per cent are opposed to 

cultural diversity. However, eighty-three per cent said there was a problem with racism in Australia. (In 

other words, the problem is with other people, never the respondents.) Forty-five per cent said some 

cultural groups did not belong in Australia and about twelve per cent admitted to being prejudiced. In 

other words, eighty to ninety per cent of working class people support Multiculturalism and are against 

prejudice, although around half have serious issues with one particular cultural group.  



x 
 

Australian society at the beginning of the last century has often been portrayed as racist 

and xenophobic;
13

 with the introduction of the White Australia Policy and Immigration 

Restriction Act
14

 proof that our nation’s founding fathers and mothers were bigoted 

individuals.
15

  However, I will consider whether, while this may appear to be the case 

from the point of view of modern twenty first century cosmopolitan Australia, the 

citizens who supported these policies were reacting to a unique set of circumstances in 

the best way that they knew at the time.
 
 Modern multicultural Australia did not 

materialise in the decades following the Second World War without any connection to 

the past.  I believe that there was a foundation of acceptance which was varying, 

inconsistent and constantly questioned.
16

  Anti-Chinese
17

 and anti-German riots had 

occurred and anti-Chinese and non-white legislation implemented; but they could only 

do so in a society that had allowed Chinese miners, German settlers and Greek and 

Maltese workers to be admitted in the first place.
18

   

 

What were attitudes of ordinary Australians at the turn of the century?  I know from my 

own memory and experience that distinctions existed during the 1950s and 1960s 

between what was covered in the media and what was occurring in everyday life.  Is it 

possible to investigate and evaluate alternative attitudes toward membership of 

Australian society at the time of Federation through alternative sources of evidence? 

 

                                                           
13

 Ann Curthoys and Andrew Markus: Who are our Enemies? 1978, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, p. 22. 

“Employers benefited directly from white worker antagonism to Chinese workers, as a cheap labour 

supply could only remain cheap if organisationally distinct from the rest of the labour force.” 
14

 Commonwealth of Australia: Immigration Restriction Act 1901. An Act to place certain restrictions on 

Immigration and to provide for the removal from the Commonwealth of prohibited immigrants. 
15

 James Jupp: Immigration, 1991, Oxford University Press, Sydney, pp. 45-47. 
16

 Mark Hearne and Greg Patmore: Working the Nation, 2001, Pluto Press, Sydney, p. 7.  Writing on the 

Centenary of Federation, the editors note that Humphrey McQueen, as a representative of the New Left 

“could find little good to say about the Australian Settlement, the Old Left or the labour movement 

generally” at the time of Federation. 
17

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 4 May 1888, p. 8. The Chinese Difficulty, referring to the departure of the 

ship Afghan for Sydney carrying unwanted Chinese immigrants, arriving on this day.  South Australian 

Register: 6 August 1888, p. 5, where this earlier event in Sydney was described as a riot.  The Sydney 

Morning Herald: 6 June 1888, p. 5.  Letter to the editor indicating that support for the “inconsiderable 

number of inoffensive Chinamen” was also strong at the time. 
18

 Gerhard Fischer: Enemy Aliens, 1989, University of Queensland Press, pp. 127-128 et passim.  Note the 

understandable but still virulent degree to which Australian attitudes towards German migrants turned 

with the outbreak of the First World War, and notably after the 1916 carnage on the Western Front. 



1 

 

INTRODUCTION 

 

In this thesis, I intend to gain insight into the kind of society that was being created in 

Australia at the start of the twentieth century; the beginning of modern Australia.  By 

adopting an empirical approach,
1
 I will be asking, what can we learn about the 

Australian society that existed a century ago?  What was considered necessary for 

membership of the Australian community as it developed from isolated colonies into a 

modern nation state? 

 

Attitudes of course change over time and are invariably fluid.  It is often not possible to 

view these in the same graduated manner; rather, we usually take specific times and 

compare with earlier or later periods, recognising that changes that have taken place 

over the interim can either occur evenly throughout that time, or suddenly, as the result 

of particular all-encompassing experiences.
2
  If one wished to determine such attitudes 

within the Australian context, and how they may have changed over time, the one 

significant point of reference would have to be the Federation of the nation in 1901.  

Not only was this virtually the half-way point between the beginning of European 

settlement on the continent, and our current era, but it was the formal and conscious 

creation of the nation in political terms.  Consequently, the event would have provided 

strong motivation for conscious reflection in social terms of what ideals the new nation 

should embody.   

 

The Federation of Australia was marked by a wide variety of formal and informal 

events throughout the first half of the year.  On Tuesday 1January 1901 a celebratory 

march passed through the streets of Sydney on its way out to Centennial Park, where the 

new nation was formally proclaimed.  Other marches and parades occurred in the other 

capital cities of the colonies, now states; however this was not only the largest event, 

but also the one culminating with this most significant ceremony.  Later in the same 

year, on Monday 6
 
May 1901, a week of celebrations for the establishment of the new 

Federal Parliament commenced with a similar parade through the streets of Melbourne.  

                                                           
1
 Ted Honderich: The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, 1995, Oxford University Press, Oxford, United 

Kingdom, p. 229. “Also, one should distinguish between empiricism as a psychological doctrine of how 

the mind acquires the contents it has, and empiricism as a doctrine of justification, about how we can 

justify our various claims to knowledge.”  In many respects, my work will utilise both concepts. 
2
 Raymond Aron: Introduction to the Philosophy of History, 1961, George Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd, 

London, p. 21. Aron embodies the Annales view that while accidents and incidents can occur and result in 

effects, long term trends still prevail. 



2 

 

Again, this momentous event was commemorated throughout the nation; however only 

in Melbourne would the festivities include the formal opening of the new parliament as 

the political manifestation of Federation. 

 

These were the two principal and largest parades that occurred at the time, and 

consequently would have embodied many of the conscious and unconscious ideals of 

the new society.  One way of analysing these ideals would be to adopt the role of a 

geographical historian, examine the routes of these two principal Federation processions 

and extrapolate back in time to analyse attitudes towards perceived membership of this 

new Australian society. 

 

It was at a meeting of the British Economic History Society in the 1930s, that the 

economic historian and Christian socialist Richard Henry Tawney rose and uttered the 

reverberating words: “What historians need is not more documents, but stronger 

boots”.
3
  Tawney was apparently not disparaging of the role of documents in 

themselves, but rather pointing out that social awareness of the material and physical 

world is “the door to historical understanding… [History] is the study not of a series of 

past events, but of the life of societies, and of the records of the past as means to that 

end”.
4
  Tawney’s response to the physical world of experience could be best summed up 

by his expectation of the role of the geographical historian:  “A student who is more 

interested in wild life than in museum specimens must be prepared to annoy 

gamekeepers by following it across country.”
5
 

 

While not expecting to annoy either gamekeepers or city policemen, I have adapted this 

role of the geographical historian through the biographer Richard Holmes’ process of 

footstepping.  By walking the routes of the two parades, as the roads, lanes and streets 

still exist today and utilising the literary resources of the time; in this case primarily the 

daily newspapers as records of the day, I intended to use these past events as a window 

into the society of the time. 

 

                                                           
3
 Ross Terrill: R H Tawney and His Times, 1973, Harvard University Press, Massachusetts, p. 7.  

W Keith Hancock: Country and Calling, 1954, Faber and Faber, London, p. 95. 
4
 Ross Terrill: R H Tawney and His Times, p. 7. 

5
 J M Winter: History and Society: Essays by R H Tawney, 1978, Routledge & Keegan Paul, London, p. 

48. 



3 

 

The source of this methodological framework developed from Holmes’ 1985 book: 

Footsteps, Adventures of a Romantic Biographer.
6
  It is in this work that Holmes 

recounts the elaboration of his study of Literary Romanticism through his following the 

modern traces of the diaries of Robert Louis Stevenson through Central France and 

Mary Wollstonecraft in Revolutionary Paris, the travels of the Romantic poet Percy 

Bysshe Shelley and his entourage through Italy between 1818 and 1822, and the final 

days of the French poet Gerard de Nerval’s tortured Parisian existence. 

 

These studies were prompted partly by developments in Holmes’ own professional life 

and partly though his interaction with momentous events in the wider world.  His 1964 

expedition through the high country of central France guided by Stevenson’s 1878 

journal Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes was largely a quest for the conscious 

development of his own career as a writer and biographer.
7
   Part two, dealing with 

Mary Wollstonecraft and the French Revolution on the other hand, was initiated as 

much by the external circumstances of the 1968 youth revolutions around the world, 

again particularly in Paris.
8
  In each instance, Holmes’ method involved adapting 

journals and diaries of personal events by following, or footstepping, the original routes 

taken by the writers in the hope of gleaning further insight into their source of 

inspiration.  His intention was to experience the particular occasion in the original 

writers’ own development through a clearer understanding of not only the singular 

works concerned, but the wider development of their careers through both his and their 

interactions with the physical environment.
9
   

 

This process is nothing new in itself, even for studying the “wild life” of humanity.  

Visiting historical sites and following the paths taken by historical figures has a long 

and proud tradition, and has formed the basis of the travelogue down through the 

centuries; from William Gilpin’s Observations on the River Wye and several parts of 

                                                           
6
 Richard Holmes: Footsteps, Adventures of a Romantic Biographer, 2005, Harper Perennial,  

London. 
7
 Richard Holmes: Footsteps, Adventures of a Romantic Biographer, p. 27.  “It was important for me, 

because it was probably the first time that I caught an inkling of what a process (indeed an entire 

vocation) called ‘biography’ really means.” 
8
 Richard Holmes: Footsteps, Adventures of a Romantic Biographer, p. 73. “One sultry evening in the 

spring of 1968, standing at the window of a small upper room in Paddington, I first heard the sound of the 

new French Revolution.”  The impetus was a letter that Holmes received from a girl in Paris describing 

the revolutionary discord in the French capital, and its contrast with the more mundane dreariness of 1968 

London. 
9
 Richard Holmes: Footsteps, Adventures of a Romantic Biographer, p. 73. “I had not been to France for 

four years, and the idea of biography had lain dormant in my mind.” 



4 

 

South Wales
10

 to Jonathan Raban’s Arabia through the Looking Glass.
11

  In recent 

times, historians and writers as wide ranging as Michael Wood
12

 and Edmund White 

have embraced the technique of stepping through historical sites and locations, either to 

give a physical immediacy to their research or as a stimulus to their descriptions.
13

  Paul 

Pickering used this same process for the introduction to his study of Chartism in 

Manchester in the nineteenth century.  “Our Point of entry into the townscape is to join 

a group of Manchester Chartists as they marched the streets of their city in protest.”  

Pickering then lists sites that he passed retracing the 1839 march: “Oldham Road and 

Great Ancoats Street, in Ancoats.  From this grand rendezvous they marched in 

procession down Swan Street and Shudehill…They had marched through what Robert 

Cooper called the old immoral world.”
 14

  Michael Wood’s In Search of the Trojan War 

includes the added dimension of being not just the description of his own researching 

the site for the veracity of Homer’s story, but also the history of the other earlier 

searches for the city.  In this case, footstepping was used to uncover the reality of an 

already well-known myth and then overlay the author’s own more recent discoveries. 

 

Where footstepping differs from mere travelogue is less in the process, and more in the 

intended purpose and outcome of this process.  There is more than entertainment and 

instruction involved.  As well as engaging and influencing the reader, the process of 

footstepping is intended to transform the writer’s own work.  It is a means of self-

discovery and development before then becoming one of enlightenment for others.  I 

therefore adopted the footstepping technique as a means of reworking this method of 

personal recording into a social analysis of a wider community, augmented by the press 

of the day and later historical commentary.  Also, by adapting these same approaches to 

historiography and the investigation of the modern myths of a modern community 

rather than the mythic past, I intend to not only uncover specific attitudes towards 

                                                           
10

 William Gilpin: Observations on the River Wye and several parts of South Wales 1770.  Originally 

published in 1782, it is interesting that the journey down a river in the “wilds” of western Britain to 

uncover the untold and exotic occurred in the same year that James Cook uncovered the unexplored east 

coast of Australia. 
11

 Jonathan Raban: Arabia through the Looking Glass, 1979, Fontana Books, Glasgow. 
12

 Michael Wood: In Search of the Trojan War, 1985, BBC Books, London.  Michael Wood: In Search of 

Shakespeare, 2005, BBC Books, London.  The methodology is especially effective where the historical 

presentation is designed for the very visual modern medium of television. 
13

 Edmund White: The Flâneur, 2001, Bloomsbury Publishing, London, p. 16.  “And no wonder Paris, 

land of novelty and distraction, is the great city of the flâneur – that aimless stroller who loses himself in 

the crowd, who has no destination and goes wherever caprice or curiosity directs his or her steps.”  
14

 Paul Pickering: Chartism and the Chartists in Manchester and Salford, 1995, Macmillan Press, 

London, p 10. 



5 

 

Australian society at the time of Federation, but also evaluate the general footstepping 

process to determine whether it is feasible for other wider studies. 

 

My purpose in analysing the both Federation marches is therefore twofold.  Initially, I 

intended to determine how people at the time thought of the emerging Australian 

identity, and whether those without an Anglo Saxon or Anglo Celtic cultural and racial 

heritage could, or should, participate in the new nation that was being created.   I would 

analyse the evidence and draw conclusions from what I uncover while physically 

retracing the routes of the marches.  My second purpose was to evaluate the process 

itself, and determine whether it is viable to attempt to rely upon this non-document 

based technique of footstepping to uncover such attitudes, particularly for a community 

rather than for the individuals to which it has generally been applied in the past.    

 

While I decided to analyse these two processions by pulling on Richard Tawney’s thick 

pair of boots
15

 and tramping the routes, I was also aware of the restrictions inherent 

within a process primarily reliant upon such footstepping.  Richard Holmes himself 

acknowledged the limitations as he retraced the footsteps of Stevenson through the 

Cevennes:  “Even in imagination, the gap was there.  It had to be recognised; it was no 

good pretending.  You could not play-act into the past; you could not turn it into a game 

of make-believe.….Somehow you had to produce the living effect, while remaining true 

to the dead fact.”
16

  However, on the same page, he also pointed out what could be 

construed as one great advantage of adopting such an approach:  “You would never 

catch them [the biographer’s subject]; no, you would never quite catch them.  But 

maybe, if you were lucky, you might write about the pursuit of that fleeting figure in 

such a way as to bring it alive in the present.”
17

 

 

I did not expect to quite catch all the individual people who participated in these 

momentous events a century ago; each one would themselves be worthy of a full 

biography.  However, by pursuing the fleeting figures as a group preparing for, and 

enacting, their parts through the streets of the two major cities of the nation, I intended 

to bring alive the society of the time, and the federated community’s ideals and 

expectations.  Unlike Holmes’ subjects though, my citizens would not be revealed 

                                                           
15

 Ross Terrill: R H Tawney and His Times, p. 7. 
16

 Richard Holmes: Footsteps, Adventures of a Romantic Biographer, p. 27. 
17

 Richard Holmes: Footsteps, Adventures of a Romantic Biographer, p. 27.     



6 

 

languidly over the space of days and weeks.  Both marches took only an hour and a half 

to pass,
18

 so I have had to approach these two Federation parades as most significant but 

also brief instances of the conscious and subconscious creation of a national identity.  

The marches were also obvious public spectacles reliant upon the conscious erection of 

arches and decorations, the conscious planning of the routes, and most significantly, the 

conscious and unconscious assembly and reactions of the participants.   

 

Where the footstepping approach varies from other forms of historical research is in the 

immediacy and the acknowledged individual nature of the activity.  Holmes did not just 

visit the districts that his subjects such as Robert Louis Stevenson and Mary 

Wollstonecraft journeyed through in France; rather he consciously and as accurately as 

possible, placed his feet in the same pathways as his subjects.  While following a 

written diary or description, he was looking for something more that really could only 

be offered by the immediacy of the location itself. 

 

The benefit of this approach bore fruit when Holmes attempted to retrace Mary 

Wollstonecraft’s diary entry revealing her view of King Louis XVI en route to his 

execution at the Tuileries on 26 December 1793.  “About 9:00 o’clock in the morning”, 

she wrote, “the King passed by my window, moving silently along (except now and 

then a few strokes on the drum, which rendered the stillness more awful).”
19

  The 

problem for Holmes was that Mary’s residential address was given as No 22 rue 

Meslay, a street not on the route but one block behind the parade as it passed westward 

down the boulevard Saint-Martin.
20

   The quandary was solved when Holmes actually 

visited the site and realised that Mary Wollstonecraft’s room was at the back of the 

house, with “an unobstructed view clear across the rooftops to the north, commanding 

the whole panorama of the boulevard beyond them, from the now place de la 

République to what then, and still is, the archway of the port Saint-Martin”.
21

  Such an 

immediate and close view of the ultimate aftermath of the French Revolution would no 

doubt have contributed to a change of heart on the part of the previously enthusiastic 

supporter of radicalism. “Mary’s apparent disillusion with the course of the Revolution 

was now taking, together with the increasing personal restrictions applied to ‘aliens’, 

                                                           
18

 Although my actual retracing and analysis of their routes would take a little longer, and even then, this 

passage of time, including the waiting beforehand was no doubt onerous enough for the participants and 

the spectators of the day.   
19

 Richard Holmes: Footsteps, Adventures of a Romantic Biographer, p. 100. 
20

 GeoCentre: Euro-Road Atlas of France, R V Verlag, Germany, Paris map 222. 
21

 Richard Holmes: Footsteps, Adventures of a Romantic Biographer, p. 99. 



7 

 

suggest that this was the sensible moment to go home.”  Even after this experience, 

though, the young militant was loath to leave. “But once again [having been offered a 

seat on a coach out of the city], she decided to stay.”
22

 

 

If history is the biography of a nation,
23

 then my study will more accurately attempt to 

script the biography of a population: an account of the two cities as communities and 

the biography of representatives of these communities.  Since such biography is also 

generally reliant upon the traditional sources of historical research, it will be important 

to see the degree to which my footstepping process can complement this.  What 

geography and biography do provide is the drama of the concrete and the immediate.  

Holmes’ historical account of the execution of Louis XVI is magnified though the 

biographical detail of Mary Wollstonecraft’s own experience, and the geographical 

referencing of this experience.  Even the Realist literature fashionable at the time of 

Federation provides a geographical link with this sense of place. Novels from the late 

nineteenth century to the post war twentieth century have often been consciously 

created through their geography.
24

   So, my footstepping is not so much a new 

methodology, rather more a new way of utilising and thinking about a traditional 

historical and even literary technique.   

 

The notion of uncovering a mythic landscape that exists beyond the formal written word 

has also been considered by the philosopher and German Romantic, Walter Benjamin.  

In his seminal 1927-1940 work The Arcades Project,
25

 Benjamin mentioned writers 

who again placed their reliance upon the non-literary and the geographical.  Hugo von 

Hofmannsthal, the Austrian literary giant of the late nineteenth century sought “to read 

what was never written,” and further claimed that:  “Historical method is philological 

method, a method that has as its foundation the book of life…the landscape built of 

sheer life.”
26

  Benjamin’s most succinct quote, and one that I feel forms a subliminal 

                                                           
22

 Richard Holmes: Footsteps, Adventures of a Romantic Biographer, p. 104. 
23

 Alun Munslow: The New History, 2003, Pearson Education Limited, Harlow, p. 143. 
24

 Ronald Hingley: Dostoyevsky, his life and work, 1978, Paul Elek Ltd, London, p. 166 et passim. 

Geir Kjetsaa: Dostoyevsky, 1987, Viking Penguin, London, p. 304.  The inner city of St Petersburg in 

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and the fictitious town of Skotoprigonyevsk (based on 

Staraya Russa, where the Dostoyevsky family holidayed) in The Brothers Karamazov, became as 

significant to the action of the novels as the human characters.  Albert Camus: The Fall, 1957, Penguin 

Books, Harmondsworth, p. 12.  “Holland is a dream, Monsieur, a dream of gold and smoke – smokier by 

day, more gilded by night.” Albert Camus’ foggy and watery Amsterdam is not only the location, but 

virtually a principal character in The Fall. 
25

 Walter Benjamin: The Arcades Project, 1999, Harvard University Press, Massachusetts, chapt. M, The 

Flâneur. 
26

 Walter Benjamin: The Arcades Project, p. 417. 



8 

 

guide to my own work declared: “And I travel in order to get to know my geography”.
27

 

Benjamin continued his investigation of what we would call footstepping through the 

writer Marcel Proust’s search for locations which, “appeared to be concealing, beneath 

what my eyes could see, something which they invited me to approach and take from 

them, but which, despite all my efforts, I never managed to discover.”
28

 

 

Although again taken from the literary world, Proust exemplified the footstepping ideal 

of drawing all that could be gleaned from the minutiae of physical experience.   As the 

author and critic C P Snow remarked: “he was the only great writer who could make the 

railway journey from Paris to Normandy sound as much of an adventure as the Charge 

of the Light Brigade.”
29

  Richard Holmes himself gives further insight into an earlier, 

“surprisingly athletic Proust who used to ‘refresh his hay fever’ with little daily 

expeditions through the Monceau, complete with gold-topped cane and lemonade-

coloured chamois leather gloves.”
30

  Interestingly, la Moncea is the park off the 

boulevard de Courcelles, a kilometre or so from La Gare St Lazare, from where the 

infamous train trip north must have commenced, and at the other end of the (then yet to 

be opened up)  boulevard Haussmann from where Mary Wollstonecraft had viewed the 

passing king a century earlier.
31

  

 

 

NATION AND MYTH  

 

All nations and national identities are created through myths.  According to Roland 

Barthes, such myths can exist consciously or subconsciously in the minds of the 

citizens, within the imagination of one section of the community or within the collective 

psyche of the nation.
32

  Myths can be representative of national characteristics and traits 

that appear obvious to all, but they can also be myths in the negative sense of the term; 

                                                           
27

 Walter Benjamin: The Arcades Project, p. 416. Schaub: Philosophy today, essays on recent 

developments in the field of philosophy 1968, p. 218. Quoted from Réja: L’Art chez les fous 1907, p. 131. 

This work apparently quotes the inmate of an insane asylum who obviously did very little travelling at all. 
28

 Proust: Du Côté de chez Swann (Swann’s Way), 1939 Gallimard Press, Paris, vol. 1, p. 256. 
29

 C P Snow: The Realists – Portraits of Eight Novelists, 1978, Macmillan Press, p. 227. 
30

 Richard Holmes: Sidetracks, Explorations of a Romantic Biographer, 2005, Harper Perennial, London, 

pp. 340-341. 
31

 GeoCentre: Euro-Road Atlas of France, R V Verlag, Germany, Paris maps 221, 222. 
32

 Roland Barthes: Vintage Barthes: Mythologies, 2009, Vintage Books, London, p. 164. “A long- 

continued use of the term nation has failed to depoliticize it in depth; the political substratum is there very 

near the surface, and some circumstances make it suddenly manifest.” 



9 

 

creations that bear little resemblance to reality.
33

  Myths, as symbolic rather than strictly 

factual concepts, are often quite incongruous.   Nations newly settled by Europeans 

seeking to escape the social and economic restrictions of the old world often embody 

contradictory ideals of personal freedom, and the conformity necessary to create a new 

unified society.
34

   

 

Australia, as with other developed cultures, appears to embody myths that are genuinely 

reflective of the national experience, myths that are idealised notions which may bear 

little resemblance to reality, and myths that also appear intrinsically self-contradictory.  

On the one hand, our national mythology embodies the ideal of the bushman, the Man 

from Snowy River, the hard bitten self-reliant worker in the wilderness; yet from the 

time of the gold rushes, through the late nineteenth century to Federation, Australia has 

been one of the most urbanised nations on earth.
35

  As Helen Irving asserts; 

“Statistically, the image of Australia as rural, and the typical Australian as the outback 

rider or bushman, was far from the truth.  But Australians then (as now) were engaged 

in a romance with the bush.”
36

  However, “a romance is never truthful; the feelings it 

expresses are always out of proportion to the qualities of its object.”
37

 

 

Even C E W Bean, the man who did more than anyone to create the bushman digger 

myth out of the First World War Gallipoli campaign, had to acknowledge that fewer 

than one quarter of Australia’s military forces in the war actually came from country 

                                                           
33

 Roland Barthes: Vintage Barthes: Mythologies, p. 169. Allowing for Barthes dogmatism: “The function 

of myth is to empty reality.”  Perhaps myths can empty reality, just as they can embody reality. 
34

 Benedict Anderson: Imagined Communities, 2006, Verso Press, London, pp. 194-195.  “Hence, for the 

members of what of what me might call ‘second generation’ nationalist movements, those which 

developed in Europe between about 1815 to 1850, and also for the generation that inherited the 

independent national states of the Americas, it was no longer possible to ‘recapture the first careless 

rapture’ of their revolutionary predecessors.” 
35

 Australian Bureau of Statistics: Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia 1901-1907, No.1, 

1908, Commonwealth of Australia, McCarron, Bird & Co, Melbourne, p. 158.  J A Lyne: Greater 

Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 1967, London. Note the map on p. 18. showing that 

Melbourne’s population as a percentage of that of Victoria had grown from 26% in 1861, to around 40% 

at Federation, to 60% at the time of the great post Second World War migration boom.  James Hagan: 

Europe and the World since 1815, Longman Cheshire, 1967, Melbourne.  Note p. 17, and the figures for 

European nations from 1800 to 1870.  Britain was comparable, with urbanisation in all urban areas, not 

just the capital city, rising from 21% to 50%.  Other European nations such as Prussia, France and Russia 

had only reached 20% or less. 
36

 Helen Irving: To Constitute a Nation – a Cultural History of Australia’s Constitution, 1997, University 

of Cambridge Press, Cambridge, p. 14.  T A Coghlan: The Seven Colonies of Australasia – a statistical 

account, 1902, Commonwealth Statistician’s Office, Sydney, p. 543.  Again, Sydney’s population as a 

percentage of that of NSW rose from 27.34% in 1871 to 35.90 in 1901, while that of Melbourne rose 

from 28.27% in 1871 to 41.13% in 1901. 
37

 Kevin T Livingston, Richard Jordan, Gay Sweely: Becoming Australians - The movement towards 

Federation in Ballarat and the Nation, 2001, Wakefield Press, Kent Town, South Australia, p. 12. 



10 

 

regions, and that in fact, almost as great a number had been born overseas in Britain 

prior to enlistment.
38

  “But in Australia this condition [the superiority of men from 

country districts]”, he continued, “had become much less marked in the last generation, 

and the percentage of Australian soldiers who had acquired their powers of 

determination, endurance and improvisation from country occupations was probably not 

much more than a quarter.”
39

 

 

To what degree did Australia’s myths centring on migration and European settlement 

also reflect a sense of national reality, either at the time, or with the advantage of 

hindsight?  Rather than being the myths of a quite different and unique people, did 

Australia’s ideals reflect the aspirations of ordinary settlers from Britain (and other 

European and Asian countries), who found themselves dealing with circumstances that 

were indeed new and often unique?  As a result, what attitudes developed and changed 

with these changing circumstances and to what the degree did national myths reflect this 

reality?  According to James Jupp, Australians today tend to pride themselves on living 

in a tolerant society.
40

  Did Australians always wish to think of themselves as being 

tolerant; and how would they have evaluated this tolerance?   

 

Certainly, political leaders at Federation were at pains to emphasise the British heritage 

of Australia, and to this extent, tolerance was perceived to be a part of this legacy, along 

with the Westminster system of government, world naval and military authority and 

industrial and technical leadership.
41

  Ironically, racism, or at least racial superiority, 

                                                           
38

 C E W Bean: Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918, vol. 1, The Story of Anzac, 1941, 

Angus & Robertson, p. 46.  L L Robson: The Origin and Character of the First AIF, 1914-1918, 1973, 

Historical Studies, p. 745. Some Statistical Evidence. Note table 5 which also demonstrates that primary 

industry and mining occupations accounted for a little over one quarter of Australian recruits for the First 

World War, and that almost three quarters of recruits were industrial, commercial and labouring workers 

from cities and large country towns. 
39

 C E W Bean: Official History, vol.V1, The AIF in France during the Allied Offensive 1918, 1941, 

Angus & Robertson, p. 1079.  In reality I suspect that the figure would have been far less, depending 

upon one’s definition of a country or agricultural worker.  It could well be argued that country town 

blacksmiths, abattoir and railway workers, bank clerks and printers had far more in common with city 

industrial and office workers than with drovers and stockmen, although at the time, many men fulfilled 

more than one role to earn a living. 
40

 James Jupp: Immigration, p. 120. 
41

 The Mercury: 24 May 1927, p. 8. The British Heritage: Truth, Justice and Freedom. “Empire Day and 

its significance was the subject of a sermon preached at the Memorial Church on Sunday evening by the 

Rev. P. Binns. Having outlined 'the meaning and purpose of Empire Day, the preacher mentioned that it 

was owing to the persevering this efforts of Archdeacon Boyce, of Sydney, as a member of the British 

Empire League, that the movement was introduced in Australia.” 



11 

 

was also an integral part of this heritage.
42

  Henry Parkes’ famous comment; “The 

crimson thread of kinship runs through us all” attempted (probably very successfully) to 

lift the discussion at the 1890 Federation Conference in Melbourne above the more 

mundane but more controversial issue of internal tariffs and taxation, to one linking the 

blood of a united Australia with that of the motherland and Empire.
43

  South Australian 

Premier Thomas Playford, added, “Thus the crimson thread of kinship, as Sir Henry 

Parkes so aptly and poetically termed it, will prove not merely a thread, but will bind us 

closer than links of steel.”
44

  Were there thus contradictions in feelings towards the 

nation’s British heritage?  On the one hand, there was the proud expression of being a 

member of the most advanced culture in the world, but at the same time was there the 

fear of being an endangered outpost of this culture?
45

  

 

Australian society since the time of first European settlement has been an immigrant 

culture reliant upon migration as much as natural increase in order to enlarge its 

population.   Many periods in the history of the Australian nation have been marked by 

a questioning and a concern over the population and the people who were to comprise 

this increase.
46

  As John Gascoigne has noted, “such an organised migration scheme 

[The Wakefield Scheme]
47

 could ensure that appropriate migrants were chosen and that 

immigration was not simply an exercise, as Wakefield put it in A View of the Art of 

Colonisation (1849), in ‘shovelling out of paupers’.”
48

   The great post Second World 

War migration boom was also characterised as much by concerns over the kinds of 

people who were being invited into the country as to the actual numbers that were 

involved; and this concern has continued to the present day.
49

  

                                                           
42

 John Rickard: Australia – a cultural history, 1988, Longman Group, London, p. 117.  “In one sense 

racism itself was part of the British heritage, but there is no doubt that the advocacy of White Australia 

revealed a new and nasty stridency.”  Perhaps this was not so new, and not always so nasty. 
43

 Helen Irving: The Centenary Companion to Australian Federation, p. 364. 
44

 The Argus: 11 February 1890, p. 4. 
45

 Gavin Souter: Lion and Kangaroo – the initiation of Australia 1901-1919, 1976, William Collins, 

Sydney, Australia, p. 52. Such links of steel were more than metaphorical. “The death of the Mother 

Queen and the break in the shell-burred cable [that had cut communication to Britain on the 28 January 

1901] were very symbolic reminders, if such were needed, of how quickly the world could change and 

how far the bereft daughter was from her ancestral home.” 
46

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 16 September 1927, p. 10. “A statement by the Commonwealth 

Statistician shows that Australia’s population from 1881 to 1921 increased by 141.87 per cent compared 

with an increase of 102.31 per cent in Canada during the same period.”  Even in 1927 there was evident 

the perennial desire of Australians to compare themselves with other similar countries.   
47

 The Wakefield Scheme was a system of financing selected migrants through the sale of land. 
48

 John Gascoigne: The Enlightenment and the Origins of European Australia, 2002, Cambridge 

University Press, Melbourne, p. 62. 
49

 Australian National Development Index: Canadian Index of Wellbeing (CIW) and Measures of 

Australia’s Progress (MAP) databse, listing Society, Economy, Environment.  Whatever opinions or 



12 

 

 

Is it therefore possible to understand the social expectations and cultural pressures at the 

time of Federation, and also uncover the degree to which the newly created sense of 

nationhood was either a reflection of society in general or only of those groups accorded 

the responsibility of recording the event for posterity?  One of the significant 

characteristics of national myths is their reliance upon the available methods of 

expression and perpetuation.  To paraphrase Benedict Anderson’s well known 

construction; communities are imagined through processes of identification and limited 

by the boundaries of communication.
50

   

 

So, are the created myths perpetuated through the same communication pathways?  To 

what degree are our views of a cultural event from a century ago determined as much by 

the limitations of the written record as by the actual views expressed within this record?  

To what degree is conscious testimony limited by being from a limited source and is it 

possible therefore to add to the analysis of historical events by utilising other sources of 

material, other research resources and other methods for collating evidence?  And will 

this provide new insights, or simply re-iterate what has gone before?   One could argue 

that how this communication is managed can greatly influence the creation of an 

identity and the mythologies that guide this creation. 

 

I will be analysing the concept of national identity and the imagined Australian 

community as this was expressed at this specific period of Australia’s history.  This will 

imply both an imagined community and a real community that has not necessarily been 

represented through the traditional historical process.  Since my work will be seeking to 

investigate alternative and evolving historical processes, this will also include an 

analysis of the degree to which the role of history has changed over the period of 

European settlement in Australia and the degree to which this settlement has in turn 

been reflected by this changing function of history.  One could argue that the 

fluctuations between what might be termed a positivist and scientific methodology, and 

a more subjective social science approach to both accumulating evidence and writing 

results, have paralleled the political and social development of Australia itself.  This has 

resulted in the evolution of a philosophy of experience created as a means of accessing a 

                                                                                                                                                                          
ideas are raised by such think tanks, the over-riding notion appears to be that such concepts of national 

identity cannot be left to chance. 
50

 Benedict Anderson: Imagined Communities, pp. 5-6. 



13 

 

wider social science attitude to analysing history, and in particular, the process of 

widening the sources and evidence upon which historical analysis is based. 

 

If, as the historian E P Thompson states, “History is made up of episodes, and if we 

cannot get inside these, we cannot get inside history at all,”
51

  then part of the role of the 

historian would be to uncover new processes for accessing the episodes that have 

previously been available from more limited perspectives.  Thompson’s own work 

embodies a history that has overlaid new attitudes onto traditional written records.  His 

is reliant upon the written records and literature of the time, and his subsequent 

evaluation of working class culture is built around court and government reports and 

newspaper articles; in other words, what writers and recorders regarded as being 

significant.
52

  Are there, however, new attitudes that can be gleaned from a new 

approach to what actually constitutes historical records? 

 

In summary, I will be asking; whose social history is it, and how do we collect and 

collate the evidence that comprises this history?  Helen Irving expresses this sentiment 

in her own evaluation of Australian Federation and the development of the Australian 

Constitution.  “Although other external factors, particularly economic and technological 

ones, may in the last instance drive history forward; at each moment, nevertheless, the 

people who live through it are also trying to make history, if only in their imaginations.  

Australians cannot understand what they are trying to do now unless they understand 

what was imagined in the creation of the institutions they wish to reform.”
53

  The tenor 

of my overall aim can best be summed up by E P Thompson’s own well-known 

justification for his work, recorded in his seminal book, The Making of the English 

Working Class.  “I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger………from the enormous 

condescension of posterity…..But they lived through these times of acute social 

disturbance, and we did not.  Their aspirations were valid in terms of their own 

                                                           
51

 Edward Palmer Thompson: The Poverty of Theory, 1978, Merlin Press, London, p. 65. 
52

 Edward Palmer Thompson: The Making of the English Working Class, 1968, Pelican Books, London 

preface to the 1980 edition, p. 8. 
53

 Helen Irving: To Constitute a Nation –a Cultural History of Australia’s Constitution  p. (x).  Irving 

then goes to make a personal rationale of her own: “This is one ‘naïve’ historian’s attempt to contribute to 

that understanding.”  Of course, one could argue that there is also the risk of a teleological fallacy within 

this argument.  The people who are living through an experience are probably not conscious of trying to 

make history, although in rare instances such the 9/11 attacks on the United States, they are aware of 

witnessing history as it is being made. However, this does not preclude the fact that people are actually 

making history all the time, both in reality, and in their imaginative interpretation of what is occurring 

before them and to them. 



14 

 

experience; and if they were casualties of history, they remain, condemned in their own 

lives, as casualties.”
54

   

 

 

NATION AND IDENTITY 

 

Benedict Anderson claims that the nation “is an imagined political community – and 

imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign”.
55

  This community is imagined, at 

least to the degree that, while most members are not capable of meeting all other people 

who also regard themselves as integral members, they all still hold the image of this 

community within their minds.
56

  If such societies are therefore a creation of the mind 

as much as of social and political forces, then what kind of society was being imagined 

at the time of Australian Federation?  Certainly, it would appear that all the pre-

requisites for a community claimed by Anderson
57

 were present in Australia by 1901:  a 

common language, recognised borders, and the technology and communication 

infrastructure to make these attributes effective.
58

   From this point of view, colonial 

Australia would appear to have always been a community on the point of becoming a 

nation.
59

  

 

The issue of both the theoretical and the practical creation of a nation was exemplified 

by the famous comment of Massimo D’Azeglio, then prime minister of Piedmont and 

one of the fathers of the Italian nation at the time of unification: “L’Italia è fatta. 

Restano a fare gli Italiani”:  paraphrased as, “Italy is made, but we still have to make 

                                                           
54

 Edward Palmer Thompson: The Making of the English Working Class, p. 12. 
55

 Benedict Anderson: Imagined Communities, p. 5. 
56

 Ed Peng Cheah and Jonathan Culler:  Grounds of Comparison – around the world of Benedict 

Anderson, 2003, Routledge, New York  p.21. “It is limited because it is not an infinite grouping 

embracing the totality of humanity – as was the case with the great monotheistic religions – but a definite 

group of people separated by clear-cut boundaries from other groups.  It is sovereign because it has 

transferred to the State the notion of an illimited power that originally belonged only to God.” 
57

 Benedict Anderson: Imagined Communities, p. 15. 
58

 Helen Irving: To Constitute a Nation, p. 31. 
59

 Shirley Fitzgerald: Rising Damp, 1987, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, pp. 43-45. Possible 

sources of friction, such as religious tension between Irish Catholics and the various Protestant 

denominations and racial tension between white Anglo Australians and non-Europeans were so much 

overlaid by geographical distinctions between the states as between regions and suburbs within the cities. 

Note in map1.12 that while large suburban variations existed between Catholics, Irish and Protestants in 

Sydney in 1891, the myth of all Catholics residing in the most poverty stricken sections of the city did not 

hold true even then.  



15 

 

the Italians.”
60

  The Australian nation, however, had the advantage that, at the time of 

Federation, Australians already existed and now there only needed an Australia to be 

formally created.  As Irving also notes, “The new Australian nation was sovereign in all 

domestic matters and this, combined with the overwhelming sense at the time that 

Australians had a distinctive, specifically Australian identity, made Australia a 

nation.”
61

 

 

As one example, Australian time zones have always been taken as those applying to the 

relevant colonial capitals, due no doubt to both the pre-eminence of these capital cities, 

and their isolation from one another.
62

   Consequently, it was the inter-colonial postal 

and surveyors’ conferences between 1892 and 1895 that helped pre-empt the political 

federation of the nation in establishing scientifically accurate time zones based on 

Greenwich Mean Time.
63

  P F Rowland in the Macmillan’s Magazine of the time also 

opened his article on Australian Federation with a discussion on this notion of relative 

distance and cultural distance.  

 

No two colonies could well have been more dissimilar in origin than New South Wales 

and South Australia, for example, and it was inevitable that each should desire to mould 

its own destinies.  But if England was prone to underestimate the actual distance, 

Australia was inclined to ignore the relative nearness of her component colonies…So 

far as political, social and commercial life are concerned, South Australia, despite those 

five or six hundred miles is assuredly somewhere near New South Wales.
64

   

 

Thus, while Anderson looks to the reduction in distance as a result of modern 

technology, it is worth noting that this distance can be social and psychological as much 

as physical and my wider analysis will also investigate this notion of cultural distance 

between places and people.  

 

                                                           
60

 Massimo D’Azeglio: I miei ricordi – Things I Remember, 1966, Oxford University Press, London p. 

311. 
61

 Helen Irving: To Constitute a Nation, p. 26. 
62

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 24 December 1861, p. 8. Even in 1861, the accuracy existed for 

measuring variations in time between the Sydney Observatory and Williamtown in Melbourne, as 

mentioned in the Fourth Annual Report on the Sydney Observatory. 
63

 However, even with the ability to determine this difference down to 25 minutes, 11.4 seconds between 

Sydney and Melbourne there appeared little impetus in 1861 to formalise the times. Helen Irving: To 

Constitute a Nation, 1997, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, p. 31. “From 1895 they [the 

Australian Colonies] also shared, we may add, if not a single time zone, at least standardised clocks based 

on Greenwich Mean Time,” 
64

 P F Rowland: Macmillan’s Magazine, Issue 84, May/Oct, 1901, p. 151. 



16 

 

As with Australia’s experience of multiculturalism over the last half century, the wider 

notion of modern nationalism did not materialise without any older foundation.  John 

Breuilly traces the development of an English or British nationalism to the Stuarts and 

the Reformation, and the sense that it was again conflict with other European powers as 

much as an innate uniformity at home that contributed to people’s sense of identity “that 

all this and more strengthened the diffused a sense of nationality: in other words, that 

national history is a history of becoming more national”.
65

  One could argue that where 

the concept of a unified culture has changed as a result of the industrial revolution has 

been to widen recognised borders and expand from the political to the social.
66

  

Therefore, it appeared to be language and language regionalism that provided much 

impetus to this discovery or rediscovery of the concept of nation and culture.    

 

However, this culture and language could only find expression, and even consistency, 

through the practical development of printing.  Anderson asserts that the sense of 

immortality largely ignored by Liberalism and Marxism, and once offered by religion 

and dynastic succession, is now imagined within the nation’s creation, with print-

capitalism as the primary catalyst for transforming religious language and dynastic 

organisation through time consciousness.
67

   There is no doubt that literacy and 

communication through the availability of a widespread press has had a strong influence 

on the development of national consciousness.
68

   Interestingly, Michelle Arrow has 

noted the degree to which radio and television, and now even the internet, have taken 

over this role through the twentieth century.
69

  One of the themes running through my 

                                                           
65

 Peter Burke: History and Historians in the Twentieth Century, 2002, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 

chapter 3 John Breuilly: Historians and the Nation, p. 56. 
66

 Geoffrey Barraclough: The Times Atlas of World History, 1982, Times Books, London, pp. 115, 128, 

129. Note the changes in national borders from the beginning of the nineteenth century and Napoleon, to 

the beginning of the twentieth century and the First World War.  Most borders changed from 

principalities dependent upon the power and prestige of political leaders to new nations largely bounded 

by common nationalities and languages.  Compare the boundaries of the newly unified Germany with 

those of an Austro-Hungarian empire that remained a mix of contrived political divisions and racial and 

linguistic confusion.  The still artificial border of the Czech nation, with its large German speaking 

population surrounding a Czech speaking nucleus would cause problems right up to the Second World 

War. 
67

 Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism: Volume 6 No 3, 2006, p. 74.  Mark Hamilton: New Imaginings: 

The Legacy of Benedict Anderson and Alternative Engagements of Nationalism. Mary Fulbrook: 

Historical Theory, 2002, Routledge, London, p. 80. 
68

 Helen Irving: The Centenary Companion to Australian Federation, p. 410. “The colonial press played a 

crucial role the achievement of Federation…The verbatim recording by skilled shorthand reporter 

frequently included an indication of the audience response in parenthesis – (Cheers, Shouts etc) – which 

conveyed levels of enthusiasm to the readers, and also left an invaluable record for later historians.” 
69

 Michelle Arrow: Australian Historical Studies, 38:130, 2007, p. 244-260.  “The most sickening piece 

of snobbery I have ever heard”: Race, radio listening and the ‘aboriginal question’ in Blue Hills. 



17 

 

thesis is this relationship of the press with the community in assessing its support for a 

Federation and for the kind of federated society this community anticipated.   

 

For a formal political outcome to arise, a formal political process needs to be 

undertaken.  However, as in all such circumstances balance has to exist, particularly 

when attempting to found a new nation on democratic principles.  This process can 

evolve slowly of its own accord or, once the parameters exist, be accelerated through 

conscious political action.  Paul Ignotus,
70

 in his description of the formation of the 

Hungarian nation in the 1770s, again remarked on the significance of language in the 

creation of a national community.   Ironically, this was apparently not through the 

recognition of the newly emerging prestige of the native Magyar language, which was 

still viewed as an uneducated peasant tongue.   The first political expression of cultural 

nationalism by the Hungarian elite was initiated by the less than subtle Austrian 

Emperor Joseph II’s threat to replace Latin with German in the very Catholic country.
71

  

Only then did the native Hungarian language find a voice.
72

 

 

Where Ignotus touches upon my thesis is in his subsequent comment, quoted by 

Anderson, to the effect that; “A nation is born when a few people decide that it should 

be.”
73

  In terms of community development, I believe that this tells only half the story.  

While it is often the case that the impetus for independence and national sovereignty 

arises from small targeted groups of devotees, if the process remains only with these 

same few people, then the nation will remain still-born.  There is a degree of interaction 

between the drive and expectations of an elite, and the slower, gradual but often more 

relentless progression of the general population.  The decade leading up to the 

Federation of Australia was characterised by a plethora of committees, conferences and 

conventions, all attempting to turn the dreams and aspirations of small numbers of 

enthusiasts into that wide national support required for the successful foundation of a 

                                                           
70

 Pál (Paul) Ignotus 1901-1978: Hungarian writer and journalist, and the son of Hugó Veigelsberg (who 

adopted the pen name Ignotus – the unknown), Hungarian nationalist through the first half of the 

twentieth century. 
71

 Benedict Anderson: Imagined Communities, p. 73. 
72

 Peter Burke: History and Historians in the Twentieth Century.  Breuilly: Historians and Nationalism, p. 

61. John Breuilly indicates the complexity of nationalism and the error of necessarily supporting the 

process unreservedly. “The real problems became clear when those successor states were established by 

the Versailles peace settlement.  The revelation that Romanians could be just as nasty towards Hungarians 

as Hungarians had been towards them;” 
73

 Benedict Anderson: Imagined Communities, p. 73. 



18 

 

new democratic nation.
74

  As T A Coghlan admitted; “The Bill of 1891 aroused no 

popular enthusiasm, and parliamentary sanction to its provisions was not sought in any 

of the colonies; thus Federation fell into the background of politics. At this juncture, a 

section of the public began to exhibit an active interest in the cause which seemed in 

danger of being temporarily lost through the neglect of politicians.”
75

  The two major 

Federation parades could thus be viewed as not only an expression of federated 

nationalism, but also as a means of further strengthening community support for the on-

going political process.  

 

 

HISTORY AND THE COMMUNITY  

 

How does this notion of historical myth relate to the evaluation of communities?  H P 

Rickman states that, “History is one of the forms of disciplined research by means of 

which the human mind satisfies its curiosity and orientates itself in the world.  Its 

subject matter is the human past and the way the present has come about (my 

emphasis).”
76

  History is thus concerned not only with the past, and with human beings 

in groups and societies, but also how they have been influenced by this past.     

 

History is therefore more than a simple academic exercise and Rickman goes on to add; 

“but history is not a specialised subject of interest only to historians.  It concerns us all.  

We look to it for an understanding of the world we live in, for an illumination of human 

nature unfolding its potentialities in the course of time and even for some hints about 

the future which may guide our actions.”
77

  As Mary Fulbrook adds, “many historians 

do not in any event share the view that history is, can, or even should be a morally 

neutral endeavour.” 
78

 Simple antiquarianism is acceptable in itself,
79

 but in more 

                                                           
74

 Helen Irving: The Centenary Companion to Australian Federation, pp. 363-370. Irving lists just the 

principal and more formal events that took place over the course of a decade: Federation Conference 

1890, Federation Convention 1891, Federation Convention 1897-98 and the Federation Leagues at 

Corowa, Bathurst, and even New Zealand and Fiji.  
75

 T A Coughlan: The Seven Colonies of Australasia – a statistical account, 1902, Commonwealth 

Statistician’s Office. Sydney, p. 258.  
76

 H P Rickman: Meaning in History: W Dilthey’s Thoughts on History and Society, 1961, Allen & 

Unwin, London, p. 12. 
77

 H P Rickman: Meaning in History: W Dilthey’s Thoughts on History and Society, p. 13. 
78

 Mary Fulbrook: Historical Theory, pp. 6, 75. “this claim is, rather, one from a particular situated, 

viewpoint in the present, and even the very attempt at ‘neutrality’ may be castigated from certain 

perspectives , as an essentially conservative (my emphasis) ploy.” Fulbrook added earlier that “theory is 



19 

 

concrete terms, the study of the past is really justified by its effectiveness in casting a 

window onto the present. “Historical representations are themselves part of the present, 

and on this view are inevitably political.”
80

 

 

One of the recurring themes through historiography, and one that will form a foundation 

of this thesis, is the reason as to why historians evaluate the past.
81

  If historians attempt 

to explain the present by analysing the past and analysing those general tendencies of 

human nature which do repeat, rather than the specific instances which do not, then 

again we need to ask not only how can we uncover the past but also how can such 

features of the past be reviewed and effectively utilised for a practical purpose.  This 

will be particularly the case with my thesis, since I will be examining and evaluating 

two events from the past by going beyond the traditional written reports that, as I have 

already indicated, are useful in themselves but may be restrictive.  Alternative ways of 

evaluating the past require alternative sources of material.  Since this material must 

already exist in some form, it will need to be extracted from other fields, and integrated 

into the historical study.  New sources may very well imply new techniques to access 

and utilise this material. 

 

If we accept memory as a premise of knowledge, then we infer history from evidence 

that includes other people’s memories.  However, history is contingent on empirical 

sources which we consciously decide to accept or reject for other versions of the past.  

Since everything that happened in the past occurred in real time, a truly objective 

presentation of an event would take as long as the original event itself; assuming that 

there existed a way of collecting every single action and occurrence.  This is obviously 

not feasible and therefore choice and discrimination enters into the process: what to 

                                                                                                                                                                          
fundamental to historical investigation, and that even an avowedly non-theoretical approach is invariably 

a theoretical approach in itself.” 
79

 Peter Burke: New Perspectives on Historical Writing, 1991, Polity Press, Cambridge, p. 34. Quoting 

Jim Sharpe: “Even those with a more developed view of the people’s past have not escaped from those 

charges of antiquarianism which academic historians are so often fond of throwing at their less 

conceptually or ideologically well-equipped brethren.” 
80

 Mary Fulbrook: Historical Theory, 2002, Routledge, London, p. 75. Unfortunately this could be 

construed that history should not be morally neutral when this benefits one particular point of view, but 

should be when it risks benefitting the opposite viewpoint. One could argue that this is probably the 

quickest way to undermine any real value history may have in affecting the modern world. 
81

 Alun Munslow: The New History, 2003, Pearson Education Limited, Harlow, p. 9. Views on just what 

we can learn from the past have varied over time. “Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht has made this point [the role 

of Idealism in interpreting historical knowledge] in his book In 1926: Living at the Edge of Time (1997) 

arguing that only if we cut ourselves off from ‘old and worn out’ ideas about ‘learning from history’ will 

we be required ‘to think seriously about different ways of using our historical knowledge.” 



20 

 

exclude, what to include and what to expand upon.
82

  This became referred to as 

Reconstructionist in that, as Gordon Leff claims, history “is not simply a representation 

of the world as it was, but a reconstruction of certain aspects of it.”
83

  Since all the 

activities from a particular historical event cannot be reproduced or presented, there is 

this conscious or unconscious filtering process constantly being employed.
84

  

“Accordingly,” Leff tells us, “much historical writing consists in analysis and 

explanation….and the recounting of events is increasingly subordinated to establishing 

and evaluating them.”
85

 

 

Rather than pretending that there is purely objective collation being undertaken, the 

Constructionist is admitting that this discrimination is ruled by a level of subjectivity, 

and that by acknowledging this, we are able to evaluate the information that we are 

assembling with at least some acceptance of the process in our minds. Historians, as 

Fulbrook notes, “do not start, as it were, with a blank sheet of paper, looking at a 

selection of historical ‘debris’ and wondering how to ‘emplot’ this into a coherent 

story.”
86

  They are consciously constructing a story from the past using consciously 

chosen information.  John Hirst’s  The Sentimental Nation – The Making of the 

Australian Commonwealth, produced for the Centenary of Federation, stands as an 

excellent example of using traditional historical sources such as newspapers and 

journals to tell much of the all-encompassing history of the political and social process 

that led up to the Federation of the nation.  Much historical writing on the Federation of 

Australia exists at this level.
87

 

 

The Deconstructionist historian takes the final step by not only drawing generalisations 

from the past and asking why things were as they were,
88

 but also by questioning the 

processes of historical analysis itself.  Are the ways that evidence is collected truly valid 

                                                           
82

 Mary Fulbrook: Historical Theory, pp. 66-67. “The ostensibly weaker claim is actually more subtle and 

the more interesting one: that there are a whole variety of possible ‘real’ connections, only some of which 

will interest us sufficiently for us to explore and seek to reproduce them in any detail.” (my italics) 
83

 Gordon Leff: History and Social Theory, 1969, University of Alabama Press, Alabama, p. 17. 
84

 David Lowenthal: The Past is a Foreign Country, 1985, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 

205.  “The concept of historical writing is not just filtering and deciding what to include as history, but 

the notion of memory as a form of forgetting. As with Tristram Shandy who took a year to recount just 

the first day of his life, it would take a life-time to record a life-time.” 
85

 Gordon Leff: History and Social Theory, 1969, University of Alabama Press, Alabama, p. 13. 
86

 Mary Fulbrook: Historical Theory, p. 67.  
87

 John Hirst: The Sentimental Nation – The Making of the Australian Commonwealth, 2000, Oxford 

University Press, South Melbourne. 
88

 M C Lemon: Philosophy of History, 2003, Routledge, London, p. 296. This can be regarded as 

Analytic, rather than analytical history: terms that have become rather confusing. 



21 

 

and effective?  Can this evidence be relied upon to tell us what we want to know?  And 

are we truly certain that the questions we are asking remain valid?  Not only are 

historians analysing the subject matter, they are also evaluating their own attitudes 

towards this subject matter.
89

  History thus becomes not only a process for researching 

and understanding the past, but also the means by which this information is then passed 

on to either people in the present time, or society in the future.  Most importantly, as 

David Lowenthal states, “History differs from memory not only in how knowledge of 

the past is acquired and validated, but also in how it is transmitted, preserved and 

altered.”
90

  Raymond Aron’s notion of the “incoherence of lived experience”
91

 in 

comparison with the coherence of recounted history contrasts with Michael Oakeshott’s 

attempt to encompass all “in which nothing is excluded, nothing is regarded as non-

contributing.”
92

   We may attempt to encompass all, but really all that we can include is 

that which is useful to our specific intended outcome.  While I contend that the 

speculative aspect of the history of Federation has always been comprehensive,
93

 the 

descriptive aspects of that history have been, from an analytic point of view, limited. 

 

This leads to the inevitable discrepancy between current and later significance.  Events 

that, at the time, were regarded as important and worth recording, may not later be 

thought of as significant, while other events that were overlooked or disregarded at the 

time have come to be considered of paramount importance.  Hence, there is often a 

superfluous amount of material available to research relatively insignificant 

occurrences, and limited information on those later deemed critical.  One could argue 

that much historical study is, by its nature, deterministic and dependent upon this 

variation in significance.  More research is likely to be conducted where more material 

evidence is available and more surmising and imaginative interpretation undertaken 

where less material exists.  This implies that research often reflects the interests of the 

past rather than the re-evaluation in the present.  Parliamentary reports on Federation, 

for example, are readily available, and so the machinations of politicians and twists and 

turns of colonial governments in the lead up to 1901 are well recorded.
94

  The attitudes 

                                                           
89

 M C Lemon: Philosophy of History, p. 282. 
90

 David Lowenthal: The Past is a Foreign Country, pp, 212-213. 
91

 Raymond Aron: Opium of the Intellectuals, 1962, Secker & Warburg, London, p. 136. 
92

 Gordon Leff: History and Social Theory, p. 24. 
93

 Helen Irving:  The Centenary Companion to Australian Federation, pp. 1-15. “Imagine Australia in 

2001 if Federation had never happened.”  
94

 NSW State Government: Journal of the Legislative Council of NSW, Session 1900, vol LXII Part 1, 

William Applegate Gullick Government Printer, Sydney, Australia, pp. 431, 479. Commonwealth of 

Australia Constitution Act, Federation of the Australian Colonies. 



22 

 

of the wider community to the notion of Federation itself, and to the kind of nation that 

they were expecting to be created out of the Federation process, have been more 

difficult to judge, and perhaps require a process augmenting the reliance upon written 

documentation.
95

 

 

There is, for example, surprisingly little record of these two principal marches in 

subsequent descriptions of the Federation process in both Sydney and Melbourne.  

Tessa Milne
96

 and Helen Irving
97

 have collated information on the marches in their 

publications for the 2001 Centenary, but other works either describing the original 

events and celebrations or guides for the centenary barely mention them even in 

passing.
98

  As a typical example, the Graham Wilcox publication The Struggle for 

Unity, A story of the Federation of Australia, mentions the numbers estimated to have 

taken part in Sydney’s celebrations: 250,000 out of a city population of 481,000; and 

mention of the evening illuminations.
99

  However, there is almost no information on the 

actual marches in either Sydney or Melbourne.  Brendan O’Keefe and Michael 

Pearson’s Federation, A National Survey of Heritage Places, written for the Australian 

Heritage Commission, does list significant sites such as the Royal Exhibition Building 

in Melbourne, and other locations such as those in Corowa, and even Henry Parkes’ 

Federation Oak,
100

 but again, no location of significance relates directly to the two 

parades.  This issue of verification becomes critical when there is this discrepancy 

between the evidence available to the present and events the historian decides to 

investigate from the past.  Restricting deep analysis of the past to those fields retaining a 

                                                                                                                                                                          
Victorian State Government: Legislative Assembly of Victoria, Session 1900, Vol III, Robert S Brain 

Government Printer, Melbourne, Australia, p. 645. Papers presented to Parliament for the Federation of 

the Australian Colonies. 
95

 Michael Oakeshott: On History – and other Essays, 1983, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, p. 46.  Michael 

Oakeshott makes this point himself:  “An historical enquiry emerges in a concern with a present 

composed of objects (Oakeshott’s term for the events, people and occurrences in an historical context) 

recognised, not merely to have survived, but as themselves survivals:  that is, recognised not as relics 

invoking veneration, as utterances of notable wisdom or foolishness, as currently useful artefacts or as 

objects of contemplative delight, but as things in respect of their being vestigial.  They are present objects 

which speak only of the past.” 
96

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901. 
97

 Helen Irving: The Centenary Companion to Australian Federation. 

Helen Irving: To Constitute a Nation – a Cultural History of Australia’s Constitution. 
98

 Commonwealth of Australia, Centenary of Federation Committee: 1901-2001 Centenary of Federation, 

Your guide to Australia’s celebrations, 2000, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra, pp. 34,48. Even in 

this kit that was very much aimed at children (as were most other such information kits), there is no 

mention of the parades and little mention of the original celebrations. 
99

 Graham John Rutledge Wilcox: The Struggle for Unity, A story of the Federation of Australia, 2014, 

Ligare Publishing, Sydney, pp. 139,140. 
100

 Brendan O’Keefe and Michael Pearson: Federation, A National Survey of Heritage Places, 1998, 

Australian Heritage Commission and Heritage Victoria, Canberra, p. 24. 



23 

 

quantity of evidence is often the only way that particular history can be studied, but it 

should not be thus regarded as definitive.  

 

Much of my rationale for an expanded methodology is influenced by the notion of a 

“History from Below”; itself deriving from the earlier “History from the bottom up” of 

Frederick Jackson Turner.
101

  Although Turner’s 1923 sentiment is a reflection of such 

widening of historical sources, one could argue that the terminology itself is somewhat 

limiting and the simple model of a “Social History”
102

 would be more accurate.
103

   

Certainly the concept was used by Jim Sharpe in Peter Burke’s New Perspectives on 

Historical Writing, although the dangers stated by Tony Judt were also mentioned; 

“there is no place for political ideology in most modern social history, any more than 

there was in the sociology from which the latter derived…”
104

   One would have thought 

that the concept of social history itself was political and followed more the earlier 

mentioned notion of  Fulbrook as to whether any history should be a morally neutral 

endeavour.   E P Thompson’s own article in the Times Literary Supplement of April 

1966 is titled History from Below, although since his work relates most to labour 

working history, in this context the term is more reflective of an economic and 

industrial position.
105

   

 

One aspect of this social history development has been, not so much a unifying force for 

recognition on the part of those who were overlooked (or who believe that they have 

been overlooked) in past historical documentation, as the subsequent recognition of the 

complexity and interconnectedness of society.  While history may have become more 

than the parliamentary debates of the elites, it was still these debates that affected the 

lives of those ordinary people who were the new subjects of historical investigation.  If 

                                                           
101

 Alun Munslow: The New History, p. 115. 
102

 Dorothy Thompson: The Essential E P Thompson, 2001, The New Press, New York.  Although the 
heading for section IV, is titled “History from Below”, Thompson himself points out that he never used 

this term, and also preferred “Social History”. 
103

 Perhaps “History from Below” reflects the era in which it was initially promulgated, when the notion 

of social class was being established; remembering too that this was its initial development, without the 

subsequent century of ideological refinement. The implication that such social history is either below the 

traditional political history, or that the subjects themselves are below the higher echelons in society would 

probably still reflect one’s immediate reaction, if not a studied and reflective opinion. 

Mary Fulbrook: Historical Theory, p. 64. “I would certainly argue that this is more than “those 

‘underdog’ histories which consciously, explicitly, with to ‘give back a past’, or give a voice to 

previously marginalised groups who had been more or less written out of mainstream (‘hegemonic’) 

histories.” Rather, one could argue that this “new” emphasis is a return to the traditional mythic history of 

each cultural group from the unique and specific effect of the development of public education through 

the late 1800s, overlaid with the modern concepts of positivist accuracy and verification.  
104

 Peter Burke: New Perspectives on Historical Writing, p. 33. 
105

 Dorothy Thompson: The Essential E P Thompson, 2001, p. 485. 



24 

 

the significance of the roles played by citizens and working people had been overlooked 

in political history, the social history ideal still needs to take into account the political 

and economic effects of governments and those in authority on the lives of these 

citizens.
106

  Attitudes of Australians to Federation were always pre-empted by the 

political formalities that occurred at the completion of the two relevant parades.  The 

role of the historian to uncover and interpret the history of society also therefore 

becomes more problematic, when there is a discrepancy in the material available from 

such differing sources.   

 

These issues are raised by Martyn Lyons in his 2010 article on A New History from 

Below.  “The ‘New History from Below’ is distinctive because it is based on writings 

from the grassroots and because it focuses on individual experiences of historical 

change.”
 107

 While the older traditional coterie was dominated by “the tradition of the 

French Annales School… and the British neo-Marxist School”
108

 and writings about 

ordinary people, Lyons focused on writings by ordinary people; in this case Italian 

soldiers living through the First World War.  In his review of Lyons longer work, The 

Writing Culture of Ordinary People in Europe C1860-1920,
109

  Paul Pickering also 

points out the complexity of the issue, where the poor are still considered “lower-class, 

the poor, the peasant masses”,
110

 yet where the wide variations of education becoming 

available at the beginning of the twentieth century led to equally wide variations in 

Italian (and French) commoners’ shared experiences and values.  Lyons’ Italian 

soldier’s letters would still need to have been placed within the context of Italy’s role in 

the First World War to provide anything more than mere written experience.  If “the war 

was to be endured, not resisted and not understood” by the common soldiers in the 

                                                           
106

 Mary Fulbrook: Historical Theory, p. 38.  Quoting G M Trevelyan, “Social history might be defined 

negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out [or perhaps the traditional politics left 

out]…[But] without social history, economic history is barren and political history is unintelligible. 
107

 Martyn Lyons: A New History from Below: History Australia, 2010 Monash University Press, vol.7 

no. 3.  The localism and parochialism expressed by the multitude of letters Lyons accessed contrasted 

with the “Patriotic slogans [that] did not necessarily signify anything but a cursory acquaintance with 

national priorities or the Risorgimento myth.”   
108

 Martyn Lyons: A New History from Below: History Australia, vol. 7 no. 3  p. 59.1. 
109

 Martyn Lyons: The Writing culture of Ordinary People in Europe C1860-1920, 2012, Cambridge 

University Press, London.  “Like the Annales, the British Marxists revolved around a journal – Past and 

Present – in whose pages the study of the subordinate classes and their political movements were 

promoted by Christopher Hill., Eric Hobsbawm, E P Thompson and George Rude among 

others…although they restored a sense of power and agency to the working classes, they were primarily 

interested in public action rather than private lives. As a result, the actual members of the lower classes in 

history remained largely an anonymous mass.” 
110

 Pickering, Paul. History from below: An excellent study of scribal culture [Book Review]. Australian 

Book Review, No. 357, Dec 2013 - Jan 2014, pp. 34-35. 



25 

 

field,
111

  then the historian should comprehend more than this, otherwise they are no 

wiser than the fanti-contadini (peasant infantry) themselves.  Again, the experience of 

the individual is of importance, but it is these shared experiences of the group that can 

extrapolate to the attitudes of the wider society.
 112

   

 

 

A PHILOSOPHY OF EXPERIENCE 

 

The last decades of the nineteenth century leading up to Federation became “a moment 

of intensity, creativity and nationalism which, by the later years, flowed only along the 

narrowest channels.”
113

   It is therefore no surprise that Sherlock Holmes was one of the 

great literary heroes at the time of Federation.   As the quintessential cool calculating 

deductive (actually inductive) scientist using the latest techniques and technologies, 

Holmes embodied much of the mood of the era.
114

   This application of science to all the 

field of the humanities created the philosophy of positivism, although this had some less 

than salubrious consequences.
115

  Collingwood, for example, delves briefly into one 

aspect of my thesis study; the development of the racism that, through the nineteenth 

century, underpinned many of the attitudes of the newly emerging Australia.
116

  As he 

points out, it was not so much the concept of scientific evolution that was so significant, 

as Darwin’s imposition of natural selection as the controlling mechanism.
117

   Evolution 

had been a long accepted scientific concept by the middle of the nineteenth century 

through the work of Jean Baptiste Lamarck and later Alfred Russel Wallace.    

However, it was the new ‘amoral’ process of natural selection which served to justify 

amoral attitudes towards non-British and non-European peoples that proved to be 

anything but equitable.   If other races were seen to be subservient, it was now the 

                                                           
111

 Martyn Lyons: A New History from Below: History Australia, vol.7  no. 3  p. 59.8. 
112

 Martyn Lyons: A New History from Below: History Australia, vol.7  no. 3  p. 59.6.  The campanilismo 

or parochial mindedness of a couple of soldiers would reflect their own narrow “visceral attachment, both 

emotional and physical, to the village.”  A similar attitude echoed widely across the whole Italian Army 

would have reflected a malaise that no doubt influenced the effectiveness of the nation to defend its 

borders. It would appear that even by the First World War, Massimo D’Azeglio’s “made Italians” were 

still rarities.   
113

 Vance Palmer: The Legend of the Nineties. Quoted in Helen Irving: To Constitute a Nation – a 

Cultural History of Australia’s Constitution, p. 33. 
114

 As an aside, it was also notable that the creator of the private detective, Arthur Conan Doyle, followed 

that other great advocate of scientific modernism, Federationist and future Australian Prime Minister 

Alfred Deakin, “a man of deep and eclectic cultural learning” into the contradictory and very non-

scientific world of spiritualism. 
115

 Alun Munslow: The New History, pp. 42, 43. 
116

 Robin George Collingwood: The Idea of History, 1993, Oxford University Press, p. 91. 
117

 Robin George Collingwood: The Idea of History, p. 129. 



26 

 

natural order of things, since the process of natural selection had naturally designated 

those in power and those in servitude to be in their allotted positions.
118

   The British 

were no longer ordained by God to rule others; their own elevated position now 

demonstrated that they were naturally more highly evolved and thus better suited to this 

role. 

 

Such changes in the view of the physical world that evolved through the nineteenth 

century did not necessarily mean that the human beings who experienced these changes 

were going to be radically altered.  As with most ideologies, positivism contained 

within itself its own antithesis.  Philosophers and writers as wide ranging as Friedrich 

Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Wilhelm Dilthey recognised that human beings did 

not always act according to the expectations of logic, or even their own perceived self-

interest.
119

  Wilhelm Dilthey differentiated between the natural sciences that relied upon 

measureable causes and explanations, and the social sciences such as history that relied 

upon understanding through interpretation.  In a way, Dilthey reversed the philosophy 

of positivism.  Rather than scientific ideals and scientific theories determining the 

interpretation that one puts on the physical world, it is the interpretation of the physical 

world that then creates explanations and ideals.  Dilthey believed through observation 

and interpretation that each instance exists as an entity in itself, not necessarily as part 

of an overarching philosophical construct.  Every event in the empirical world must be 

brought about by factors that explain it independently, whether we do or do not actually 

discover them.
120

   

 

Significantly, Dilthey also differentiated between the lived experience of the individual 

and the concept of shared experienced and shared values if the experience is to be of 

any wider benefit.
121

  Individual opinions may exist, but they are valid only if expressed 

                                                           
118

 Charles Darwin: The Descent of Man, 1871 D Appleton and Co, New York,  p. 521. 
119

 Ted Honderich: The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, p. 257. C P Snow: The Realists – Portraits of 

Eight Novelists, 1978, Macmillan Press Ltd, London, chapt. 4. Although there is not space within this 

thesis to conduct an involved analysis of Realism, Naturalism and Existentialism, the developments of 

these philosophies and similar ideas that were in the ether at the time had a powerful influence on many 

within Australian society at the time of Federation. 
120

 Wilhelm Dilthey: The Critique of Historical Reason, 1978, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, p. 

225.  The technical terms that Dilthey used to express these various forms of experience were Erlebnis: 

for lived experience and specific personal experience that is regarded as unscientific in that it cannot be 

verified, and Erfahrang: ordinarily but scientifically verifiable experience. 
121

 Wilhelm Dilthey: The Critique of Historical Reason, p. 226. 



27 

 

by many in the group.
122

  So should the interpretation of episodes such as Australia’s 

Federation marches only be viewed as communal?    

 

By experience of life I mean these propositions which constitute themselves in a 

collective circle of persons.  They are statements about the nature and course of life, 

judgements about what has proved to be of value, rules of living, and determination of 

goals and goods.  Their hallmark is that they are creations of a community (my 

emphasis).  And they apply just as much to the life of the individual person as to the life 

of the community.
123

   

 

Dilthey was also asking: how is historical knowledge possible?  What are the common 

features of human life which we can use for the understanding of historical processes 

and how then do we discover the meaning that situations have, or have had for 

others?
124

  In his notes on hermeneutics, Dilthey begins the evaluation of actual 

interpretation. “Interpretation would be impossible if expressions of life were 

completely strange.  It would be unnecessary if nothing strange were in them.  It lies, 

therefore, between these two extremes.  It is always required where something strange is 

to be grasped through the art of understanding.”
125

  Thus, using such interpretation as a 

way of getting inside E P Thompson’s episodes implies finding a way to relate this 

expression and understanding to others.   Experience always needs to be mediated 

through some form of expression that can be interpreted by others; otherwise it remains 

locked within the mind and inaccessible.
126

  Hence, language is no longer simply 

another cultural construct amongst many, but the only means by which all other aspects 

of culture can be interpreted.
 
 

 

Munslow introduces Plato’s concept of Mimesis; showing or acting as a means of 

reproducing the past, or one aspect of the past.  This is presented as a contrast to 

                                                           
122

 Mary Fulbrook: Historical Theory, p. 67.  “In short, historians work within collective traditions of 

inquiry which set certain parameters and puzzles for which they seek solutions …Historians frequently 

work, whether explicitly or implicitly, within the context of collective ‘controversies’.”  
123

 Wilhelm Dilthey: The Critique of Historical Reason, p. 227. All is based upon turning the personal 

into the shared – only then can it be reflected upon by using terms, words and concepts that are common 

to all in society.  
124

 Wilhelm Dilthey: The Critique of Historical Reason, p. 225.  H P Rickman: Meaning in History – W 

Dilthey’s Thoughts on History and Society, pp. 64-65. 
125

 Wilhelm Dilthey: The Critique of Historical Reason, p. 225.  H P Rickman: Meaning in History – W 

Dilthey’s Thoughts on History and Society, p. 77. 
126

 David Lowenthal: The Past is a Foreign Country, p. 213.  “To remember and communicate such a past 

requires complex and enduring institutions.  Hence history must be studied as a social activity…groups 

define themselves through history as an individual does through memory.” 



28 

 

Diegesis, or the traditional narrative telling which has been the basis of both original 

mythology and the traditional historical presentation.
127

  The issue is part of the 

philosophical consideration of the relationship between the present and the past.
128

  If 

the past can only belong to its future, causes may appear to be related to their effects in 

ways that were never really the case at the time.  So in order to study them from the 

distance of time, more than simple narrative telling may be necessary.  Footstepping 

emerges as a means of linking these two concepts together by transferring aspects of 

history that were previously only available through mimesis into the realm of the 

written narrative through a form of re-enactment. 

 

While there is the recognition of the previously mentioned legacy of the positivist 

approach in the value of collecting information,
129

 Collingwood was disparaging of the 

basic “scissors and paste” approach to history where this is as far as the process goes.  

However, one could argue that this is a necessary introduction to the process, since it is 

from this assemblage of facts and reports that can then come the drawing of 

conclusions.  Collingwood went on to develop the concept of historical evaluation as 

understanding and explaining through the process of re-enactment.  He claimed that the 

simple acceptance of such reports from the past must be critiqued since they can often 

be unreliable.
130

  Hence, he regarded the notion of re-enacting as a means in some way 

to garner additional source material.
131

  Collingwood further claimed that, 

 

The historian argues from evidence as opposed to events accessible to our experience.  

He must therefore do more than present what he discovers; he must in some sense re-

invent it with the meaning which it had for the period from which it survives…he has to 

re-create them inside his own mind, re-enacting for himself so much of the experience 

of the men who took part in them [experiences from the past] as he wishes to 

understand.
132

    

 

This concept of re-enactment is open to interpretation on many levels.  Can we really re-

play the evidence in ways that imbue it with the meaning that it had for the period to 

                                                           
127

 Alun Munslow: The New History, pp. 173-174.  As indicated earlier with the Reconstructionist fallacy 

of being able to represent the entirety of and event, complete Mimesis has never been a practical 

possibility and perhaps the post-modernist approach is simply a reflection of this.   
128

 Fulbrook: Historical Theory, p. 7. 
129

 Robin George Collingwood: The Idea of History, pp. 126-128. 
130

 Robin George Collingwood: The Idea of History, p. 282. 
131

 Gordon Leff: History and Social Theory, p. 25. 
132

 Robin George Collingwood: The Idea of History, p. 282. 



29 

 

which it relates?  If so, how can we go about this, and will the results be useful for both 

the practicing historian and the readers from the present period?   What was 

Collingwood referring to when he spoke of the process of re-enactment in the mind?  Is 

this a physical re-living of an historical event, or purely a mental imagining of the past; 

a “going over in the mind” of the historian as he or she absorbs relevant information 

from the era?   Certainly it is a process for getting into the mind of individuals or the 

“collective mind” of communities to analyse their historical actions and beliefs within 

the context of the times, and it is in this sense that I will be applying the process in my 

thesis.  This will mean essentially applying ethnographic processes from the 

anthropological evaluation of different cultures in the present to the evaluation of the 

Australian culture in the past.  In other words, we are treating the past as a ‘foreign 

country’, and the cross-cultural interpretation of the past applies as much to our own 

culture through this prism of time. 

 

This process differs from the current vogue for physical historical re-enactment 

critiqued by McCalman and Pickering.  Dressing up and replaying historical events in 

modern times in order to “understand” what people were going through in the past, 

often results in outcomes at variance to what would provide a deeper comprehension of 

this past.
133

  McCalman and Pickering also emphasise John Brewer’s significant 

quandary; that students of re-enactment need to find a way of dealing with contingency 

and chance.  When re-playing events from the past, be they the Battles of Hastings and 

Waterloo, or Federation parades through capital cities,  the tendency is to teleologically 

assume that because these events proceeded in an historically recorded way, the 

outcomes were logically inevitable.  Arguments are then proffered claiming that one 

leader was better than another, or that progress was logically obvious, when weather, 

bad food or even a political leader’s last minute decision to step from a train to deliver 

an almost off the cuff speech can have far reaching implications.
134

 

                                                           
133

 Iain McCalman and Paul Pickering: Historical Re-enactment – from Realism to the Affective Turn, 

2010, Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills, p. 9.  The staged re-enactment invariably imposes ideological 

parameters whereby it is the wishes and expectations of the modern re-enactors rather than the historical 

experiences of those from the past which can become paramount.  Striking miners who, themselves end 

up winning over Thatcher’s Britain in such staged performances, and even cartoon Confederate re-

enactors who end up winning the Civil War, demonstrate this in a poignant form. 
134

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 25 October 1889, p. 8. Sir Henry Parkes at Tenterfield. “Banquet to the 

Premier, A Brilliant Reception (by telegraph from our Special Correspondent).”  As Helen Irving states, 

the Herald was the only paper to run the full text of the speech, taking one quarter of the entire page. 

“Nevertheless, it was enthusiastically received at Tenterfield and almost immediately attracted acclaim 

among fellow New South Wales Federationists.” Helen Irving: The Centenary Companion to Australian 

Federation, 1999, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, p. 429.   



30 

 

Therefore, history differs from science in that it cannot be replicated: it relies upon 

unique facts and evidence for each instance,
135

 even evidence that can be inferential.
136

  

Of course the conundrum arises, in the historical sense, of being able to justify to others 

that what may appear obvious but unverifiable.  So, the process of interpretation flows 

from the determination of historical information for oneself, and the justification for 

others of views and opinions that are drawn from this information.  Munslow takes a 

post-modernist stance, which accepts that historians do not come to their topics and 

their interpretations without a position influenced by previous ideas and life 

experiences. “Working from the belief that historians ascribe meanings to the past rather 

than discover its inherent or given meaning,”
137

  does not mean that historians 

artificially create meanings.  As mentioned, they still need to justify their interpretations 

to others.  

 

Living through a period gives the researcher a certain level of insight into attitudes that 

are personal, social in one’s immediate cultural group, and cultural within the wider 

community and nation.  However, these recollections are, by their nature, restricted by 

both personal bias and the changes that occur in memory over time, and as the 

sociologist Wilhelm Dilthey would have stated, often invalid as historical 

interpretations precisely because they are only individual.
138

  Without this personal 

experience though, the researcher is reliant upon the experience of others through 

writings and reports.  And this is where limitations begin to influence interpretation.  An 

individual’s own bias and personal attitudes can be ameliorated by balancing with the 

opinions of others through written reports of the time, since the attitudes of the wider 

society and nation are often likely to be reflected in these written records. 

 

Collingwood then introduces the concept of repetition of thoughts and ideas as the 

repetition of the one thought many times.
139

  However, I would argue that this is, in the 

                                                           
135

 Robin George Collingwood: The Principles of History, 1999, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 5-

8. 
136

 Robin George Collingwood: The Principles of History, p. 10.  Collingwood offers the analogy of a 

parabola, where, while only a few points may not determine a parabola mathematically, an observer can 

often inductively infer a parabola before such a mathematical proof exists.  Actually, in mathematics it is 

often the reverse that is the case. A parabola can be mathematically inferred by three points, and 

determined by four, whereas the human mind often requires more clues that this. 
137

 Alun Munslow: The New History, p. 2.   
138

 Wilhelm Dilthey: The Critique of Historical Reason, p. 228. 
139

 Robin George Collingwood: The Idea of History, pp. 289-290.  “It has been shown that an act of 

thought can be not only performed at an instant but sustained over a lapse of time; not only sustained but 



31 

 

historical sense, rarely the case since with each repetition there is an automatic level of 

refinement that takes place.  As Lowenthal has pointed out, memories can continue over 

time but they are constantly changed and enhanced each time they are repeated.
140

  Not 

only are the implications of the memory often made more evident with each repetition, 

but the circumstances of the rememberer also change over time.   

 

To know someone else’s activity of thinking is possible only on the assumption that this 

same activity can be re-enacted in one’s own mind.  In that sense, to know ‘what 

someone is thinking’ (or ‘has thought’) involves thinking for oneself.  To reject this 

conclusion means denying that we have any right to speak of acts of thought at all, 

except such as take place in our own minds, and embracing the doctrine that my mind is 

the only thing that exists.
141

   

 

Here Collingwood’s explanations attempt to clarify the difference between someone 

else’s thoughts, and the historians’ understanding of what someone else’s thoughts may 

be.  In theory, I do not think that the concept is difficult for either historians or even lay 

readers to comprehend.  What both groups often fail to do is implement the concept in 

everyday analysis.  There is invariably the assumption that what someone a century ago 

thought about a situation or circumstance is what a modern interpreter believes that they 

thought, or should have thought.  To use the example of my own re-enactment of the 

Federation marches; retracing these routes in the 1950s would have been a different 

experience to that in the 1990s, and different again a decade later.  Historians would not 

just be viewing the route half a century and then a century later, but would be bringing 

to bear their own experience of post-war immigration and post-White Australia 

multiculturalism. 

 

Memories can continue of course, but as Collingwood himself stated, when we 

understand another’s thoughts from the past, we are really refining them and converting 

them into thoughts of our own.
142

 Where Collingwood does take the next step is by 

looking for an effective method for analysing another’s thoughts in ways that can be 

                                                                                                                                                                          
revived; not only revived in the experience of the same mind but (on pain of solipsism) re-enacted in 

another’s.” 
140

 David Lowenthal: The Past is a Foreign Country, p. 206. “Memories are also altered by revision. 

Contrary to the stereotype of the remembered past as immutably fixed, recollections are malleable and 

flexible; what seems to have happened undergoes continual change.” 
141

 Robin George Collingwood: The Idea of History, pp. 286-288.  
142

 Robin George Collingwood: The Idea of History, pp. 289-290. “Since the thought as re-enacted is now 

our own, and our knowledge of it is limited to our own present awareness of it as an element in our own 

experience.” 



32 

 

utilised through analysing their actions.  Again, the logic becomes obvious.  We cannot 

get inside the minds of other people today, let alone back in a distant historical period, 

so the only thing that we have to go on are their actions, and their expressions of action 

in writings and sayings.  And since these writings and sayings can be intentionally or 

unintentionally deceptive, and since history is, ultimately, the interpretation of actual 

events, we are forced back onto analysing actions.  It is here that Gilbert Ryle takes the 

concept even further.   

 

Just historians are ultimately children of their time, so too are social scientists.  Gilbert 

Ryle was born in 1900 and followed R G Collingwood as Waynflete Professor of 

Metaphysical Philosophy and Fellow of Magdalen College Oxford in 1945.  He thus 

belonged to the first generation that, in the Western tradition, was able to consciously 

consider a physiology as well as a philosophy of the mind.  Until the beginning of the 

twentieth century, philosophy of the mind remained just that:  thinking, surmising and 

pondering the thought processes that were as physically unattainable as they had always 

been.  It was from the medical demands of survivors of the First World War, and the 

massive technical developments that arose from the Second World War that the first 

real physiology of the mind arose.   

 

It was into this ferment that Gilbert Ryle published his seminal work The Concept of 

Mind (1949).  Ryle took the positivist scientific view to its logical extreme, and 

removed Descartes’s duality of mind and body, replacing it with simply the 

physiological reality of the physical body.  Ryle rejected the notion of the mind as the 

“Ghost in the Machine”, claiming that what we refer to as the mind is merely a 

particular category of expression.
143

  According to Ryle, the mind does not exist as an 

entity at all, but rather is merely the visible expression of thoughts and ideas.
144

  It is 

Ryle’s subsequent notion that we can assess only by abilities that are demonstrated, and 

by actions that can be viewed before us that relates back to my thesis.
 145

  The 

                                                           
143

 Gilbert Ryle: The Concept of Mind, 1949, Hutchinson & Co, London, p. 15. 
144

 Gilbert Ryle: The Concept of Mind, pp. 20-23. In many ways, this issue now appears to be one of 

semantics.  For Ryle, the mind does exist, but not as a unique entity with a life and expression of its own 

but as the expression of the individual.  Intelligently doing something does not consist of two operations: 

the mental and the physical components are the same operation.  We therefore judge the mental “mind” 

aspects of an operation by the physical expression, and the skill in interpretation is the skill in evaluating 

these expressions. 
145

 Gilbert Ryle: The Concept of Mind, p. 46. Ryle gives the example of the drunkard playing chess.  A 
drunk or incompetent chess player may inadvertently make a move that bewilders and defeats a grand 

master. Most people viewing the game would realise what was happening, but just how would the 



33 

 

implication is that when we describe someone’s actions as, for example, intelligent or 

stupid, we are not portraying what is going on in their minds, but what can be observed 

in the physical world.
146

   

 

As this affects historical interpretation, Ryle is partially right, in that with the example 

he offered, we can see what Napoleon did, and what Euclid wrote, but we have no way 

of directly observing what was really going on in their minds.
147

  However, this does not 

mean that they did not really have minds with thoughts running through them; only that, 

through the lack of evidence passed down the centuries, we do not know what these 

thoughts really were.  It is where he begins to investigate the actual process of 

observation that Ryle’s ideas again become useful to the historian.  Not only is the 

physical world the only world that can be observed by others, irrespective of role of the 

mind in creating action, but importantly,  the way that we observe this physical world is 

dependent upon the cultural concepts that we have absorbed.  Observation has two 

components: the visual looking and the intent to find out something.  Observation is 

initially base upon sensations that automatically arise from the object itself: “sensations 

are neither observable nor unobservable”.
148

  However, their results definitely can be 

observed, and this intentive observation is very much dependent upon social norms and 

expectations.  

 

Such observations and recordings thus need to be placed into some kind of formal 

context, again preferably within a community, and here Ryle introduces the concept of 

established codes.  ‘Looking at something’ means using a cultural category that others 

can readily understand.  The observer must have some knowledge and appreciation of 

what they are witnessing; in other words, they must be able to put this into context.
149

  It 

is here that discrepancies can arise in analysing activities that have taken place over the 

distance of a century.  In describing what we are seeing, we have to employ terms that 

                                                                                                                                                                          
spectators know what was really happening?  According to Ryle, the mind does not exist as an entity at 

all, but rather is merely the visible expression of thoughts and ideas.   
146

 Gilbert Ryle: The Concept of Mind, p. 52. This appears to be valid at one level, in that we cannot get 

inside the mind of another individual, so have to rely upon the visible expression of these thoughts and 

ideas in order to evaluate them.  However, as with many responses to ideas of the past, there appears to be 

an over-reaction; “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” in that, by assuming we cannot directly 

know thoughts except by their expression, the notion of a mindful thought itself does not exist. 
147

 Gilbert Ryle: The Concept of Mind, pp. 52, 58. “Overt intelligent performances are not clues to the 

workings of minds, they are the workings.”  Or perhaps they are all that we have to go on. 
148

 Gilbert Ryle: The Concept of Mind, p. 206.  
149

 Gilbert Ryle: The Concept of Mind, p. 54. Whether the observer needs to have a level of psychological 

training is mentioned, although apparently not essential.  



34 

 

we know and can relate to in our own past experience in an attempt to adequately 

describe our observations.
150

  After all, it is ultimately the effectiveness of the 

description that is going to convert the experience into history. 

 

 

OBSERVATION AND INTERPRETATION  

 

Once an experience has been observed and analysed, either through direct experience or 

through the process of re-enactment, it then needs to be interpreted in order to be 

utilised and transmitted.
151

  Rather than these ideas and concepts remaining locked 

within the individual mind, and therefore of only theoretical interest, they need to be 

brought out into the world of practical experience where they can be of practical benefit.  

Wilhelm Dilthey is therefore asking, how is such historical knowledge possible?  What 

are the common features of human experience that we can use for the understanding of 

historical processes?  How then do we discover the meaning historical events have, or 

have had for others?
152

  Does this type of observation really convey the relevant 

information clearly to the spectator?
 153

    

 

It is in attempting to answer these questions that the practical applications of Clifford 

Geertz become relevant.
154

  Geertz adopted the techniques that Ryle advanced for 

evaluating actions in the psychological and philosophical spheres, and adapted them to 

the social sciences through the process of interpretive anthropology.
155

  Their value lays 

not so much in the actual methodology, which is still theoretical, as in the overall 

attitude and approach.  By asking new questions rather than giving definitive answers, 

Ryle and Geertz’s concept of thick description provides a valid intellectual framework 

                                                           
150

 Gilbert Ryle: The Concept of Mind, p. 203. 
151

 H P Rickman: Meaning in History- W Dilthey’s Thoughts on History and Society, p. 65.  As Rickman 

demonstrates with a concrete example; “a person mowing the lawn does not try to communicate anything, 

yet he clearly conveys to the spectator ‘what is in his mind’.”   
152

 H P Rickman: Meaning in History- W Dilthey’s Thoughts on History and Society, pp. 64-65. 
153

 M C Lemon: Philosophy of History – a Guide for Students, 2003, Routledge, London, p. 327. Lemon 

also presents the example of a woman gardening. While it is relatively easy to see what she is doing 

(although viewed from a distance or through the palings of a fence, even this may not be obvious), 

reasons and implications are not that straight forward.  Is the gardening being done primarily to create a 

garden, or for exercise, or as an excuse to get out of the house?  A bored but knowledgeable professional 

gardener may plant a garden as part of his job, but a garden that lasts and thrives, while an enthusiastic 

amateur may put much effort into planting a totally unsuitable garden that dies in a month. 
154

 Clifford Geertz: The Interpretation of Cultures, 1973, Harper Collins, London, p. 5. “If you want to 

understand what a science is, you should look at the first instance not at its theories or its findings, and 

certainly not at what its apologists say about it: you should look at what the practitioners of it do.”   
155

 Clifford Geertz: The Interpretation of Cultures, chapt. 1. 



35 

 

for such interpretation.  This theory was itself part of the reaction against positivism and 

the scientific fallacy that the observer is objective and detached from both the 

immediate outcome of their research and from the wider sociological context in which 

the research is taking place.
156

  Geertz significantly noted that “the realisation (or 

perhaps it was only an admission) that socio-political thought does not grow out of 

disembodied reflection, but ‘is always bound up with the existing life situation of the 

thinker’ seemed to taint such thought with the vulgar struggle for advantage it had 

professed to rise above.”
157

  Here Geertz’s principal statement guiding his interpretation 

becomes significant.  

 

Believing with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance 

that he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be 

therefore not an experimental science in search of a law, but an interpretive one in 

search of meaning.  It is explication that I am after, construing social expressions on 

their surface enigmatical.
158

   

 

Thick description itself is concerned with attempting to unravel the thoughts and 

reasons behind activities, since this is the only way that analysis of activities can be 

used to extrapolate other activities in the future.  An individual may commit an action 

for any number of reasons, and while that action can be most accurately described at the 

time, the various reasons behind a particular action will invariably affect any future 

reactions that result.  For the social scientist, this is surely a significant reason to 

undertake the study in the first place.  Thick description, as implemented by Clifford 

Geertz, sought explication and illumination rather than implication, by gleaning insights 

that actually went beyond those consciously available to the participants themselves.  

This is therefore taking E P Thompson’s notion of getting into episodes one step further 

by attempting to not just describe the episode and explain what is happening, but now 

trying to understand the rationale behind the episode.  In practical terms, Geertz’s own 

ideal becomes a guiding principle. “Anthropologists [and Historians] don’t study 

villages; they study in villages…”
159

  Applying this to my thesis would imply that a 

                                                           
156

 Ted Honderich: The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, pp. 519, 520. The instance of Karl 

Mannheim’s concern over the influence, and often not recognised influence of the observer’s or 

recorder’s personal background and heritage on their interpretation. “Social thought expresses rather than 

explains human life…The task of theory is therefore to understand what people think about society rather 

than propose hypotheses about it.”   
157

 Clifford Geertz: The Interpretation of Cultures, p. 194. 
158

 Clifford Geertz: The Interpretation of Cultures, p. 5. 
159

 Clifford Geertz: The Interpretation of Cultures, p. 22. 



36 

 

footstepper does not study the Federation of the nation in cities; they study marches 

through cities. 

 

For the historian, the application of Geertz’s and Ryle’s concept of thick description 

provides not so much a process for investigating culture itself, as the question of 

whether we can apply this process to a community or culture, not in the present, but 

from the distance of a century.  The examples provided by Ryle and Geertz revolve 

around issues such as winking, and the questioning as to whether an observer can tell a 

wink from an inadvertent twitch.
160

  These issues are of course significant for both a 

social science observer in the current world, but would be more difficult for an historian 

viewing events one step removed in the past.   

 

Katherine Hoffmann
161

 also reflects on Dilthey’s earlier notion that such interpretation 

needs to be that of the community rather than the individual.  While this was applicable 

to sociology in a place like Morocco, where most of the population were illiterate, and 

therefore were reliant upon anthropologists to have their culture interpreted for the 

outside world,
162

  it would be more so in the case of history where there is the added 

discrepancy of time.
 163

  Geertz’s process of thick description is applied in his own 

works, through sociology and anthropology, in the present;
164

  however, when applied 

to the past, Ryle’s concept of established codes becomes more relevant.
165

  We cannot 

ask a community directly for verification of an inference that we have drawn, and even 

less so from the distance of a century, so can we indirectly utilise common expectations 

from today and overlay them onto the past?  If culture is what we see and hear occurring 

within a community, then the effectiveness of our evaluation is dependent upon the 
                                                           
160

 Gilbert Ryle: The Thinking of Thoughts – What is ‘Le Penseur’ doing? 1968, University of 

Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, pp. 2-4.  Clifford Geertz: The Interpretation of Cultures, p. 6. 
161

 Katherine E Hoffman: Interpreting Geertz, The Journal of North African Studies vol. 14 nos. 3, 4  

September/December 2009  p. 418. 
162

  Katherine E Hoffman: Interpreting Geertz The Journal of North African Studies vol. 14 nos. 3, 4 

September/December 2009  p. 419. “As I want to argue here, however, the metaphor of culture as text is 

not only a literary metaphor, but also a literacy metaphor. It seems to presume that we, whoever we are, 

share an orientation toward the practice of writing and the nature of texts…Geertz’s attendant claim was 

that culture is public and evident in human behaviour (influenced by Wittgenstein’s belief of language as 

public): ‘Culture is public because meaning is’. Even belief, then, should be understood through the 

practices that it shapes and thus there is no need to get inside the heads of the Other (as if that were 

possible).” 
163

 Gilbert Ryle: The Concept of Mind, p. 21. 
164

 Clifford Geertz: The Interpretation of Cultures, chapt. 1. 
165

 Clifford Geertz: The Interpretation of Cultures, p. 6.  “The winker is communicating and indeed 

communicating in a quite precise and special way: deliberately to someone in particular, to impart a 

particular message, according to a socially established code, and without cognizance of the rest of the 

company.”  Taken from Gilbert Ryle: What is ‘Le Penseur’ doing? 1968, University Lecture 18, 

University of Saskatchewan. 



37 

 

effectiveness of both our collating and describing what is happening within a society 

and our analysis of what we believe are the reasons behind these activities.  As 

Fulbrook says: “We may agree with those hermeneutic theorists, following the insights 

of anthropologists such as Clifford Geertz, who claim that at least one (though not 

necessarily the only) task of historians must be to seek to understand ‘rule guided 

behaviour’ and hence to redescribe the past ‘in its own terms’.”
166

 

 

Such interpretation reflects the three levels of historical experience that the researcher 

brings to the investigation of past events.  There is the immediate and personal 

recollection, where this exists; followed by that of the social and cultural group to which 

the researcher belongs; and finally, the often further removed level of the wider society 

and nation.  Geertz’s own organisation of analysis follows a similar pattern, with his 

first order interpretation relying upon the veracity of community members living within 

a particular society.
167

   Second and third order interpretations are anthropological in 

nature, but still rely upon being in the present.
168

  The classic example provided 

originally by Ryle, that of the sheep raid in central Morocco in 1912,
169

 is presented as 

example of the complex and convoluted way that cultures can operate, and thus the 

obvious difficulties facing social scientists in trying to comprehend the thick description 

behind them.  However, this complexity may only be apparent to an outsider precisely 

because they are an outsider.  To a local, the whole lead up to the sheep raid and its 

aftermath may have been perfectly simple and logical.  Consequently, a significant issue 

of intellectual conflict can arise.  The notion implicit with many anthropologists such as 

Geertz is that only the locals truly appreciate their culture, and that it is up to the 

external observer to discover this knowledge.
170

   

 

                                                           
166

 Mary Fulbrook: Historical Theory, p. 85. 
167

 However, are they often too close for objective evaluation; so close that they often do not notice the 

established codes under which they operate? 
168

 Clifford Geertz: The Interpretation of Cultures, p. 15.  Geertz’s own concept of the varying orders of 

interpretation can appear to be a little confusing, if only because the graduations from one to the other 

both overlap, and are dependent upon circumstances.  According to Geertz, a first order interpretation is 

made by a local or native who has complete knowledge of his or her own culture; a second order 

interpretation is made by informants with local knowledge who relate this knowledge to a professional; 

while third order interpretations are made by anthropologists and professionals from their own 

observations.  According to these definitions, my analysis of the Federation Parades will primarily be 

third order interpretations, with some second order information.  I will be relying upon my own 

observations of an “exotic” culture, along with the written records of a perhaps restricted group of locals 

and inhabitants of the time. 
169

 Clifford Geertz: The Interpretation of Cultures, pp. 7-9. 
170

 Clifford Geertz: The Interpretation of Cultures, pp. 9-11.  Again, the concept of established codes, and 

the notion that “Culture is located in the minds and hearts of men” does not necessarily imply that they 

are conscious of this in the way that an outside professional may be. 



38 

 

However, this can be at variance with reality; one can also be too close to a community 

and a culture to see it with objectivity.  In many instances is it precisely the stranger 

who comes into a culture from the outside who is able to appreciate aspects that are 

missed or dismissed by the locals.  It is often the fresh eyes of this outsider that can 

open up insights that are too close to home for the residents.  Edmund White puts this 

most succinctly; “In fact, one can make a good case that only foreigners can properly 

judge a contemporary [scene or person] – distance gives the objectivity that time will 

eventually provide even to compatriots.”
171

  Further, White’s quote from Pierre 

Bourdieu in many respects foretells the anticipated effectiveness of my research 

process: “Foreign judgements are a little like the judgements of posterity.”
172

   We are 

thus presented with a paradox.  Those present at an event within their own culture often 

comprehend what is actually occurring more accurately because this is their own 

culture, but often do not recognise wider implications that are obvious to an outsider, 

again precisely because they are not outside observers. 

 

My specific historical investigation of Australian society through the thick description 

of the two major Federation marches will also consciously contend with this dilemma.  

Comparison between the parade in Sydney and that in Melbourne will, by its nature 

centre on reconstructions of the events of the past, but from two different perspectives.  

With the former, I will be returning to a city that I remember and still comprehend to a 

fair degree.  In the latter, I will be researching a new location where not only the 

geography is new, but also many of the social cues.  The more informal physical and 

certainly cultural geography of Sydney will be contrasted to the relative formality of 

Melbourne.  The degree to which the cultural aspects of the marches themselves 

reflected this physical topography and the degree to which my own experiences respond 

to these distinctions will thus also form an integral part of my methodology. 

 

This all implies a filtering process over not only the information available, but in my 

case, also through the filter of time.  My thesis will therefore be partially concerned 

with the process of deciding which aspects of the past to include.  This process will, 

hopefully, be conscious, since I am not looking at Australia at the time of Federation in 

                                                           
171

 Edmund White: The Flâneur, 2001, Bloomsbury Publishing, London, p. 28.  This is precisely the 

paradox that I am exploring, and attempting to resolve, in my thesis. 
172

 Richard Shustermann: Pierre Bourdieu: A Critical Reader, 1999, The Social Construction of the 

International Circulation of Ideas, Blackwell, Oxford, p. 221. Quoted in E V Ramakrishnan et al: 

Interdisciplinary Alternatives in Comparative Literature, P P Raveendran: Literature as Supermarket: 

Mapping World Literature Today, p. 59. 



39 

 

order to simply describe the events that took place at the time, or even to debate the 

notion of Federation itself, but rather to use the Federation of the nation to investigate 

the kind of nation that Australians at the time were intending to consciously and 

unconsciously create.  How to analyse this in practical terms will raise issues that have 

long been present in the philosophy of history through the concept of re-enacting the 

past in the mind of the historian. These have been extrapolated from the physical 

sciences to social science by philosophers such as Dilthey and Collingwood.  By 

utilising Clifford Geertz’s adaptation of Gilbert Ryle’s anthropological theory of thick 

description I will, again, journey not so much to a foreign culture in the present as to my 

own culture in the past.   

 

 

MARCHES AND ARCHES  

 

Since I will be footstepping the routes of the two principal Federation parades through 

the street of Sydney and Melbourne and investigating and analysing non-literary 

sources, I will be attempting to put into words ideas and concepts that were, at the time, 

expressed in ways additional to conscious historical reportage.  I will therefore need to 

consider the significance of marches and commemorative arches themselves.  

 

According to the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language, the Pocket Oxford 

Dictionaries of Greek and Latin, and the Heritage Illustrated Dictionary of the English 

Language,
173

  both the words March and Arch have ancient Indo-European roots that 

have generally retained their meanings to the present day.  The word March has an 

interesting derivation, although not through the obvious (if only in English) similarity to 

the word Arch.  The Indo-European root for this term is merg, meaning border or 

boundary. From this, we obtain words as wide ranging as margins, demarcation, merge 

and mark.  There is thus the twofold concept of the border, and the defining of the 

border by walking around it: markon; to mark with footprints.  In Britain, the Welsh 

Marches were the lands established and patrolled during the Middle Ages to mark out 

the border of the “civilised” world.  There is also the more ominous old French root of 

                                                           
173

 Oxford University Press: The Oxford English Dictionary, 2001, Oxford University Press, Oxford. 

Oxford University Press: Pocket Oxford Classical Greek Dictionary, 2002, Oxford University Press, 

Oxford.  Oxford University Press: Pocket Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2001, Oxford University Press, 

Oxford.  William Morris: The Heritage Illustrated Dictionary of the English Language, 1975, McGraw-

Hill International, New York, p. 1529. 



40 

 

marcar: to seize, with the possible additional notion of marking out for conquest.  The 

notion of beating the bounds to demarcate an area; militarily, politically or culturally 

continues this concept. 

 

Hence, a march is not simply a parade that is conducted to celebrate an event.  There is 

a more substantial demonstration of political strength and power, and the formal 

marking out of a route or region over which one is making a political and military 

claim.  The route itself becomes as significant as the composition, since possession is 

being formally taken of all places passed by, and all places contained within the 

established boundaries.  As will be analysed later in my thesis, it was also the areas and 

districts that were left off the routes, and thus symbolically sidelined from inclusion in 

the new nation, that were often as significant as those areas integrated through the 

formal marching process. 

 

Arch comes from the integration of three related roots. The source word arkw means 

bow and was contemporaneous with the complementary root arw, arrow.
174

  This seems 

an obvious reflection of the shape and structure of both the original and current physical 

forms.  Just as a bow bends without breaking in order to create the force to fire an 

arrow, so an arch bends as a means of transferring its massive force to the ground 

without collapsing.  There is thus the sense of both stability and power, and it would 

appear to be no coincidence that the word is also closely aligned with the other root, 

ark: to begin and to rule.  Words such as archon, archive, archbishop, and the older 

Indo-European aryo: lord, ruler, compound the physical description with a social and 

political purpose.  There is thus the strong concept of power that is derived not just from 

brute force but from a sense of entitlement.  It is obvious why Roman generals and even 

French emperors should wish to ennoble and legitimise their often blatant deeds of brute 

force with structures of such solid permanence. 

 

It therefore does seem strange that all the arches constructed to commemorate as 

momentous an event as the Federation of Australia should have been so temporary and 

then so quickly dismantled (in the case of those that did not actually fall down of their 

own volition).  Tessa Milne, in her Centenary of Federation booklet found it “difficult 

to comprehend that those formidable arches ….were not great architectural feats, but 

                                                           
174

 William Morris: The Heritage Illustrated Dictionary of the English Language, p. 1506. 



41 

 

mere ‘shams’ of their ancient counterparts….”
175

   In truth, there was apparently a 

proposal to replace the temporary Commonwealth Arch in Park Street Sydney with a 

£12,000 permanent structure, including a museum, at the site, but this fell by the 

wayside.
176

  Instead of one arch to stand for all time to commemorate the creation of the 

Commonwealth, there were multiple temporary structures designed to include as many 

aspects of the cultural milieu as possible; yet all to come down once the celebrations 

were over.  Milne also makes the comment that, to many today, it seems just as strange 

that people at the time should have adopted what is a very old world classical form of 

“high Victoriana” to celebrate the then most modern newly established country in the 

world.
177

  Is it possible that Australians in 1901 were not thinking of themselves as a 

new creation in a country only one hundred and thirteen years old, but rather as part of a 

cultural continuum that stretched back millennia?   

 

Arches were thus a very common means of celebrating and commemorating great civic 

events throughout the European world of the nineteenth and early twentieth century.  

Again, their invariably temporary nature also masked often questionable and 

problematic themes.  Milne mentions the 1901 Royal Tour of Christchurch in New 

Zealand; part of the same tour that included the May Melbourne Federation celebrations 

in Australia.  The local civic fathers came up with the novel concept of promoting both 

the agricultural wealth of the south island and the newly developed techniques of 

refrigerated transportation by erecting an arch of ice and frozen sheep carcases.
178

  The 

local New Zealand Herald apparently thought the result gave “a disappointing 

appearance, looking bare and tawdry”.
179

  At least the frozen sheep were beyond care in 

terms of comfort.  The suffering of other live animals such as “cows, horses, sheep and 

poultry housed in additional arched towers”
180

 can only be imagined. 

 

The cultural representation of arches used in so many of the commemorations at the 

time also lent itself to its own form of pointed social commentary.  Cartoonist 

Livingston Hopkins, or “Hop” from The Bulletin, drew an illustration titled “The Arch 

                                                           
175

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 3. 
176

 Helen Irving: The Centenary Companion to Australian Federation, p. 333. 
177

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 3.  Helen 

Irving: To Constitute a Nation – a Cultural History of Australia’s Constitution, p. 9. “But they were 

assembled out of everyday materials, most were decorative and picturesque, rather than stern and 

classical, and none was permanent.” 
178

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 7. 
179

 The New Zealand Herald: 24 June 1901, p. 6. 
180

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 7. 



42 

 

of the Unemployed” at the time of the establishment of the Federal parliament in 

Melbourne.
181

  This imaginary structure comprised towers of the unemployed poor, with 

half a dozen working men on top holding a banner that read “Remember Lazarus the 

First Unemployed”.
182

   As an aside, “Hop” was also one of that small but influential 

number of Americans of liberal persuasion who was to have a disproportionate 

influence on Federation era Australia.
183

 

 

As stated, such public displays to commemorate special events have been used for 

millennia, although often adopting the most up to day technology available at the time.  

With the visual sense being so strong in human beings, the availability of artificial light 

during the nineteenth century changed forever the nature of public performance.  The 

use of candles and then gas lamps to portray images on screens dates from the mid 

Victorian era, with Anita Callaway quoting instances of light and illusion being 

employed in Collins Street Melbourne to commemorate the marriage of the Prince of 

Wales in 1863:  “Light was the key factor in creation this illusion…” using the newly 

developing technology of gas illumination behind material and paper transparencies.
184

   

 

Callaway earlier alludes to the use of what was then the most up to date technology for 

earlier celebrations in the colonies of New South Wales, Victoria and Van Diemen’s 

Land.
185

  That night time events included the risky use of candles and thin paper 

transparencies would have added to the rarity of such occasions and hence the 

heightened sense of uniqueness and also other-worldliness.  Even today, while night 

events may attract more people and create more excitement; many sense a lack of 

legitimacy, as though people feel that they are being somehow manipulated and that the 

outcome lacks suitable formality.
 186

  Night and artificial light remain the preserve of 

fantasy in both a negative and positive sense.
187

  While placing questions over the 

                                                           
181

 The Bulletin: 11 May 1901, p. 17. 
182

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, pp. 12, 13. 
183

 B G Andrews: Livingston York Yourtee Hopkins, Australian Dictionary of Biography online, National 

Centre of Biography, Australian National University, Canberra.  It is a little ironic that Hop’s biographer 

should then claim that “though his political satire was racy and irreverent, it lacked toughness;” 
184

 Anita Callaway: Visual Ephemera, 2000, University of NSW Press, Sydney, p. 52. 
185

 Anita Callaway: Visual Ephemera, 2000, University of NSW Press, Sydney, po.23-26. 
186

 Chris Jenks: Visual Culture, 1993, Routledge, London, United Kingdom, p. 152.  As well as 

commenting on the English Victorian gentry’s visitation to dark working class enclaves as a form of 

entertainment, Jenks also expands to reflect on the general parallel between darkness, degradation and 

“dangerous delights”. 
187

 Anita Callaway: Visual Ephemera, 2000, p. 52. Even today there is still this distinction between the 

emotional and slightly risqué night-time artificially lit activity and the formality of day time and the 

objective glare of the sun.  Night football and the night time racing of cars and horses are extremely 



43 

 

veracity of serious activities, night and dark also paper over many of the social 

distinctions that exist in the clear light of day.  The Argus, for example, went out of its 

way to emphasise the egalitarian effect of the lighted celebrations for the Prince of 

Wales’ wedding; “Not one class but all – artisan and merchant, labourer and civil 

servant.”
188

  Consequently, although many of the supplementary displays centred on 

lighted streets and displays, the two principal Federation marches themselves were still 

conducted in the clear light of day. 

 

In an interesting period touch, the visiting English journalist Edward Frederick Knight 

later wrote about, “finding Melbourne’s [Federation] lights so brilliant as to attract “the 

attention of the Martians (my emphasis) and startle them.”
189

  This one sentence 

perhaps as much as anything establishes Australia’s Federation in the modern era.  It 

was only two years earlier, in 1898, that author H G Wells had published the science 

fiction novel The War of the Worlds, describing an invasion of Earth by Martians.  

Science Fiction researcher Mike Ashley states that “It was left to H G Wells to develop 

the popularity of the invasion-threat novel by having the ultimate invader, the Martians, 

in The War of the Worlds.”
190

  With the outbreak of plague in Sydney only two years 

later Ashley’s comment on the ending of Wells’ imaginary invasion is rather pertinent. 

“Wells has an ace up his sleeve, though, when the Martians fall victim to disease, the 

smallest microbe achieving what humanity failed to do.”
191

  As with the earlier The 

Time Machine (1895), the science fiction clearly demonstrates how close the Federation 

period was to our own era, and our modern view of the world.   

 

The concept of having marches to celebrate or commemorate momentous events has 

some history in Australia, although it must be said, less so than other cultures.  One 

could argue that traditionally Australians are uncomfortable with such public 

performances.  As the writer for The Argus quipped, “Young Australia was not stiff and 

military.  It was informal, hatless and shoeless.  Australian statesmen did not display 

                                                                                                                                                                          
attractive and thrilling spectacles, but the more ‘serious’ events of grand finals, grand prix and Melbourne 

Cups generally still revert to the daylight hours (although, for how long?).   
188

 The Argus: 12 May 1863, p. 5. 
189

 E F Knight: With the Royal Tour, 1902, Longmans Green, London, p. 111. 
190

 Mike Ashley: Discovering Literature – Romantics and Victorians, British Library database. 
191

 Mike Ashley: Discovering Literature – Romantics and Victorians, British Library database. 



44 

 

their Imperial honours.  Those who became pompous and official or took themselves 

too seriously were laughed at.”
192

   

 

While there are isolated unique events welcoming home successful sporting stars and 

teams or military forces, Australia tends not to have many annual parades although, 

Anzac Day, St Patrick’s Day and Moomba parades do come to mind.
193

  Therefore, the 

significance of the two Federation parades was actually their uniqueness as events 

intending to commemorate the singular political union of the nation.  By its very nature, 

this was only going to occur the once, so that any successes, or more importantly 

failings, could not be amended the next year.  The processions may therefore have been 

compared with other similar events in other nations or the individual colonies, but not, 

as happens with Anzac Day marches, for example, with the previous year’s parade. 

 

Gavin Souter continued the analogies with other unique social conventions and rituals, 

likening the events on 1
 
January 1901 to both a marriage and an initiation:  

 

Like the real tribal initiation that took place during the weeks between the Inauguration 

and the opening of the first Federal Parliament 9
 
May 1901…The Aranda coming-of 

age ceremony in Central Australia….a succession of shock-absorbing, status-

confirming rites…associated with many totems.  While the coming of age and social 

maturity of the nation grew slowly and relentlessly as the maturity of a person, marriage 

is a singular activity that can define the rest of one’s life.
194

 

 

Irving furthers the metaphorical allusion by even quoting the anti-Federation (or more 

accurately, questioning Federation
195

) former premier of NSW George Dibbs: “that this 

[the first referendum campaign] was not like an ordinary election, but more like a young 

man taking to himself a wife ‘for better or for worse’”.  And that marriage, unlike 

Federation “…would allow a man to get rid of his wife if such a thing was 

expedient.”
196

  So there was certainly the recognition of both the significance and the 

                                                           
192

 The Argus: 2 January 1901. Quoted in Helen Irving: To Constitute a Nation – a Cultural History of 

Australia’s Constitution, p. 9. 
193

 The Age: 4 November 2013 online. Thousands flock to city for Melbourne Cup parade. “The 

Australian belief in having a fair go and everyone having a fair chance. So whether it’s a battler who’s 

bought a horse on the cheap or the richest man in the world who’s trying to win the Melbourne Cup in the 

handicap they all get a fair go." 
194

 Gavin Souter: Lion and Kangaroo – the initiation of Australia 1901-1919, p. 31. 
195

 Helen Irving: The Centenary Companion to Australian Federation, p. 356. 
196

 Helen Irving: To Constitute a Nation – a Cultural History of Australia’s Constitution, p. 7. 



45 

 

permanence of the process on the part of those who both supported and opposed 

Federation.  

 

 

MAPPING AND PHOTOGRAPHY 

 

Since my footstepping process will be following the well planned and well-marked 

routes of the two marches, mapping both the original parades and my latter day research 

will form an integral part of my thesis.  The Federation of Australia took place before 

the advent of the automobile as the ubiquitous form of private transport and 

consequently many street maps of the time were of a quality and an accuracy that would 

be quite unacceptable today.  Although effective enough for reference (particularly the 

ones in the press marking out the routes of the parades) their production was poor and 

reproduction even worse.  Anderson spends time discussing the development of 

mapping in Thailand through the nineteenth century, and the way that this later 

development would have paralleled its earlier evolution in Europe. “Only in the 1870s 

did Thai leaders begin thinking of boundaries as segments of continuous map line 

corresponding to nothing visible on the ground but demarcating an exclusive 

sovereignty wedged between other sovereignties.”
197

  This complements my earlier 

discussion on the notion of the march pacing out the political boundaries of a newly 

imagined nation in ways that predated the print technology of mapping. 

 

The imagining of the mapped landscape is thus as reliant upon print technology as the 

written word in newspapers and journals.  Just as the availability of printing techniques 

are required to imagine such new political orders and their boundaries, so the 

technological requirements of motorised transport have compelled the creation of road 

maps that actually do correspond to what is visible on the ground, and therefore leave 

far less to the imagination.  While not overtly political, these maps do reflect strong 

cultural expectations in what their designers and publishers consider to be significant 

enough to include.  The decision whether to include either named or unnamed churches, 

and named or unnamed private and state schools are certainly cultural decisions that 

could be regarded as political.  While earlier road maps only found it necessary to 

include roads, railways and suburbs without even the scaling necessary to easily find 

                                                           
197

 Benedict Anderson: Imagined Communities, p. 172. 



46 

 

locations,
198

 later street directories now include both scales and keys on each page to 

accommodate the expectations of a totally mobile society.
199

 

 

I have therefore relied upon later street directories that, although a mere one or two 

decades distant provide much clearer graphics, while still indicating the roads and 

streets as they existed in 1901.
200

  My current day footstepping was also guided by 

current day street directories for Sydney and Melbourne,
201

 since these reflect the reality 

of the city that I actually experienced as I walk the routes.  Since this thesis is 

comparing process and methodologies between the two cities, with Sydney relying 

partly on my own memories of the city from the past, I referred to an earlier 1988 

Sydney street directory.  Due as much to graphic clarity as any other reason, I also 

decided to utilise the maps from this 1988 Sydney Street Directory and the 1993 

Gregory’s 2
nd

 Edition Melbourne Compact Street Directory
202

 as the general location 

guides in the photograph volumes of my thesis.  While a couple of decades out of date 

in terms of some city buildings,
203

 these maps give the clearest illustration of the routes 

taken by the two marches. 

 

I have also relied upon the Sands’ Directories for both Sydney and Melbourne: 1900 for 

Sydney and 1901 for Melbourne, to locate specific premises along the routes of the two 

marches.
204

  Information for these directories were collected door to door by Sands’ 

Agents, published between 1858 and 1932 and paid for by advertising in the 

directories.
205

  Consequently, while open to error, they were all encompassing, giving 

entries for every number in each street and even the individual residences and 

businesses in multi storey and commercial premises. They therefore give the clearest 

                                                           
198

 Gregory’s: Sydney Street Directory 1934, 2006, The Australian Book Guide Company, Sydney. 

Anderson Gowan: Melbourne Street Directory 1921, 1921, Anderson Gowan, Melbourne. 
199

 UBD Australia: UBD Sydney Street Directory 2000, 2000, Universal Press, Sydney, Australia. 
200

 Gregory’s: Sydney Street Directory 1934. 

Anderson Gowan: Melbourne Street Directory 1921. 
201

 Gregory’s: Sydney Street Directory 2011, 2010, Universal Press, Sydney.   

UBD: Melbourne Street Directory 2008, 2008, Universal Press, Melbourne. 
202

 Gregory’s: Sydney Street Directory (Maxi) 1988, 1988 Universal Press, Sydney.   

Gregory’s: Melbourne Compact Street Directory 1993, 1993, Universal Press, Melbourne. 
203

 The most notable changes evident in the Sydney Directory over the intervening twenty four years are 

the blank spaces at Darling Harbour evident of the time taken to come to some arrangement over the fate 

of the Barangaroo site, and the marking of the original Moore Park location of Sydney’s Showground.  

This site is of course now Fox Studios, with the Showground moved to Homebush Bay.    
204

 John Sands: Sands’ Sydney and Suburban Directory for 1900, 1900, John Sands, Sydney, Australia. 

Sands and McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, 1901, Sands & McDougall, 

Melbourne, Australia. 
205

 Paul Convey Randwick Historical Society: Sands Sydney Directory – an Introduction to its use 

database. 



47 

 

and most accurate listing of both residential and business addresses of the time.  The 

role of these directories would eventually be taken over by the telephone white and 

yellow pages and by commercial street directories thirty years later in the era of the 

1934 Gregory’s. 

 

A central aspect of my footstepping approach to this historical investigation was also 

the photographic record, since this provided the most effective method of recording the 

geographical and architectural aspects of my thesis.  Whatever other non-literary 

sources of evidence I may be uncovering through my footstepping approach, I still 

needed to record the results of this research in a traditional form, through the written 

report and discourse of my thesis, and through a photographic record of the two 

Federation parades. 

 

There were three interconnected forms of photograph used to accompany the text of my 

thesis: those taken during my footstepping the parade routes, the original 1901 images 

of the parades themselves and the arches along the routes, and also general images of 

the two cities taken around 1900 indicating not only specific sites either along the routes 

but also those close to the routes that covered specific issues raised within my thesis.  

The two volumes of the photographic booklet are intended to be read as historical 

documents in themselves as well as supplementary to my thesis.  Therefore, I have cited 

the accompanying photograph book within my thesis by volume and page number, since 

the photographs themselves contain additional caption material and information.  

Historical photographs are referenced within the caption texts, while those taken during 

the footstepping process are numbered for reference according to my photographer’s 

proof sheet listing. 

 

I would claim that the inclusion of such photographic material has a chequered career in 

historical discourse, being both a valuable source of additional information but also 

mistrusted; reflected in the fact that few academic histories contain more than a 

smattering of photographs or drawings. While Peter Burke has stated that: “Photographs 

are never evidence of history: they are themselves the historical,”
206

  there is some 

recognition that a level of blatant subjectivity can be present.  For example, Burke goes 

on to include Sarah Graham-Brown’s discussion on the significance of the variation 

between original sepia prints and later black and white and full colour photographs:  “a 
                                                           
206

 Peter Burke: Eyewitnessing – the Uses of Images as Historical Evidence, 2001, Reaktion Books, p. 23. 



48 

 

soft sepia print can produce a calm aura of ‘things past’, while a black-and-white image 

may convey a sense of a harsh reality.”
207

  However, for the press, the role of the 

photographic image can become inverted and actually lend a greater degree of 

authenticity to written articles.  As Peter Burke states: 

 

Newspapers have long been using photographs as evidence of authenticity.  Like 

television images, these photographs make a powerful contribution to what the critic 

Roland Barthes has called the ‘reality effect’.  In the case of old photographs of cities, 

for example, especially when they are enlarged to fill a wall, the viewer may well 

experience a vivid sensation that he or she could enter the photograph and walk down 

the street.
208

   

 

In this, the footstepper and geographical historian is adopting more the role of the 

journalist when relying on either images themselves or image laden thick description. 

“For their part, urban historians not infrequently use paintings,  prints and photographs 

as so as to imagine and to enable their readers to imagine the former appearance of 

cities,”
209

 

 

In adopting the complementary inclusion of photographs I was assisted by my wife, 

photographer Patricia Casnave.  It was, in fact, the knowledge that I would be able to 

call upon Patricia’s expertise in architectural and historical photography that I chose to 

analyse the two Federation marches using methodological approach.  Other 

photographic influences have been the Australian photographers Harold Cazneaux and 

Max Dupain.  Harold Cazneaux, was very much a creative and artistic photographer, so 

while his work may not accord directly with the requirements of my thesis, his principle 

that the “photographer must be in accordance with all nature’s moods, he must feel the 

very spirit of the scene if he is to be successful,”
210

 provided a guide to approaching the 

geography of a scene with a feeling for landscape.  Max Dupain took more of an 

objective scientific approach, and is perhaps closer to the ideal of the historian.  There is 

both the desire to present an accurate record that can be entrusted with the role of a 

verifiable record, and the historical concept that there is a social purpose behind the 

                                                           
207

 Peter Burke: Eyewitnessing – the Uses of Images as Historical Evidence, p. 22.  However, this may 

well be a modern sensibility in an era when we have both formats, as well as colour prints, and are thus 

able to distinguish amongst the different options. 
208

 Peter Burke: Eyewitnessing – the Uses of Images as Historical Evidence, pp. 21-22. 
209

 Peter Burke: Eyewitnessing – the Uses of Images as Historical Evidence, p. 85. 
210

 Helen Ennis: Cazneaux, the Quiet Observer, 1994, National Library of Australia, Canberra, p. 29. 



49 

 

photographic exercise.  “Modern photography must do more than entertain; it must 

incite thought and, by its clean statements of actuality, cultivate a sympathetic 

understanding of men and women, and the life they create and live.”
211

 

 

My methodology to uncover and evaluate the kind of imagined Australian community 

that was represented through the two major Federation parades has therefore been able 

to combine the practical process of footstepping with the interpretive analysis of thick 

description through the additional recording of the sites and locations that I viewed and 

visited.  I have also utilised the process of researching the written record for additional 

social and historical perspectives and for comparing with my own research and results. 

Just as individual diaries and personal records were employed by Richard Holmes as the 

practical initiators and motivation for the research into his individual biographical 

subjects , so I integrated the experiences of the cities of Sydney and Melbourne and 

their communities through the press and historical commentary to the analyse the 

biography of Australian society.  The newspapers of the day essentially became the 

diaries of those communities that Wilhelm Dilthey considered to be the foundation of 

the historical process.  Evidence was thus further collated through the photographic 

record of the era with geographical and architectural photography used as part of the 

recording process, resulting in both a written and visual evaluation of the two principle 

parades through the two largest Australia cities a century ago. 

 

 

                                                           
211

 Jill White: Dupain’s Sydney, 1999, Chapter & Verse, Sydney, end cover reference. 



50 

 

SYDNEY FEDERATION PARADE 

 

 

1.  ARRIVAL IN THE CITY  

 

My footstepping in Sydney commenced with my arrival in the city, early in the 

afternoon of 16 November 2008, just as the new spring warmth was beginning to rise up 

through the city.  The bus had left Canberra earlier that morning with the heat of an 

inland drought lying upon the countryside.  Over the next three hours, as it journeyed 

north east and joined the Hume Highway, the dry grasslands became greener and the 

damp of early morning fog slapped against the windscreen.  The land became more 

mountainous, with the cool rugged forests of the Southern Highlands dropping down 

steeply to the foggy rivers and creeks giving a hint of what the whole region must have 

been like a century ago. 

 

We drifted down onto the coastal plain and soon arrived at Campbelltown; the industrial 

outskirts of Sydney.  New tiled roofed houses crept over the hills, dusty corrugated iron 

factories and glaring reflections from the windscreens of Commodores and Falcons in 

the used car lots now filled the old paddocks that had once fed the colony of Sydney.
1
  

Grass that had originally spread across farms and wide fields now struggled to poke out 

from the gravel between cracked concrete footpaths and dusty gutters. 

 

As the bus hummed eastward, it began retracing, in reverse, the development and 

expansion of the city that had taken place over the previous two centuries of European 

settlement.  The twenty first century now blended back into the 1960s as the houses 

became older, and the storage yards smaller.  Rows of cars and building timber were 

replaced by containers of imported cartons and rusty scaffolding.  The proud 

industrialisation that had expanded from Federation to the 1970s was now in retreat, 

leaving behind empty sheds and piles of disused pallets.  The Bankstown district east of 

the Georges River had been opened up after the Second World War; with the fibro and 

weatherboard cottages used to house both the returned servicemen, and the first influx 

of post-war migrants.  These were also the first bands of suburbs that were defined by 

                                                 
1
 Grace Karskens: The Colony – a history of early Sydney, 2009, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, pp. 286-287. 

Even from the era of the early escaped cattle at Cowpastures and the Macarthurs at Elizabeth Farm, the 

district had been a vital agricultural region. 



51 

 

the motor car rather than by public transport, and the first to be then demolished to 

make way for the expressways that have become the city’s means of coping with the 

automobile. 

 

The bus continued on, entering Canterbury, and what were the outskirts of the city a 

century ago.  The aptly named Federation and late Victorian bungalows now struggle to 

retain a foothold among the new units and town houses as more and more people seek 

to take advantage of the closeness to the city centre and the original public transport 

networks.  Commercial lots disappeared with wide roads replaced by bus lanes and 

railway stations, and the hot dusty haze became clearer as coastal breezes filtered in 

through the streets.  Ironically, it is at this very point where the original pre-automotive 

city actually commences, that the new M5 South Western Distributor suddenly dives 

into the tunnel that now redirects traffic from Bexley Road to the airport and the inner 

metropolis.   

 

After diverting through Mascot Airport, the bus now entered the closed cramped streets 

of the inner west.  At the time of Federation, the central ring of suburbs from Waterloo 

and Redfern to Leichhardt was changing from the original comfortable suburban fringe 

into slums for the poor.  Industrialisation was filling the streets with factories, brick pits 

and railway yards, and the grand multistorey villas and terraces were being divided up 

into lodging houses.  The broad vistaed balconies were crudely boarded up as their 

original residents moved out to new commuter suburbs such as Strathfield and 

Hurstville.
2
  Now it is the industrial workers who need to follow the factories as they 

move out to Campbelltown, while the great grandchildren of the original middle-class 

suburbanites are coming back.  The terraces that I remembered being derelict were now 

shining with fresh paint, new iron roofs and recast lace, with the rusting old Holdens 

that had filled the narrow streets running back from the main roads now replaced by 

shiny new Audis and four wheel drives.
3
  

 

                                                 
2
 Peter Spearritt: Sydney’s Century – a History, 2000, University of NSW Press, Sydney, pp. 69-71.  Note 

the 1935 Labor Daily report given by Labor Premier William McKell, titled Evils of Slum Areas.  He 

singled out Redfern Paddington, Newtown, Glebe, Pyrmont, Balmain, Alexandria, Waterloo and Botany 

as “the State’s most important problems”. Some of these suburbs are still in transition and others now 

contain some of the most sought after and expensive real estate in the city.  The Sydney Moring Herald: 4 

November 1939, p. 18.  McKell, now as leader of the opposition, again claimed that “the slum problem 

had been ignored too long.” 
3
 Peter Spearritt: Sydney’s Century – a History, p. 207.  Access to the harbour is also one of the 

limitations placed upon many of the previous inhabitants of the newly gentrified suburbs. 



52 

 

The bus finally arrived at Central Railway Station and I began the short walk along 

Elizabeth Street and up Wentworth Avenue to my hotel on the southern edge of Hyde 

Park.  This whole district around Brickfield Hill, south of the Central Business District, 

would also have looked remarkably different at the time of Federation.  After fifty years 

of deliberation, the decision had finally been made in 1900 to construct a major rail 

terminus for the city.
4
  The site chosen had unfortunately been used as the Devonshire 

Street Cemetery, and so, as the planning progressed for the Federation march to traverse 

College Street and Oxford Street on the ridge above, planning was also underway for 

steam trams below to remove the 1,145 bodies for reinterment in Botany Cemetery.
5
 

 

Wentworth Avenue also did not exist at the time; but more of that later.  I was more 

concerned with making it up the hill and settling into the Hyde Park Plaza.  This 

residence was itself an interesting relic from my own past.  The three towers that now 

occupy the College Street block from Oxford Street back to Sydney Grammar School 

were built in the late1960s, early 1970s; about the time that I was leaving school and 

leaving the city for teacher training in the country.  Sydney then was in the throes of 

high modernism, both architecturally and socially.  The pattern of uncontrolled change 

that had been evolving during the post Second World War era had come to fruition, 

with the destruction of more and more of the Victorian sandstone and brick buildings 

that had been crisp and new at Federation.  The belief that the new is superior and the 

old is passé  had extended to the social fabric and, along with most other young people 

at the time I absorbed this ideal, to the degree that I cannot now remember what actually 

occupied our hotel site prior to its construction.  The much older inner city Victorian 

professional residences would have been long gone; but replaced by what?
6
   

 

Once settled into my room, I decided to fill in the brief remainder of the afternoon by 

strolling around what had always been my favourite quarter of Sydney, the eastern edge 

of the city.
7
 The city of Sydney has, from the beginning, been defined by hills and 

gullies, and the ten kilometre curved sandstone ridge running from Enmore and 

                                                 
4
 Sydney Evening News: 6 January 1902, p. 6. The New Railway Station to cost £400,000.  Although the 

usual blow-out had occurred between the April 1900 decision and estimate of £233,000 and the greater 

amount two years later, newspaper articles still concentrated on the “Stateliness and Beauty” of the 

design. 
5
 David Burke: Making the Railways, 1995, State Library of NSW, Sydney, p. 140. 

6
 This cultural amnesia must be rather general since, even with research, I have not found any mention, or 

complete images of the buildings that predated the current hotels. However, there is a glimpse of what 

existed at the time of Federation in the Photograph Booklet vol. 1, p. 91, with the three storey building on 

the left occupying the corner of what will become the Hyde Park Plaza. 
7
 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 3. 



53 

 

Newtown to Surry Hills, and eventually through Bondi Junction and Charing Cross to 

the heights of Randwick, has long divided the city between the old industrial plain 

stretching to Botany Bay and the wealthier slopes to the harbour and coast.  The 

Federation parade itself was defined by this landform as it followed the crest of the 

ridge along the major thoroughfare of Oxford Street.
8
 

 

Over the intervening decades, this city end of Oxford Street has morphed from the 

quality clothing district between the wars to a cluster of 1960s Mod wine bars, then to 

the city’s gay strip, to seedy abandonment, and finally back to a sort of inner urban 

normality.  Massage and tattoo parlours were now replaced by hardware stores and 

home improvement shops, mirroring the hip young as they matured into family oriented 

mums and dads.  Even some of those icons of modernism that had been so new and 

revolutionary in my youth, no longer held the same attraction.  The moving footpath 

from the Domain car park to St James station, now half a century old, appeared as a 

rattling and jarring anachronism, continuing to lumber along with an arthritic stagger, 

perhaps because no-one can afford to dismantle it.
9
  There is even talk of demolishing 

the epitome of 1950s modernist progress; the Cahill Expressway, although  while this 

still squashes itself across the top of Circular Quay, the rusting crumbling concrete 

cancer eating into its supports may yet make such discussion superfluous.
10

  The 

recently deceased Harry Seidler had constructed one last phallic flourish in 

Darlinghurst,
11

 but few seemed to be following his lead, and his Blues Point Tower had 

again been voted the most unpopular building in the city.
12

  The frenetic destructiveness 

from four decades earlier now seemed calmer in the architectural sense, although the 

hustle and bustle of the streets was as hectic as ever.  The push toward the new and the 

modern still exists, of course, but has itself pushed westward, and is now filling colonial 

Parramatta with the same bland concrete and glass that had been the case earlier in the 

city centre.   

 

                                                 
8
 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 3.  The original map of the Federation Parade route follows the end of this 

sandstone ridge. 
9
 Photograph booklet vol.1, p. 4.  The route of this footpath is visible on the lower current map, in the 

Domain, just below the red title: Sydney. 
10

 Parliament of NSW: Legislative Assembly Hansard 15 Sept 1994. 
11

 Harry Seidler and Associates: Horizon Apartments Forbes Street Darlinghurst database. 
12

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 28 September 2002 online.  Towering Ambition: Blues Point Tower. 

Kilsby Australia: Urban Design database, quoting amongst others, the poet Les Murray. “I hate that 

building, I really do. It's an ugly piece of rubbish.” 



54 

 

The large and ornate Victorian era government offices in Macquarie and Bridge Streets 

meanwhile had been transformed from actual working institutions, to empty and 

discarded shells, now to restored hotels and convention centres.  But at least they and 

their streetscapes still survive.   The point where the original 1901 march, and my re-

tracing of its route commenced; the eastern sandstone side of the city, remained almost 

identical to how I remembered it in the 1960s, and remarkably similar to how it would 

have appeared in 1901.  That the Federation parade should have taken this route a 

century ago was still as obvious today as it would have been then.  It was also obvious 

that the principal celebrations for the newly Federated nation should have been planned 

for the city of Sydney.  Although from 1861 to 1901 Sydney had been eclipsed by 

Melbourne in population and civic wealth,
13

 this city was the site of the original 

European settlement in the nation, and the mother colony to most of the others that 

arose later.  At the time of Federation, the ending of convict transportation and the 

awarding of self-government itself was only half a century in the past.  Even today there 

is a strong link with this colonial past in the fact that the city itself was never formally 

christened.  Governor Phillip designated the location of the new settlement “Sydney 

Cove” after Lord Sydney, Secretary for the Home Department, which at the time 

administered colonial affairs.  The land around the harbour, known then as Port 

Jackson, was declared the County of Cumberland, with the intention of eventually 

naming the settlement “Albion”.
14

  This never occurred.  Phillip continued to send his 

dispatches back to Britain headed “from Sydney Cove”, and eventually just “from 

Sydney”; and the name stuck. 

 

From the very beginning, the town, and then city, was haphazard and unplanned, with a 

disordered approach to survival that it retains to this day.  While staid, deliberate 

Melbourne may adopt the affectation of ideological anarchy in fashion, radical politics 

and theoretical sociology, Sydney lives it every day in chaotic roads, public transport 

that exists on the point of collapse and political shenanigans that would make a 

Byzantine emperor green with envy. 

 

 

 

 

                                                 
13

 Deborah Tout-Smith: Melbourne, a City of Stories, 2008, Museum Victoria, Melbourne, p. 54. 
14

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 25 February 1933, p. 8.  



55 

 

2.  COMMENCEMENT OF THE MARCH 

 

It should be remembered that the marches investigated and analysed in this thesis were 

only two major events from a full half a year of celebrations through 1901.  In Sydney 

there was the Federation march, or Inauguration Parade that led to the formal 

proclamation of the new nation on 1 January 1901.  This was followed by a smaller 

parade a week later and then another celebrating the Royal Visit later in May.  The 

Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York (later to become King George V and his 

consort Queen Mary) had again been welcomed by the city of Sydney en route back to 

Britain, via New Zealand, after opening the first Australian Parliament in Melbourne.
15

  

This Melbourne event was also accompanied by two major, and many minor, 

processions through the southern city.  There were also parades through the other major 

cities of the nation, and even various suburban locations in Sydney and country towns 

had their own celebrations to commemorate the momentous events. 

 

My footstepping therefore followed a similar pattern.  Although primarily based on 

retracing the main Sydney and the Melbourne processions, their routes have been 

returned to at various times to both add to the specific interpretation, and to 

accommodate a retracing of the marches closer to their original time of the year.  While 

most of the Sydney analysis was done during the November 2008 visit, the process was 

repeated in early January 2011.  The later investigation was primarily to review the 

march at the same time of year as the original, and to time an uninterrupted walk along 

the entire route, including out to the location of the Federation pavilion in Centennial 

Park.  This compared well with the weather as it was experienced  in 1901, since the 

initial footstepping was undertaken during a drought, as was the original parade, while 

the later exercise occurred as the hot mid-summer city was daily threatened with 

showers and rain, again as was originally the case.
16

 

 

My initial retracing of the march began the day after my arrival, as the new warm sun 

was again beginning to heat the city.  The mornings were still crisp and cool, but by 

mid-morning the dry glare was bouncing off the glass walls of the skyscrapers.  A long 

drought had shown no sign of abating, and for people living in the city, rain was no 

                                                 
15

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 6 June 1901, p. 6.  The Duke’s Departure. 
16

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, 2000, The 1901 

Centre University of Technology, Sydney, p. 22. 



56 

 

longer an unfortunate incident to be tolerated, but a longing on the horizon that now 

rarely eventuated: and so it was in 1901.  Then too the fin de siecle drought had gripped 

the land, although as if by divine intervention, Federation brought relief.  The nation 

had, in most places, been under some level of drought since 1895.
17

  In Victoria through 

the 1890s, that colony had to import wheat from California for its own bread 

consumption,
18

 no doubt reinforcing the new state’s preference for an economy based 

on protected manufacturing rather than an agricultural industry open to the vagaries of 

the weather.  In fact, it was the burden of the then longest drought in the short history of 

European settlement on the continent that was one of the many pressures pushing the 

colonies to federate.
19

 

 

However, in Sydney one can always rely upon a blustery summer storm to clear the dust 

from the city’s throat.  The Federation parade would take place a couple of weeks into 

what had become a steamy and humid summer, punctuated by thunderstorms and 

drenching rain.
20

  Storms and rain had soaked the city on the evening of the procession, 

and authorities were concerned that their impact would be more severe than merely 

causing the paint and plaster on the arches to run.  However, as if the gods were indeed 

smiling on the celebrations, the sky cleared at 9:00am, and held off until 3:00pm that 

afternoon, as the last of the formalities at Centennial Park concluded.
21

 Although 

photographs and drawings of the protected crowd in the city show clear hatted heads, 

those of the ceremony at the Park indicate a sea of umbrellas.
22

  No doubt these would 

have been protection against not only the mid-summer sun, but also the still anticipated 

possibility of rain. 

 

Earlier that day the Federation march had assembled in the Domain, between the back 

of State Parliament House and the partially constructed Art Gallery of NSW, with of 

course, no Cahill Expressway blocking the geographical connection to the 

Conservatorium of Music, the Royal Botanic Gardens and Government House.  The 

imposing NSW State Art Gallery that dominates this eastern end of the Domain was 

                                                 
17

 Alessandro Antonello: Learning and Settling – An Environmental History of the Federation Drought in 

New South Wales 1895-1903, 2007, MA thesis, Australian National University. 
18

 Geoffrey Blainey: A Land Half Won, 1995, Pan Macmillan, Sydney, p. 353. 
19

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 30 July 1884, p. 4.  Federation. “A resident of Melbourne writes to the 

Pall Mall Gazette on May 2…Mr Service did not fail to bring the subject of Federation before the trades 

delegates.”  Even at this early stage, Federation was seen as a bulwark “against drought, hardship and 

debt:” 
20

 The Age: 2 January 1901. Containing many weather references. 
21

 ABC: Australia’s Centenary of Federation, 2001, ABC. 100 Years’ program notes, p. 2. 
22

 The Daily Telegraph: 2 January 1901, p. 9.  



57 

 

initially conceived back in 1871 when the NSW Academy of Art was formed under the 

chairmanship of Thomas Sutcliffe Mort, a gentleman who will feature more than once 

in this thesis.
23

  Mort was an integral figure in the development of the colony of NSW 

through the mid-nineteenth century.  The successful, Lancashire born businessman had 

made his fortune from 1843 as the first successful wool broker and auctioneer in the 

colony, and his list of industrial, social and cultural achievements would comprise a 

thesis in itself.
24

  Industrialist, miner, broker and very busy developer, Mort saw earlier 

than most the potential for what had been a penal colony to become a great centre of 

British civilisation.
25

 

 

At the time of his establishment of the NSW Art Academy, the mercurial Mort was also 

developing the problematical technology required for the refrigerated transport of meat 

to Britain.  As a patron of the arts, he built his own public art gallery in his home, 

“Greenoaks”, at Darling Point, but died in 1878, before the permanent colonial gallery 

could be constructed in the Domain, and also just before the first successful shipment of 

frozen meat arrived in Britain.
26

  Walter Liberty Vernon’s current gallery itself spanned 

the Federation era, being largely constructed in 1896, but still being completed in 

1901.
27

  

 

Although sensing a strong connection to the new nation, and caring enough to go 

through the protracted process of Federation,
28

 Australians still appeared to feel the 

strong lure of British civilisation.  The Art Gallery façade glories in its classical motifs 

intricately carved in the local honey coloured sandstone, with the more recent, and no 

doubt necessary, modernist extensions hidden embarrassingly down the slope to the 

rear.  This connectedness to the culture of the ‘old country’ continued well after 

Federation,
29

 as noted by the 1905 Frederick Pomeroy statue of the Scottish poet Robert 

                                                 
23

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 5. 
24

 And has done so: note Alan Barnard’s thesis and biography: Visions and Profits – studies in the 

business career of Thomas Sutcliffe Mort, 1961, Melbourne University Press and Oxford University 

Press.  
25

 Alan Barnard: Thomas Sutcliffe Mort (1816-1878), Australian Dictionary of Biography online database, 

National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. 
26

 Alan Barnard: Thomas Sutcliffe Mort (1816-1878), Australian Dictionary of Biography online database. 
27

 John Haskell: Haskell’s Sydney, 1983, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, p. 28. 
28

 Helen Irving: The Centenary Companion to Australian Federation, 1999, Cambridge University 

Press, Melbourne, pp. 8-15. 
29

 The heady mix of romantic independence and the strong sense of British cultural nationalism were well 

expressed by P R (Inky) Stephensen in his 1935 essay: The Foundations of Culture in Australia - An 

Essay towards National Self-Respect, 1986, Allen & Unwin, Sydney.  “Culture in Australia, if it ever 

develops indigenously, begins not from the Aborigines, who have been suppressed and exterminated 



58 

 

Burns, still holding pride of place on the current Art Gallery Road.
30

  The poet Henry 

Lawson himself would later footstep the same location the evening after the popular 

unveiling:
 31

 

 

Grown tired of mourning for my sins- 

And brooding over merits- 

The other night with pucker brow 

I went amongst the spirits; 

And I met one that I knew well: 

“Oh Scotty’s Ghost, is that you? 

And did you see the fearsome crowd 

At Robbie Burns’s statue? 

       

The Domain itself, or as it originally was gazetted, the Public Domain, remains as the 

great meeting place for the residents of Sydney, although the ease with which one side 

of it was resumed for the Cahill Expressway demonstrates the fragility of public 

ownership in Sydney’s rather avaricious culture.  Many of the large Moreton Bay figs 

around the Domain’s borders were there already in 1901.  In 1848 the newly arrived 

director of the Botanic Gardens, Charles Moore, travelled to northern NSW, where he 

was apparently so impressed by the local Moreton Bay fig as a branching shade tree, 

that he began the wide ranging planting of the species around Sydney.
32

  Most of the 

trees in the Domain would have dated from this point, although trees were still being 

planted decades later.
33

   The cumulative effect of so many trees having been planted at 

the one time has led to the dilemma where they are all now approaching the time when 

they will have to be replaced.  The recent public concern over the need to cut down a 

                                                                                                                                               
(sic), but from British culture, brought hither by Englishmen, Irishmen and Scotsmen throughout the 

nineteenth century………We inherit all that Britain has inherited, and from that point we go on – to 

what?”   
30

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 31 January 1905, p. 6. “An interesting event of the holiday [30 January 

1905] was the unveiling of a statue of the Scottish Bard Robert Burns in the Domain…by State Governor 

Sir Harry Rawson. There was an attendance of several thousands of people, but owing to the inclemency 

of the weather [again], the proceedings were abbreviated…” 
31

 Henry Lawson: Poetical Works, 1979, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, p. 189. Robbie’s Statue 1905. 

Photograph Booklet vol. 1, p. 6.   
32

 City of Sydney: Significant Tree Listings online database. 
33

  The Sydney Daily Telegraph: 2 January 1901, p. 8. In fact, Camdenville Public School retained a 

spreading shade tree until the 1980s that must have been planted a century before, when the school was 

established.  There was even a large landmark fig tree standing outside the Department of Public 

Instruction in Bridge Street that was illuminated for the Federation celebrations with modern electric 

lights. 

Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 7.   



59 

 

number of these trees behind State Parliament House would no doubt explode should 

most of the trees in the Domain suddenly need to be simultaneously removed.
34

 

 

The 1901 Federation Parade commenced at 10:00am on Tuesday 1 January 1901.  There 

were mentions of the parade not setting off until 10:30am,
35

 although this may have 

been the experience of some of those close to the actual event, since the whole march 

actually took some seventy minutes to pass any one location and so many participants 

would not have left the Domain until more an hour later. 

 

With the five miles, or just over eight kilometres, to Centennial Park taking a brisk 

ninety minutes for the initial contingent in the parade, the whole procession would have 

expanded to more than two hours, not even allowing for the formal ceremony at the end.  

It is no wonder that The Daily Telegraph mentioned the need for urine bottles.
36

  In 

keeping with this requirement, apparently, “the Government had thoughtfully provided 

[at  Centennial Park] some dozen or more standpipes with a full head of water laid on, 

and with large galvanised iron tubs to catch the waste water….[and] no fewer than 

seven hundred pannikins which were placed loose with the tubs.”
 37

  This was to satisfy 

some forty thousand spectators at the park, not counting the participants who would 

have arrived hot and bothered from the march.  By now most of the estimated five 

hundred thousand spectators would also have been assembled along the route within 

Sydney.   Forty thousand of these were claimed to have been accommodated just in 

formal seating along the city section of the route.
38

  

 

Planning for the events had been well underway for over a year, with Premier Sir 

William Lyne eventually appointing an organising committee originally of 50 members.  

“The Premier informed a ‘Herald’ reporter last night that he had not as yet appointed the 

members of the proposed Federal Ceremonial Committee…’The fact is,’ remarked Sir 

William Lyne, ‘that I am perfectly overwhelmed with applications for persons who 

desire to serve on the committee, and it is very difficult to make a selection’…”
39

 

 

                                                 
34

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 10-21 April 2004 online database. Botanic Gardens stymies council’s 

attempt to save doomed fig trees. 
35

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 1 January 1901, p. 15. 
36

 The Sydney Daily Telegraph: 2 January 1901, p. 11.  
37

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 2 January 1901, p. 11. 
38

 The Sydney Daily Telegraph: 2 January 1901, p. 14. 
39

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 11 October 1900, p. 7.  Federation, The Ceremonial Committee.  



60 

 

For such an august event, it was rather worrying that the Citizens’ General Committee, 

or Citizens’ Commonwealth Committee as it was sometimes referred to, should have 

then been given essentially only two months to prepare for the parade.  Even by October 

1900 members of the committee had not been appointed, indicating that much of the 

preparation was intended to be left in the hands of individual community organisations.  

This committee was therefore intended to be quite representative, with the plan being 

for the city to be divided into blocks and that “the citizens on them should add their 

names to the committee and that the committee be asked to appoint sub-committees to 

arrange the blocks.”
40

  “The Premier informed a Herald reporter last night that he had 

not yet appointed the members of the proposed Federal Ceremonial Committee.  ‘The 

fact is,’ remarked Sir William Lyne, ‘that I am perfectly overwhelmed with applications 

from persons who desire to serve on the committee, and it is very difficult to make a 

selection.’”  Fortunately, “the committee will probably be appointed in the course of a 

few days.”
41

 

 

It was clear from the beginning that the chief matters would be entirely controlled by 

the government, and that the functions of the Citizens’ Committee would be in regard to 

the operations of private individuals…That the following gentlemen be added to the 

executive committee: The aldermen of the city… Samuel Hordern (scion of the 

department store family), T W Thrower (president of the Trades and Labour Council), 

W Vicars (president of the Chamber of Manufacturers) [and one of the major employers 

in Newtown and Marrickville at the time]…
42

 

 

This committee was to be overseen by the Hon Edward William O’Sullivan, the NSW 

Minister for Public Works who was responsible for much of the march organisation, 

and a politician who will also find mention more than once in this thesis.  From the 

outset, the route chosen by this committee was to traverse Bridge Street and then Pitt 

Street, without following through to George Street, even though other aspects of the 

route were changed dramatically.  No mention appeared to have been made in any 

report as to why this was the case, so the avoidance of this area of the city is open to 

                                                 
40

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 14 November 1900, p. 7.   
41

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 11 October 1900, p. 7.   
42

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 14 November 1900, p. 8. 



61 

 

conjecture; however, the need to include Martin Place occurs in all mentions of this 

route.
 43

 

 

One notable feature of the celebrations in 1901 that will be alluded to often through this 

thesis was the genuine affection the whole community expressed for Queen Victoria and 

even for her now forty years deceased consort, Prince Albert.  Traces of this adoration 

of Victoria were evident again and again as I walked the route of both marches so it 

seemed fitting that Sydney’s parade should have commenced along Prince Albert Road, 

then the main thoroughfare into the Domain.  But times change, and this path has 

become a bypassed offshoot now eclipsed by the Art Gallery Road to the east that takes 

current traffic all the way to the harbour at Mrs Macquarie’s Chair.
44

   

 

Prince Albert Road re-affirms its royal supremacy and takes over from Art Gallery 

Road at the Domain Gates, the location of the first of the specially constructed 

celebratory structures: the Coal Arch.
45

  This edifice was also known as the Newcastle 

Arch, not only because the northern mining city supplied the construction and material 

for the arch, but the design itself mirrored a September 1897 structure erected in Hunter 

Street Civic to commemorate Newcastle’s Centenary.
46

  That earlier arch had been 

created from the same literal material and adorned by a Star of David, signifying the 

support lent by Newcastle’s Jewish merchants.
47

 

 

In keeping with so much of the funding of Federation celebrations, it was again local 

committees and organisations that planned and constructed the Coal Arch.
48

  The mayor 

of Newcastle, Alderman David Miller and his elected fellow high office holders 

oversaw the erection of this monument to Newcastle’s role in the developing 

                                                 
43

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 30 October 1900, p. 6. Citizens’ Commonwealth Committee. A Series of 

Recommendations:  “Recommendation 6: That the route of procession should be from Circular Quay, 

through Loftus Street to Macquarie Place, to Pitt Street, to Martin Place to George Street, past the Town 

Hall, To Bathurst Street, into Pitt Street, back to Park Street, to College Street, up Oxford Street to Ocean 

Street, into Centennial Park.”  This involved a doubling back that would appear to have been a finally 

rejected feature of many early route plans. 
44

 Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Sydney Street Directory 2011, Sydney map D. This end of 

Prince Albert Road is now used only by joggers and council vehicles, with little indication of its 

significant link to the past. 

Photograph Booklet 1, p. 6. 
45

 Photograph Booklet 1, p. 7.   
46

  Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 26. 
47

 John Turner: A Pictorial History of Newcastle, 1997, Kingsclear Books, Sydney, p. 64. 
48

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 4 December 1900, p.5.  Citizens’ Commonwealth Committee.  “The 

Commonwealth Arch was reported to be in progress of erection at the junction of Park Street and 

Elizabeth Street.  Suggestions in regard to the coal arch of the Newcastle district, and a proposed arch of 

produce, maize and sugar cane from Grafton were considered.” 



62 

 

industrialisation of the nation.  Alderman Gardiner from Hamilton was responsible for 

the design of the arch, and for its construction,
49

  although in the case of this more 

substantial structure, the Star of David was not in evidence.
50

   In the final event, it 

would have been preferable if he had obtained some professional structural guidance.  

As with the earlier version, the arch itself consisted of two supporting piers of heavy 

blocks of coal rising some six metres to the springing for the light timber framed arch.  

Above this arose smaller pieces of coal held in place by wire netting.  Not only was the 

coal itself donated by local Newcastle mining and industrial companies, but forty 

miners volunteered themselves as marionettes, symbolically hewing at the coal from a 

four metre high edge around the two pillars as the march proceeded underneath.
51

 

 

This Coal Arch illustrated tensions that would develop within the labour movement for 

the next century and beyond.  The previous two decades had experienced the rise of 

radicalism within society at large, and the evolution of a Labour Party that had already 

seen representatives elected to colonial parliaments.
52

   However, this arch construction 

and dutiful display also demonstrated a conservatism on the part of those working 

people who were obviously less interested in overthrowing the established order, than in 

gaining access to it.
53

  Banners proclaiming “Welcome to the Governor General”, as 

well as the motto “Omina vincit labor” (labour conquers all) indicated that, while many 

may have written of theoretical republicanism, the reality of many working people’s 

view of the imperial presentation was of affection and loyalty.
54

  Henry Lawson himself 

seemed to embody the dichotomy of the times.  While often expressing a republican 

                                                 
49

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 25. 
50

 Newcastle Hebrew Congregation: History of the Jewish congregation in Newcastle and the Hunter 

online database. Although having existed in Newcastle from earliest days, the Jewish presence at the time 

of Federation was tenuous, and specific funding for the new arch was apparently not forthcoming. 
51

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 29 December 1900, p. 10. “A feature of the display on Tuesday next will 

be the appearance of forty special miners in pat attire with the tallow lamps attached to their caps.  The 

will be accommodated on stands to the erected half way up the arch and during the passing of the 

procession will be engaged in hewing coal with the ordinary mining picks.” 
52

  Hearns and Patmore: Working the Nation 2001, p. 72. “And the future belonged to labour and 

radicalism.”  The Worker: 27 May 1899, p. 7. “The march of progress [is] from a tyrannous past, to a 

freer and more liberal present towards a future where the people would be in full control over their own 

lives.” 
53

 Hearns and Patmore: Working the Nation 2001, p. 72. “Democracy was the other great watchword of 

labour counter-discourse.”   
54

 Richard Gordon: The Australian New Left, 1970, William Heinemann, Melbourne, p. 5.  Humphrey 

McQueen offers a more modern jaundiced view in his chapter: Laborism and Socialism. “Those who look 

at the Labor Party and the ACTU and despair of the working class are mistaken. What they see in those 

organisations is not a working class but a particularly Australian petit-bourgeoisie: they do not see 

workers who have lost the will to overthrow capitalism, but a petit-bourgeoisie who never had it.”  



63 

 

radicalism in his literary work in poems such as Freedom on the Wallaby,
55

 he was 

happy to accept assistance from the NSW Governor Earl Beauchamp in financing his 

trip to Britain in 1900.
56

   

 

So we must fly a rebel flag, 

As others did before us, 

And we must sing a rebel song 

And join in rebel chorus. 

We’ll make the tyrants feel the sting 

O’ those that they would throttle; 

They needn’t say the fault is ours 

If blood should stain the wattle! 

 

The irony of it all was that, for whatever reason, the Governor General did not actually 

drive under the Coal Arch, but came from Government House along the rear Hospital 

Road behind Parliament House and joined the procession at St Mary’s Cathedral.
57

  

Whether this was a planned formality, a snub, or the result of Hopetoun being very sick 

at the time is not mentioned; however, it meant that he missed out on one of the most 

interesting and dramatic features of the parade. 

 

It was also a remarkably honest gesture by the march organisers to include a Coal Arch 

in the first place.  Along with horses and horsepower, European and Australian culture 

of the time was totally dependent upon coal and coal mining.
58

  Coal was thus a 

valuable commodity, and the cost of constructing such a seemingly solid structure 

would have been considerable.
59

  Unfortunately, the residents of nearby suburbs such as 

Woolloomooloo also recognised the value of the expensive but necessary material being 

left unattended and apparently readily available to all.  By 5 January, enough of the 

                                                 
55

 Henry Lawson: A Campfire Yarn – The complete works 1885-1900, 1984, Lansdowne Press, Sydney, p. 

146. Freedom on the Wallaby, 1891. 
56

 Wilde, Hooton, Andrews: The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, 1994, Oxford University 

Press, Melbourne, p. 454. 
57

 The Daily Telegraph: 2 January 1901, p. 14. 
58

 George Orwell: The Road to Wigan Pier, originally published in 1937, 1989, Penguin Books, 

London, pp. 29-31.  George Orwell made this very point most eloquently nearly forty years later.  “In 

order that Hitler may march the goose-step, that the Pope may denounce Bolshevism, that the cricket 

crowd may assemble at Lord’s, that the Nancy poets may scratch one another’s backs, coal has got to be 

forthcoming…..all of us really owe the comparative decency of our lives to poor drudges underground, 

blackened to the eyes, with their throats full of coal dust, driving their shovels forward with arms and 

belly muscles of steel.” 
59

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 7.   



64 

 

supporting structural coal had been removed for the arch to have become a public 

hazard: and so it proved to be.  Around 9:00pm that evening, Phillip Maher from 

Camperdown and his daughter were supposedly passing by when part of the wooden 

framework collapsed, almost burying them.
60

  The young girl suffered a fractured hand 

and several broken teeth; not inconsequential injuries in 1901. 

 

Interestingly, no mention was made in press reports of the incident as to why someone 

from a suburb over five kilometres away would have been walking past the arch after 

sunset, and why the arch should have chosen that time to collapse.  The possibility that 

Maher and his daughter were themselves in the process of removing coal for their own 

use was apparently not investigated, although Tessa Milne makes the ironic comment 

that the unplanned collapse was a fitting reminder of “the real dangers of the mining 

industry”.
61

 

 

That the first arch to have been passed under by the march should have been dedicated 

to mining and industry and presided over by the ‘knights of labour’ was reflected in the 

organisation of the march itself.  Formal precedence dictated that the less significant 

marchers or those of lesser social and cultural standing would have come first in order, 

followed by those of an increasing standing, until finally culminating in the social 

leaders and Vice-Regal representatives. Consequently, after the preliminary force of 

mounted police and lancers, the march was launched by representatives of the working 

people of NSW: trade union officials and representatives of the trades and industries 

found in the colony.  

  

It is unclear whether this significance would have been so obvious to the audience 

actually watching the parade. The vision of some two hundred and fifty resolute 

workers representing twenty five crafts and occupations, all in their working clothes and 

carrying the tools of their trades, would surely have been a most impressive vision 

coming down the streets of Sydney.
62

  Attitudes towards the labouring classes were 

evident in the press, with The Daily Telegraph commenting that the trades union 

representatives’ “sturdy limbs at once suggested that threadbare but nevertheless always 

veracious sentiment – ‘the bone and sinew of the nation’.”
63

 

                                                 
60

 The Daily Telegraph: 7 January 1901, p. 7. 
61

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, 2000, p. 28. 
62

 The Daily Telegraph: 2 January 1901, p. 1.  The Sydney Morning Herald: 1 January 1901. 
63

 The Daily Telegraph: 2 January 1901, p. 14. 



65 

 

This view contrasted with the dialogue between two observers recorded by The Age as 

the march commenced:  “I thought the military were to precede the procession, 

remarked someone who had suddenly discovered that the programme which he has 

purchased for a penny is not being followed.  So they were, replied his companion, but 

you see, they have made an improvement and sent the rag-tag and bobtail first.”
64

  No 

doubt there would have been a heady mixture of admiration and condescension reflected 

in such reportage, although it is more than likely that there was also the lingering 

recognition that the Federation process had been one of inclusion, necessary for the 

democratic process to provide a successful outcome across all sections of the 

community.   The degree to which this inclusion was to include all had its practical, if 

not theoretical limits.  As Neville Kirk claimed, working people saw themselves in the 

process of creating a “Workers’ Paradise”
65

 freed from the constraints and restraints of 

the mother country.
66

  “Organised workers in Australia saw themselves as being ‘more 

British than the British’ in their racial ‘purity and their whiteness’.”  However, part of 

this inheritance also included the tolerance of others, if only by degrees of this 

“whiteness”.
67

 

 

 

3.  RACE AND RELIGION  

 

The next significant location on the march route was St Mary’s Cathedral; the site of 

one of the most momentous, and even amusing, cultural demonstrations in Australia’s 

history.  At the time of Federation, Australia was rife with religious sectarianism, 

ostensibly between Roman Catholics and Protestants.
68

  The situation, however, was not 

this simple with conflict, competition and discord also between the various Protestant 

denominations, and even within denominations and Catholic orders.  High and Low 

Church Anglicans, Wesleyan and Primitive Methodists, Irish born and Australian born 

                                                 
64

 The Age: 2 January 1901, p7. 
65

 Neville Kirk: Labour and the politics of Empire, Britain and Australia 1900 to the present, 2011, 

Manchester University Press, Manchester, p. 75.  The newly formed Australian Labour Party actually 

used this terminology. 
66

 Neville Kirk: Labour and the politics of Empire, Britain and Australia 1900 to the present, p. 11. 

“These aspects [class-based and national oppression and exploitation] constituted the antithesis of the 

attempt to construct a ‘Workers’ Paradise’ in Australia rooted in democracy, social justice, openness 

and…egalitarianism…” 
67

 Neville Kirk: Labour and the politics of Empire, Britain and Australia 1900 to the present, p. 11. 
68

 Ann Curthoys and Andrew Markus: Who are our enemies? p.14. “The Irish who today form ethnic 

groups were treated as a race by the British in colonial Australia because of their assumed physical 

appearance (e.g. prominent upper lip).”  Helen Irving: The Centenary Companion to Australian 

Federation, p. 116. 



66 

 

Catholics all found good reason to discriminate against one another.
69

  Although Roman 

Catholics, and Irish Catholics in particular, had formed an integral part of Sydney’s 

society from first settlement, their initial status as outsiders meant that government 

support for their religious requirements was limited.
70

  Several priests had been 

transported as convicts after the 1798 Irish Rebellion in County Wexford,
71

  and it was 

this county that would then give its name to one of the more disreputable districts of 

Sydney.
 72

   

 

The foundation stone for Sydney’s first Catholic Church was laid by Governor Lachlan 

Macquarie in 1821, and as has ironically been the case ever since, construction was 

financed by donations not only from the Catholic community, but also other 

denominations and the government.
73

  The site chosen, the eastern side of Hyde Park 

was one that, at the time, reflected the financial and political position of the Catholic 

Church in the colony.
74

  This had been a rubbish dump that overlooked the gully of the, 

even then, seedy suburb of Darlinghurst.
75

  The early Catholic chaplain, Father John 

Joseph Therry, had requested that the church be built at the Rocks, but Macquarie, as 

town planner amongst other things, remained adamant.
76

 

 

On 29 June 1865 this original St Mary’s burned to the ground, although one of the few 

standing wall sections on the site remains as a memorial.  What had originally been a 

less than salubrious location had now, with the expansion of the city, become one of the 

great architectural sites of Sydney, so it was obvious that the construction of a new, 

grander structure would take place over the remains of the old.  Designed by the Anglo-

Catholic architect William Wardell, the new Cathedral was dedicated to Australia’s 

patron saint, St Mary, Help of Christians, on 8 September 1882.
77

  Although officially 

                                                 
69

 Peter Spearritt: Sydney’s Century – a History, pp. 196-201. 
70

 G N Hawker: The Parliament of New South Wales 1856-1965, 1971, Victor Blight NSW Government 

Printer, Sydney, Australia. Note the table on p. 148.  Although by the time of Federation, many Catholics 

were in positions of political power in NSW, the overall percentage within the state parliament was 

always lower than that in the general population:  9% of MsLC in 1890 and 10% in 1905.  In the census 

of 1901, Catholics made up 25.6% of the population in NSW and 22.5% Australia wide. 
71

 St Mary’s Cathedral: St Mary’s – A Living Cathedral, Sydney, 2004, p. 28. 
72

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 4 May 1900, p. 7.  By the time of the Federation parade, Wexford Street 

would be in the process of demolition, with the avid support of the Catholic community. 
73

 St Mary’s Cathedral: St Mary’s – A Living Cathedral, p. 29. 
74

 Mark Nunn: St Mary’s Cathedral, 2008, Dictionary of Sydney online database. 
75

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 9.   
76

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 27 June 1935, p. 8. Mention is made of the level of conflict that arose 

three years earlier between “ardent town planner” Macquarie and his equally passionate architect Francis 

Greenway over what would be the future location of St Andrews Anglican Cathedral. 
77

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p.12. 



67 

 

opened by Sydney’s Catholic leader, Cardinal Patrick Francis Moran, in September 

1900,
78

 only the northern nave and abbreviated transepts were actually finished at the 

time, with the main structure not completed until 1928.  The two great southern spires 

were finally put in place in June 2000, a century after the official opening, and in time 

for Australia’s Centenary of Federation.
79

 

 

Nineteenth century tensions born of the Irish famine had been further reinforced on the 

12 March 1868 when an apparently deranged Irish Nationalist, Henry James O’Farrell, 

attempted to assassinate the visiting Duke of Edinburgh, Queen Victoria’s second eldest 

son Prince Alfred, at a picnic at Clontarf.
80

  Despite calls for clemency from the Duke 

himself, the otherwise quite liberal NSW Martin/Parkes Government hanged O’Farrell 

on 21 April.
81

  One consequence of this assassination attempt, and the Duke’s 

successful recovery, was the construction and dedication of the Royal Prince Alfred 

Hospital in Sydney as a teaching hospital for the University of Sydney.
82

 

 

Cardinal Moran seemed to become the focus of much of this controversy at the 

beginning of the twentieth century, as the Melbourne Archbishop Daniel Mannix would 

from the First World War onwards.
83

   As a way of finding a place for themselves and 

their culture in newly developing Australian society to a degree that was not possible in 

Great Britain, Irish Catholics were also looking to the newly emerging labour 

                                                 
78

  The Sydney Morning Herald: 22 September 1882, p. 9.  Opening of St Mary’s Cathedral. “On Friday, 

September 8, the most important event in the history of Catholicism in this colony was celebrated in the 

solemn opening of St Mary’s Cathedral.” The official opening on September 9 1900 was not without 

sectarian controversy itself. The Sydney Morning Herald: 14 September 1900, p. 3.  St Mary’s Cathedral 

Opening. Letter to the Editor of the Herald signed W M Dill Macky, B Price, F Colwell; Evangelical 

Council. “That this council notes that at the opening of St Mary's Roman Catholic Cathedral on Sunday 

last, his Excellency the Governor attended in his official capacity as representative of her Majesty the 

Queen, and was accompanied by their Excellencies the Governors of Queensland and New Guinea, who 

also attended in official costume and style. The council also notes that his Worship the Mayor and other 

official personages are also reported to have been present in their official capacities…That on that 

occasion, and in presence of his Excellency, the appointed preacher (Dr Redwood) is reported to have 

said "The leaders and founders of Protestantism, Luther, Calvin, Zwinglius etc were notorious for their 

vices." 
79

 St Mary’s Cathedral: St Mary’s – A Living Cathedral, p. 32. 

Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 9.   
80

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 14 – 20 March 1868.  Numerous articles on the assassination attempt. 
81

 Freeman’s Journal: 2 May 1896, p. 18.  The poisonous environment that subsequently erupted was 

demonstrated by the myth of the “Kiama Ghost”; when state premier James Martin and colonial secretary 

Henry Parkes claimed that in a secret interview with O’Farrell, he had admitted to a Fenian conspiracy, 

which had included the murder of a co-conspirator. Parkes made his accusations at a meeting in the 

Illawarra town of Kiama, and since no murdered body could be found, the issue became known as the 

“Kiama Ghost”. 
82

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 24 September 1932, p. 16. Fiftieth anniversary tomorrow of the opening 

of the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.   
83

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 12.   



68 

 

movement for both the protection of their livelihoods, and as an entry into the political 

establishment of the nation.
84

  The appointment of Moran had itself reflected this 

departure with tradition and change in status.  Previous Roman Catholic Archbishops of 

Sydney; John Bede Polding and Roger Bede Vaughan had been English Benedictines 

who themselves suffered conflicts with the primarily Irish composition of the Australian 

Catholic population.
85

 

 

This politicking was indicative of the commanding position that the Christian Church in 

general held in the nation of the time.  The degree to which Christianity still retained a 

genuinely spiritual influence within Australia has always been difficult to judge, but it 

was certainly a powerful political force; with most of the disputes seeming about 

political power as much as doctrinal ideology.
86

  The primacy of the various Christian 

leaders at the Inauguration Ceremony at Centennial Park demonstrated that, even as the 

nation that was being established as a secular federation with the theoretical separation 

of church and state, Councils of Protestant Churches succeeded in having the words 

“….humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God,” added to the preamble of the 

Constitution.
87

 

 

The situation in Sydney was complicated by the degree of political power that the Irish 

Catholic community was attaining in the city.  While some institutions would continue 

to refuse to employ Catholics,
88

 many NSW social identities, and a good number of the 

state’s senior politicians were part of an Irish Catholic power base that was rapidly 

gaining, and would continue to hold, political influence in the state.
89

  The socialist 

platform that original Labour leaders; many from a Non-Conformist and Methodist 

trade union tradition, attempted to introduce was anathema to Moran, and it was not 

                                                 
84

 Patrick Ford: Cardinal Moran and the ALP, 1966, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, chapt. 7. 
85

 St Mary’s Cathedral: A Living Cathedral, pp. 16-17. 
86

 This would appear to contradict other views such as: John Gascoigne: The Enlightenment and the 

Origins of European Australia, 2002, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, p34. “The largely private 

character of Australian religion meant, then a society where Enlightenment values could become 

established with much less of that overt conflict that was evident in many European countries.” 
87

 Commonwealth of Australia: The Australian Constitution, 1997, Constitutional Centenary Foundation, 

Melbourne, p. 18.  Helen Irving: The Centenary Companion to Australian Federation, p. 344. 
88

 The number of comments and letters to the editor in local newspapers such as the Queensland Figaro 

and Punch of 7 May 1887 and the Cumberland Argus of 15 January 1910 claiming that such a situation 

should not occur, clearly indicates this was an issue at the time. 
89

 G N Hawker: The Parliament of New South Wales 1856-1965,  1971, Victor Blight NSW Government 

Printer, Sydney, pp. 148, 213. This did not necessarily equate with simple numbers of representatives.  

Even in 1905, Catholics accounted for 10% of members of the NSW Legislative Council, although over 

the whole period 1901-1960, accounted for 23.8% of all Members of the Legislative Assembly, and more 

closely matched the percentage in the general population. 



69 

 

long before Labour was able to attract the support of the Catholic hierarchy by 

essentially dropping the socialist plank, and adopting Protectionism while also 

supporting the Federation of Free-Trade Conservatives such as Reid.
90

  The Roman 

Catholic Cardinal of Sydney thus held not just high spiritual power in the city, but also 

high temporal power, and when it was decreed by Lord Hopetoun, through the NSW 

State Premier Sir William Lyne, that the Anglican Archbishop William Saumarez Smith 

would take religious precedence in the proceedings, a furore erupted.  Even some 

members of the Committee of Management that was responsible for the Federation 

Celebrations themselves ceded that Cardinal Moran should have pride of place in the 

event.
91

  The influence of the Orange Lodges was strong in both the conservative NSW 

State Government of Lyne and on the committee, and the Catholic Press sensed a 

sectarian conspiracy.
92

   

 

What Moran appeared to be attempting to do was to create a viable Irish Catholic 

culture within the wider Australian community; one that was distinct from the Anglican 

and Protestant majority, but which also would enjoy all the benefits and privileges that 

went with full membership of this community.
93

  To do this, he had to tread carefully 

enough not to alienate both the wider Australian society and bring formal restrictive 

legislation down on top of the already prevalent informal sectarianism, but also 

members of his own community who could be as perplexed by his machinations as 

everyone else.
94

  Much criticism was made of the support that Moran gave to Chinese 

migrants and workers, particularly in April 1888, with the public demonstrations that 

accompanied the arrival of the immigrant ship Afghan.
95

  While Premier Parkes was 

driven by these demonstrations to introduce a bill restricting the entry of Chinese into 

the colony of New South Wales, Cardinal Moran continued to describe the Chinese as 

                                                 
90

 Patrick Ford: Cardinal Moran and the ALP, 1966, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, chapts. 27, 

34, p. 282. 
91

 The Sydney Daily Telegraph: 5 January 1901, p. 9. 
92

 Catholic Press: 5 January 1901.  Chris McConville: Croppies, Celts & Catholics – The Irish in 

Australia, 1987, Edward Arnold Australia, Melbourne, pp. 96-97.  McConville centres on Melbourne in 

his subchapter Orange Revival. As Catholicism waxed and waned through the second half of the 

nineteenth century, so did the power and aggressiveness of the Orange Lodges.  Marches up Sydney Road 

Brunswick apparently bordered on the kind of violence that has become synonymous with Northern 

Ireland. “Ugly battles along Sydney Road [in 1897] look very tame compared with the anti-Home Rule 

pogroms of Ulster Orangemen, yet they signified a rising sense of authority on the part of the Orange 

Lodge.”  
93

 Mark Hearn: Mary Malone’s lesson: a narrative of citizenship in Federation Australia, November 2004 

Gender and History, vol. 16, issue 2, University of Sydney, pp. 376-396. 
94

 Mark Hearn: Working lives – Mary Malone’s lesson: a narrative of citizenship in Federation Australia, 

University of Sydney Work and Organisational Studies online database, May 2002. 
95

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 30 April 1888, p7.  “A deputation from the Trades Hall Council waited 

on the Premier on Saturday [28
 
April] to protest against the landing of Chinese.” 



70 

 

“industrious”, and that restriction on Chinese immigration was an “unchristian” 

response by “loafers” who proclaimed “trade union principles while rejecting work at a 

reasonable wage.”
96

  Many lay Catholics would have been a little confused.  Although 

able to relate to the situation of the Chinese from their own position of previous 

outsiders denied the chance to make their honest way in the world, they would also have 

responded to the perceived threat to their standard of living by Chinese workers; 

particularly since many Irish Catholics themselves earned their living in the same 

labouring and manual trades occupations that competed directly with the Chinese. 

 

Above all, Cardinal Moran was a fervent Federationist.  Having spent much of his early 

church career between 1853 and 1866 in Rome, Moran experienced the federation 

process at first hand through the unification of the new Italian nation.
97

  However, when 

it came to Sydney’s celebration of Federation, Moran was not to have his way.  The 

very public boycott that would take place by the Catholic hierarchy actually 

overshadowed the equally strong sense of disgust at High Anglican primacy felt by the 

representatives of the other Protestant denominations.  A deputation to the Premier by 

representatives of the Presbyterian and Wesleyan Methodist churches requested that the 

order of precedence be altered for the sake of equality.
98

  This was not done, and as a 

result, they also boycotted the March, although their presence was only noted at the later 

formal ceremony at Centennial Park.
99

   

 

In the event, Archbishop Moran was present, but as an éminence gris dominating the 

commencement of the march.  He took his very public stand by sitting with Archbishop 

Thomas Joseph Carr from Melbourne, enthroned on a platform at the recently 

constructed north-west corner of St Mary’s Cathedral surrounded by two thousand 

Catholic school children.
100

  As the parade passed, the peeling bells of St Mary’s paused 

out of respect, the children cheered, and many members of the parade themselves 

responded by cheering the Archbishop and the principled stand that he had taken.
101

  

 

                                                 
96

 Mark Hearn: Mary Malone’s lesson: a narrative of citizenship in Federation Australia, pp. 376-396.  

The South Australian Advertiser: 14 May 1888. 
97

 Patrick Ford: Cardinal Moran and the ALP, p. 199. 
98

 The Daily Telegraph: 2 January 1901, p. 15.  Interestingly, the Telegraph passed the issue off as “The 

unfortunate hitch which at the last moment prevented the heads of the various denominational bodies 

from taking part in the procession, was however scarcely noticed by the crowd, few of whom were 

probably aware of what had occurred.” 
99

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 1 January 1901, p. 15. 
100

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 11.   
101

 The Sydney Daily Telegraph: 2 January 1901, p. 9. 



71 

 

This demonstration by Cardinal Moran was made possible by the fortunate location of 

St Mary’s Cathedral on the north-eastern corner of Hyde Park and by the decision of the 

march organisers to send the parade along this chosen route.
102

  With the Domain being 

the most suitable assembly point, and the subsequent need to travel down Macquarie 

Street, it was then logical for the marchers to make the turn past St Mary’s.  The only 

other possible point of assembly for such a large number of people, Hyde Park, would 

still have afforded the Roman Catholic Cathedral domination of the proceedings.  Even 

the alignment of the roadway eventually played into the hands of Moran.  As can be 

seen in the accompanying photographs, Prince Albert Road traverses a clockwise arc 

about the Lands Department with St Mary’s Cathedral on the outside of the curve.  As 

the Cardinal sat in this most obvious location, the marchers would have looked him 

straight in the eye as they followed the route around to Queen’s Square.
103

  Perhaps this 

whole incident, and the reaction of the participants, was symptomatic of the level of 

accommodation that was, in reality, being reached within the developing society of the 

day.  Had the disputes between the faiths been purely religious and doctrinaire, there 

would have been no room for compromise or good natured banter.  However, with the 

dispute being primarily political, a politically expedient stand was made possible by all 

sides, with no-one really losing face.   

 

In the context of understanding the march, it is important to reflect upon the siting of the 

major religious institutions in both Sydney and Melbourne, and the way that the routes 

of the Federation parades echoed the position of Christianity within Australian Society 

at the time.  High Anglicanism was reflected through the ruling elite of both Sydney and 

Melbourne; with the major Anglican cathedrals in both cities located adjacent to both 

Town Halls: one block down the road in the case of St Paul’s in Melbourne, and directly 

next door in the case of St Andrew’s in Sydney.
104

  Locating the hub of temporal and 

spiritual power so close to one another in the physical and social hub of both cities 

would not have been inadvertent, although notably, the sites of later elected political 

power, the Colonial and then State Parliaments were well separated.  Both State 

Parliaments were placed on hills overlooking the bustle of the city below and thus were 

                                                 
102

  Note the location of the then recently completed corner of St Mary’s cathedral relative to the route of 

the procession. Not only did the marchers have been looking directly at Moran and his entourage as they 

approached the Cathedral, but the Cardinal would then have been able to view the march as it passed and 

turned to proceed down Macquarie Street. 
103

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 10.   
104

 Gregory’s Publishing Company: Sydney Street Directory 2011, map C. 

UBD Australia: Melbourne Street Directory 2008, map 1. 



72 

 

symbolically removed from the muddy corporate and civic world.  It was also along 

these same ridge lines that the two Catholic Cathedrals were later located.
105

    

However, as much through the dynamic of urban growth, as through the sheer imposing 

power of the new cathedrals themselves, the former rubbish dump overlooking 

Darlinghurst, and the isolated hill to the east of Melbourne city would become the 

religious and cultural centres for a large segment of the population. 

 

 

4.  CITY DEVELOPMENT 

 

The first notable government building to be passed as the Federation march left the 

Domain was the Land Titles Office on the right hand corner of Prince Albert Road, 

directly opposite St Mary’s.
106

  Even today this building serves its original function, as 

well as being the repository of personal certificates such as births, deaths and marriages 

for the citizens of the state.  The bureaucratic efficiency reflected in the ornate classical 

facade harks back to one of the supposedly least popular of New South Wales’ original 

colonial rulers, Governor Ralph Darling.
107

 

 

Although remembered (and often reviled
108

) as the man who attempted to implement 

the Bigge Report and overturn many of the advances made by the much beloved 

Lachlan Macquarie,
109

  Darling also left a more positive legacy;  establishing the 

ordered bureaucracy necessary for the development of a viable colonial society.
110

 

Notwithstanding his being responsible for the acquisition of much Aboriginal land and 

the legal displacement of the original inhabitants of Australia, Darling placed much of 

the land ownership of the colony on a firm, orderly footing.
111

  His introduction of the 

                                                 
105

 Gregory’s Publishing Company: Sydney Street Directory 2011, map D.  

UBD Australia: Melbourne Street Directory 2008, map 18. 
106

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 15.   
107

 Alan Birch and David S Macmillan: The Sydney Scene 1788-1960, 1962, Melbourne University Press, 

Melbourne, p. 60.  The Australian: 28 October 1831, p. 2.  The newspaper commemorated the removal of 

Darling with the headline: “Further Rejoicings for Governor Darling’s departure.” 
108

 Geoffrey Blainey: A Land Half Won, p. 112. 
109

 John Gascoigne: The Enlightenment and the Origins of European Australia, p. 53.  Note the public 

meeting in Sydney prompted by “Governor Darling’s draconian treatment of two soldiers, Sudds and 

Thompson,” prompting calls for a free press and trial by jury. 
110

 Bede Nairn: Sir Ralph Darling (1772-1858), Australian Dictionary of Biography online database. 

“Surely there is no colony under His Majesty's Government where attention to the selection of Individuals 

is so important … not only the character of the Government, but the moral improvement of the people 

mainly depends on it”. 
111

 Bede Nairn: Sir Ralph Darling (1772-1858), Australian Dictionary of Biography online database. 

“Before leaving London Darling and half the Earl of Liverpool's cabinet had been dined by the directors 



73 

 

furlong square for all new town planning,  reacting to the ever more chaotic 

construction in the centre of Sydney itself, has left a bequest to this day of wide, car 

friendly roadways in most of the nation’s cities and country towns.  Ironically, the city 

of Sydney itself was less amenable to change, and continued to evolve in an ever more 

haphazard manner, and it would be Melbourne that was to benefit the most from 

Darling’s forward looking plans.
112

 

 

Although often overlooked today, the junction of Prince Albert Road and St Mary’s 

Road also revolves around an ornate drinking fountain inscribed: “1884 John Hardie 

mayor
113

 – to his fellow citizens, John Fraser MLC, L Beveridge – sculptor”.  This 

small, quaint structure complements the other remaining fountain supplied by the mayor 

and stone mason, located in the southern half of Hyde Park.
114

  The second fountain is 

fortuitously sited on the main pathway between the exit from Museum railway station 

and both the Australian Museum and the Sydney Boys’ Grammar School where its taps 

still serve an invaluable role as the focus for passing small boys .  The St Mary’s Road 

fountain, on the other hand, now sits forlornly in the middle of one of the busiest access 

roads into the city, although it is also still used as a source of refreshment by lunchtime 

joggers on their way to and from the Domain.   

 

That these structures still exist as a combination of public benefaction and personal 

memorial to a past political leader, serve as a belated recognition of the importance of 

fresh water to the health of the city’s inhabitants.  These fountains were constructed at a 

time when Sydney was still receiving pumped water from the Lachlan Swamps at the 

northern end of Botany Bay.
115

  This long string of lakes and swamps also still exist as 

the Centennial Park duck ponds, the low lands and multiple golf courses running from 

                                                                                                                                               
of the Australian Agricultural Co., but he had already been briefed at the Colonial Office on the undue 

alienation of land. Soon after his arrival in Sydney he established a Land Board to examine the claims of 

applicants. To stop fraud and absenteeism, land was to be granted only to bona fide settlers in proportion 

to their capital and alienation within seven years was forbidden.” 
112

 Deborah Tout-Smith: Melbourne, a City of Stories, p14. Note Robert Hoddle’s implementation, and 

modification, of the furlong square. 
113

 City of Sydney Local Government: Sydney’s Aldermen online database. “John Hardie was born in 

Sydney on 2 July 1833, son of Scottish immigrants Robert and Jane Hardie. He married in 1855, although 

his wife and children have not been identified, and died in Sydney in 1904. The family were Presbyterian. 

By 1867, John Hardie and John Mitchell, millers and bakers, were established at 516–18 George Street. 

About 1869 Hardie took over George Wilkie’s flour mills.” 
114

 Photograph Booklet 1, p. 14. 
115

 Shirley Fitzgerald: Rising Damp – Sydney 1870-90, pp. 27-28. Note the map on page 28 of the Redfern 

district in 1879 clearly showing these water catchments of the inner south of the city. 



74 

 

the city to Botany, and even the cooling ponds for Mascot aerodrome.
116

  By 1888, the 

realisation that this was going to be insufficient for Sydney’s requirements coincided 

with advances in the technologies of dam construction and pumping.  During the 

summer of 1884-1885 there was “a heavier than usual [sic] outbreak of typhoid 

fever…the hospitals could take no more cases,”
117

  and as a result, the Board of Water, 

Sewerage and Drainage was established to begin taking water from the massive upper 

Nepean River catchment in the Southern Highlands.
118

  At the time of Federation, the 

water component of the board’s responsibility was well under control with the damming 

of the Nepean, the soon to be dammed Cataract River and the construction of Prospect 

Reservoir.  The sewerage and drainage aspects, however, were yet to be dealt with, and 

would continue to affect attitudes towards Sydney’s land use, and eventually even the 

route of the Federation parade itself.
119

 

 

Following Cardinal Moran’s demonstration at St Mary’s Cathedral, the march then 

proceeded clockwise to Queens Square at the top of Hyde Park and the beginning of 

Macquarie Street, including the foundation Anglican Church of St James. Although 

from 1887, the site was formally designated as Chancery Square,
120

 the district has only 

ever been known as Queen’s Square and St James,
121

 with the St James underground 

railway station, St James Law Courts, and originally a St James Theatre on Elizabeth 

Street. The area also expands to the Hyde Park Barracks across Macquarie Street which, 

a century ago, was being used as the Metropolitan District Court.
122

  The quarter is, and 

was then, the legal centre of the city, with the Law Courts symbolically facing church 

and barracks, and the city’s large legal firms around the corner in the narrow canyon of 

Phillip Street.  It is also still one of the more architecturally conservative districts in the 

city; retaining the heritage of the bricks and the sandstone cut from the clay and bedrock 

of the colonial city.
123

 

                                                 
116

 Gregory’s Publishing Company: Sydney Street Directory 2011, maps 376, 406. 
117

 Shirley Fitzgerald: Rising Damp – Sydney 1870-90, p. 86. The Sydney Morning Herald: 9 February 

1885. 
118

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 25 October 1880, p. 7. The Nepean Water Supply Works. “The interest 

which the public in general takes in the construction of the works in connection with the Upper Nepean 

water supply scheme must make any information about them acceptable, and so one of our reporters has 

visited several sections of the line, to ascertain the exact amount of work done, and the state of 

forwardness in which the different contracts are.” 
119

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 15 May 1908, p8. Even seven years after Federation basic sewerage 

disposal for North Sydney was still only being planned by the city’s Engineer-in-Chief. 
120

 Historic Houses Trust of NSW: Hyde Park Barracks online database. 
121

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 16. 
122

 Alan Birch and David S Macmillan: The Sydney Scene 1788-1960, p. 18. 
123

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 17.   



75 

 

 

Throughout the eighteenth century, various forms of classical architectural style 

dominated public construction, and were a universal reflection of civic and political 

power.  However, in the days before the advent of mass transportation, the materials 

that were employed to express this style varied according to the each building’s 

location.  In Sydney the two most suitable materials available were sandstone and 

bricks.  The local sandstone that was literally under the mason’s feet was easy to work 

and weathered to an attractive, relatively hard and long lasting surface.
124

  Between the 

sandstone outcrops were gullies filled with shale clay that was perfect for the making of 

bricks.  The ability to exploit these materials was further enhanced by the Aboriginal 

shell middens that dotted the Sydney basin, providing a ready source of lime, and by the 

fact that the local hard, twisted gum and acacia timber was more suited to burning for 

bricks and lime than actual construction.
125

  Governor Macquarie’s architect Francis 

Greenway used coarsely cut local sandstone and locally baked bricks to build St James 

church and the Hyde Park Barracks, and the route of the march would later pass across 

the very Brickfield Hill site that supplied the clay for these significant structures.
126

  

 

With modern industrialisation, this localisation of material has largely been lost.  The 

glass, concrete and steel reinforcing prevalent in modern buildings could come from 

Sydney, China or Korea.  Ease of transportation now renders the source of industrially 

produced goods and even building materials largely irrelevant.  Even by the time of the 

high Victorianism that reached its zenith at Federation, machine cut sandstone from 

around the city and as far north as the Hawkesbury river was being used for most of the 

great public buildings in Sydney.  William Wardell used this same finely-cut local 

sandstone for St Mary’s, after having relied upon the local basalt bluestone for most of 

the earlier Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral.
127

  As a classic instance predating 

current modernism, Wardell intentionally imported the lighter, stronger and easier to 

work sandstone from the Hawkesbury for the spires and carvings of St Patrick’s.
128

 

 

                                                 
124

 Apperly, Irving, Reynolds: A Pictorial Guide to Identifying Australian Architecture, 1989, Angus & 

Robertson, Sydney, chapts. 1, 2. 
125

 Cox and Lucas: Australian Colonial Architecture 1978, pp. 36-38.  Maplandia: Geological Sites and 

Localities online database. Note Lime Kiln Bay on the Georges River, the Shelly Beach on Sydney 

Harbour and the lime burning sites on the Cooks River.   
126

 Apperly, Irving, Reynolds: A Pictorial Guide to Identifying Australian Architecture, p. 24. 
127

 Apperly, Irving, Reynolds: A Pictorial Guide to Identifying Australian Architecture, pp. 24, 28, 78, 80. 
128

 Ursula M De Jong: St Patrick’s Cathedral – a guide, 2005, Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne, 

Melbourne, p. 2. Although the Anglican Cathedral in Melbourne, St Pauls, is constructed from local 

Victorian sandstone and limestone, it too utilised the stronger Hawkesbury sandstone for its spires. 



76 

 

It was thus at this point that the monarch who gave her name to the era spanning almost 

two thirds of the century would have become apparent to the marchers entering the main 

thoroughfare of the city.  Just as they would have faced the unplanned visage of 

Cardinal Moran on the outside of the curve past St Mary’s, so they would also have 

passed a very intentional eye upon the larger than life statue of Queen Victoria as they 

turned into the top of Macquarie Street.
 129

  At the time, the statue of Her Majesty was 

amusingly then aligned east to face back to St Mary’s, also returning the gaze of Moran 

and his demonstration.
130

   The decorations festooning and threatening to overpower the 

large effigy, no doubt spoke far louder than pious and formal incantations as to the 

feelings of the population toward their monarch.  Perhaps Victoria really did embody 

the social and political sensibilities of the time, with this excessive adoration reflecting 

both pride and a fearful expectation on the part of Australians to be defended as an 

integral part of a far flung empire.  Certainly, there was the sense of a past stability, with 

most of the population having known no other monarch during their lifetime.
131

 This 

would probably have been mixed with trepidation, knowing as they must have, that their 

queen was unwell and that they could soon be without her physical presence and 

political eminence.
132

   Her relationship with her colonial subjects certainly was 

complex.  While generally viewed as a benevolent monarch and inspirational 

figurehead, Victoria’s personal attitudes were often at variance to this perception.
 133

   

 

However, it would appear that for most people in the community, she was both a 

stabilising political figure, and more importantly, a tangible connection to a Britain 

upon which Australians were still very dependent, both economically and emotionally. 

The outpouring of grief at her death on the 22 January 1901 ranged from the formal 

work by Poet Laureate, Mr Alfred Austin reprinted in The Sydney Morning Herald to 

the unsigned poem published in the Bairnsdale Advertiser and Tambo and Omeo 

Chronicle: 

                                                 
129

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, pp. 15, 16.   
130

 Queen Victoria’s statue has subsequently been moved on more than one occasion as road alignments 

have changed to accommodate the need for traffic and the fashion for pedestrian malls.  However, she 

continues to dominate her intersection and, thoughtfully, has now been rotated to look back to St James 

Church and down Macquarie Street. 
131

 The Sydney Morning Herald:  24 March 1887. Celebration of the Queen’s golden jubilee.  The Sydney 

Morning Herald: 31 July 1897. An Ode for Queen Victoria – her diamond jubilee. 
132

 Bendigo Advertiser: 20 April 1901, p. 2.  Queen Victoria’s death foretold. 
133

 Keith Amos: The Fenians in Australia (1865-1880), 1988, University of NSW Press, Sydney, pp. 201, 

235.  Victoria had supported the Duke of Cambridge’s refusal to pardon the Fenians of 1866, although six 

were later “released from the clemency of Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria” in Western 

Australia ten years later.   



77 

 

 

She came in Autumn radiance, summer gone, 

Leaf still on branch, but fruit upon the bough. 

Fruit of long years and ripe experience… 

And now there falls  

A sudden sadness in our lives, and we 

Can only bow disconsolate heads and weep,
134

  

 

Life is grown empty, for, but yesterday, 

‘Twas all-in-all to have the right to say 

‘there is a lady whom I live to serve, 

For whose least pleasure it were good to die… 

Sleep, Mother of the People sleep, thy sway 

Endureth with the empire thou hast knit 

They glory shall go with us on our way. 

At all our councils shall thy spirit sit.
135

 

 

Opinions vary as to whether such ebullient attitudes towards Queen Victoria were a 

positive or a negative indicator of Australia’s nationalist spirit.  Helen Irving’s 

introduction to the collection: Becoming Australians- The movement towards 

Federation in Ballarat and the Nation, mentioned all the limitations that still remained 

to Australia’s ultimate independence even after Federation, and that “despite the 

constant references to, and representation of, Queen Victoria…not a lot of detailed 

historical work has been focussed on the celebrations of 1901, but those who have 

written about the Commonwealth Inauguration have shared a tendency towards a 

negative conclusion on the question as to whether there was a specific Australian 

sentiment expressed at all.”
136

 

   

                                                 
134

 The Sydney Morning Herald:  1 March 1901, p. 3. 
135

 Bairnsdale Advertiser and Tambo and Omeo Chronicle:  27 April 1901, p. 1.  Poems such as these 

appear to go well beyond a mechanical expression of respect that would have been the preserve of 

officialdom at the passing of any other monarch.  There is not only a sense of loss of the head of the realm 

and the empire, but almost a feeling of abandonment by a mother, or at least mother figure.  Perhaps it is 

my own poetic imagination, but there also appears considerable similarity between the tenor and rhythm 

of this poem and the later Lawson work describing Robbie Burns’ statue. 
136

 Livingston, Jordan, Sweely: Becoming Australians – The movement towards Federation in Ballarat 

and the Nation, 2001, Wakefield Press, Kent Town, p. 2. Helen Irving Introduction 



78 

 

This ongoing influence of Queen Victoria became evident in the establishment of 

Empire Day throughout the British Empire.
137

  Although the day was introduced 

throughout the various members of this Empire three or four years after the death of the 

Queen, the date chosen remained her birthday, the 24 May.
138

  While some at the time 

were concerned that the memory of the old queen would fade all too soon,
139

 this would 

not occur for half a century, and only then be replaced with the more pragmatic current 

public holiday that celebrates the equally long reigned Queen Elizabeth II.
140

 

 

With the large number of spectators and participants filling the city, the logistics of 

transportation and crowd control would have been formidable.  General instructions that 

were issued by the NSW authorities prior to the parade included the necessary control of 

horses, both during the march, and “after 7 o’clock on the nights of the general 

illuminations.”
141

  Horses with carriages were to keep to the left, and proceed at a 

walking pace, and not to be brought to a standstill.  Even “persons on foot [were] to 

keep to the right-hand footpath or adjacent roadway, in the direction in which they are 

proceeding.”
142

   Bicycles were banned outright; indicative of the level of danger such 

machines appeared to offer at the time.
143

   Sensibly, there was also a height limitation 

of 14 feet on all vehicular traffic allowed in the city, indicating the minimum transitory 

height of the various arches and decorations.  Public safety was therefore a concern, 

with a further long list of notices published in the press the day before the event.  These 

                                                 
137

 John Rickard: Australia – a cultural history, 1988, Longman Group, London, p. 115.  “Empire Day 

was part of the marketing of the imperialism. Stemming from Canada in the late 1890s, the idea was 

taken up by the British Empire League, an Australian branch of which had been established in 1901 to 

promote the Boer War cause.” 
138

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 21 February 1905, p. 6.  Empire Day.  “One of the results of the 

Premiers conference is, as our summary reported on Saturday, that May 24 is likely to be set apart as a 

holiday to be known as Empire day, and special lessons are to inserted in the State school books to imbue 

children with the Imperial sentiment.” 
139

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 23 May 1906, p.13.    Empire Day.  “Tomorrow will be an interesting 

day. The ‘Twenty-fourth of May’ was for so many years a memorable holiday that it is surprising how 

soon the memory of the good queen in whose honour the day was celebrated could be forgotten.”  Our 

Herald commentator need not have worried.  
140

 eMelbourne: Empire Day online database. “Empire Day was observed in state schools from 1905 with 

a program of addresses, pageants and patriotic songs, with children swearing allegiance to King and 

Empire with a loyal declaration. Also known as Flag Day, Empire Day saw the city decorated with flags 

on principal buildings and cable trams… Originally celebrated on 24 May (Queen Victoria's birthday), 

popular observance declined in the postwar period. Renamed (British) Commonwealth Day in the 1950s, 

and moved in 1966 to 11 June, (Queen Elizabeth II's birthday - sic)[or the second Monday in June, 

actually celebrating the birthday of King George V and Queen Elizabeth’s coronation on 2 June 1953] , it 

was more commonly known as Cracker Night and celebrated by bonfires and the lighting of fireworks 

until stricter government regulation reduced their availability.” 
141

 The Daily Telegraph: 31 December 1900, p. 6. 
142

 The Daily Telegraph: 31 December 1900, p. 6. 
143

 Ironically, it is now bicycles that are regarded as vulnerable compared with the more threatening 

automobile. 



79 

 

included warnings not take infants our young children into crowded areas and care not 

to touch horses ridden by the military or the police.  Although of course wishing to 

preserve the safety of all concerned, one would have assumed that most people in 1901 

were well enough acquainted with the temperament of horses in city streets to treat such 

animals with respect.
 144

 

 

 

5.  MACQUARIE STREET AND THE OLD CITY  

 

The march then travelled north down Macquarie Street, along a route chosen for a 

political and social significance that remains obvious to the modern footstepper, with  

even Queen Victoria’s gaze now turned to look north past St James’ Church.  On the 

eastern side of the street remain many of the great heritage buildings of the city: the 

Royal Mint, Sydney Hospital and State Parliament House.
145

  These institutions were 

constructed over the course of the Victorian century, from the Rum Hospital cum 

Colonial Mint between 1811 and 1816, to the later State Government House and 

Thomas Rowe’s Sydney Hospital, not completed until 1894.  Many of these buildings 

were under threat of demolition at some stage during the subsequent twentieth century 

and Hyde Park Barracks itself was only saved from the wrecker’s hammer in 1937 due 

to the lack of money for the undertaking.
146

   

 

The attitude of many in authority over the years could be summed up by John Boyd 

Steel, secretary of the Howard Prison Reform League between the wars.
147

  As well as 

drawing the long bow of claiming that crime in the Rocks had diminished as a direct 

result of the demolition of houses in 1930 for the construction of the Harbour Bridge,
148

 

Steel claimed that, “There are no old buildings in Sydney which could be preserved on 

account of their beauty or even for the supposed Macquarie design.  All these old barns 

are merely out of date and can never be antiquities.  Certain old buildings at Circular 

Quay are certainly reminiscent of olden days, but they are useless monstrosities, just the 

same.”
149

   

                                                 
144

 The Daily Telegraph: 31 December 1900, p. 6. 
145

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, pp. 19, 20.   
146

 Peter Spearritt: Sydney’s Century – a History, p. 250. 
147

 Howard League for Penal Reform online database. This charitable organisation is still in existence, 

and still fights for the welfare of prisoners and their families. 
148

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 17 October 1938, p. 9.  
149

 Peter Spearritt: Sydney’s Century – a History, p. 250. 



80 

 

 

On the left hand side of the street in 1901 would have stood the impressive private 

residence of Burdekin House, home to one of the significant families of nineteenth 

century Sydney.
150

  The eventual fate of this house would tie in with other sites related 

to the Federation parade through the city.  The congregation of St Stephen’s 

Presbyterian Church at nearby Darling Harbour appeared more than happy about the 

possible replacement of their 1826 York Street church when the district suffered an 

outbreak of Bubonic Plague in 1900 and much of this area was cleared.  This church 

had been the site of conflict with the “fiery leadership of the Rev John Dunmore 

Lang”,
151

 and although the building would remain as the current Scots’ church, religious 

discord would see the departure of many emotionally worn out Presbyterians to 

eventually found the Macquarie Street St Stephen’s Church in 1933.
152

  This church 

now occupies the site of the Burdekin House
153

 and indeed even St Stephen’s own 

current website notes that the demolition of Burdekin House, “described as one of the 

finest residences in Sydney”
154

 would itself become the rallying point for the early 

conservation movement in Sydney.
155

 

 

Following these original structures that marchers in the passing Federation Parade 

would also have noticed is the one building they would have just missed: the new annex 

for the NSW State Library and the grand extravagance of the Mitchell Library and 

Shakespeare Place.
156

  Another notable instance of the degree to which private 

individuals provided the impetus for the social and economic development of the 

community was the example of David Scott Mitchell.  The son of the supervisor of the 

Military Hospital who had become a wealthy industrialist, Mitchell was part of the first 

intake for the newly established University of Sydney in 1852.  Although never really 

short of money, Mitchell was, by temperament or circumstances, “short of affection, 

and turned his passionate and sensitive nature to the collection of Australiana and 

books”.
157

 

                                                                                                                                               
Gregory’s Publishing Company: Sydney Street Directory 2011, maps A, B. The “old barns” now form 

part of The Rocks heritage precinct that attracts millions of local and overseas tourists every year. 
150

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 21. 
151

 St Stephen’s Church: The Three Faces of St Stephens, St Stephen’s Uniting Church, pp.1-3. 
152

 DWA Baxter: John Dunmore Lang (1799-1878), Australian Dictionary of Biography online database. 
153

 St Stephen’s Church: The Three Faces of St Stephens, p 4. 
154

 St Stephen’s Presbyterian Church Macquarie Street: Burdekin House online database. 
155

 Historic Houses Trust of NSW:  For the Public Good – Crimes, Follies and Misfortunes, p. 67. 
156

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 25. 
157

 The Lone Hand: 1907 vol. 1, Arthur William Jose David Scott Mitchell.  Alan Birch and David S 

Macmillan: The Sydney Scene 1788-1960, p. 227. 



81 

 

 

At the time of the parade, Mitchell’s huge collection was still being stored at 161 

Macquarie Street, on the opposite corner of Bent Street to the Australian Club.
158

  The 

current large repository is another one of those notable sites so far passed on my 

footstepping expedition that again demonstrates the gulf in cultural sensibilities that has 

changed over the course of a century.  Nowadays, in Sydney, and elsewhere throughout 

the nation, the ultimate prestige location is one that has a view overlooking a harbour, 

the sea or river.  The view from a point on high over one of the most beautiful harbours 

in the world is enough to place a premium on a suburban residence or commercial 

building.  

 

In 1901 this was apparently not the case.  Harbour side suburbs such as Balmain, The 

Rocks and even Double Bay were places to be avoided.  This had much to do with the 

almost non-existent state of public health facilities at the time.  The improvements in 

sewerage disposal that had occurred from the 1850s to the 1900s consisted primarily of 

replacing cess pits with sewers that expelled human waste directly into the harbour.
159

  

Harbour locations were obviously less appreciated, except for the far eastern suburbs 

such as Vaucluse that were close enough to the heads to avoid the worst excesses of 

human and industrial waste.
160

  Consequently, awareness evolved toward views of the 

natural world that reflected these circumstances.  There are still many 1920s vintage 

bungalows in suburbs along the cliffs in Eastern Sydney where the lounge and living 

rooms face the road, while the views from the back of the houses that overlook beaches, 

headlands and parks are consigned to pokey little windows in bathrooms and toilets.  

These houses were constructed at the same time as the Blue Mountains were being 

established as a recreational destination precisely because of the dramatic scenery and 

spectacular views.
161

 

 

                                                 
158

 Frank Clune: Saga of Sydney, 1962, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, p. 244. The current Mitchell Library 

was eventually constructed between 1906 and 1910.  John Sands: Sands’ Sydney and Suburban Directory 

for 1900, p. 94. 
159

 Peter Curson and Kevin McCracken: Plague in Sydney, the anatomy of an epidemic, 1989, University 

of Sydney Press, Sydney, chapt. 4. 
160

 Peter Curson and Kevin McCracken: Plague in Sydney, the anatomy of an epidemic, pp. 83-84. 
161

  The Sydney Morning Herald: 16 March 1909, p. 8.  Mention of celebrations at the Medlow Bath 

Hydro Majestic. This retreat was created in 1891 and purchased by Mark Foy in 1902 as a health spa. 

Apparently Foy’s retail prestige was enough for him to convince the NSW State Government to rename 

the original railway stop of Medlow to the current Medlow Bath. Blue Mountains Australia: Medlow Bath 

online database. 



82 

 

Both St Mary’s Cathedral and the Mitchell Library today command vistas that are 

considered priceless.  Even with the growth of tall buildings in the streets below and tall 

trees in the surrounding parklands, they still look out to the harbour and the heads; yet at 

the time, this was deemed of little significance.  Just as the principal Roman Catholic 

place of worship had been sited on land that originally no-one else really wanted, it took 

a century before the site of the Mitchell Library was allocated to a significant civic 

structure.  The library now faces Shakespeare Place, originally a point of entry for the 

Domain and the Botanical Gardens.
162

  Its wide spacious grandeur was allowed repose 

for half a century until 1958 when the Cahill Expressway was extended to 

Woolloomooloo, taking much of this land for both the open cut dual carriageway, and 

that most vibrant expression of late 1950s modernity, a road tunnel.
163

   

 

My footstepping now crossed over Macquarie Street to the corner of Bent Street and the 

site of the former Australia Club.  This club was one of many institutions that served the 

practical purpose of linking the City and the Bush.  Such organizations for the 

financially wealthy, and hotels such as the Great Southern, adjacent to Central Railway, 

for the less well off, provided valuable accommodation for country folk visiting the city. 

The western side of Macquarie Street’s eclectic mix of fashionable town houses also 

included doctor’s surgeries and up-market boarding houses, no doubt catering to people 

visiting the city specifically for medical treatment.
164

  It was to the clubs, hotels and 

boarding houses that such visitors looked for sanctuary in the ‘big smoke’.  As Henry 

Lawson himself experienced:
 165

 

 

 It was pleasant up the country, City Bushman, where you went, 

 For you sought the greener patches and you travelled like a gent; 

 And you curse the trams and buses and the turmoil and the push, 

 Though, you know, the squalid city needn’t keep you from the bush. 

                                                 
162

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 25. 
163

 Note the Jeffrey Smart painting expressing not only the alienation of the modern 1960s Brutalism 

design ideal, but is also a very accurate, if compressed, depiction of the northern exit of the then new 

tunnel.    
164

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 25 October 1899, p. 4.  Fires in the City.  Unfortunately, not even 

boarding house residents were safe from the ever present threat of fire.  “About a quarter past 2 o’clock 

yesterday morning Constable Yates who was on duty near the Treasury buildings, noticed an outbreak of 

fire at 133 Macquarie Street north, a four storey house opposite the Gardens.”  Although no-one was  

injured, five residents an members of staff had to be evacuated and “the police investigating the 

circumstances in connection with the outbreak…arrested a man on suspicion, who was taken to No. 4 

police station [located in Phillip Street] and charged with being concerned in the affair.” 
165

 Henry Lawson: Poetical Works of Henry Lawson, p. 226. The City Bushman. 



83 

 

The district still somewhat fills this role today; with legal and medical offices in the few 

grand old structures that remain.
166

  Suitably, the Australian Historical Society, at 133 

Macquarie Street, now occupies one of the last of these sober and discrete boarding 

houses, in this case managed at the turn of the century by Mrs Jane Ware.
167

  The 

northern end of the street toward Circular Quay was more highly commercial, with 

agricultural merchants, and the great wool stores buildings harking back to when 

Circular Quay provided the main docks for overseas shipping.
168

  These would be 

eventually sacrificed in the late 1950s on the altar of Modernism; demolished to make 

way for the city’s first skyscraper, the AMP building.  Most of the other classical 

commercial buildings from 1901 have also been replaced with modern glass towers.   

 

As well as observation points in significant buildings such as the Australian Club,
169

 

Macquarie Street provided the first major viewing opportunity for most people watching 

the Federation Parade from the ground.  Crowds were accommodated on special 

constructed platforms on the flatter upper end of the street, while those taking their 

place in the throng on the slopes further down had to stand.  What is most evident now 

walking north is this change in the alignment of the road, with the Macquarie Street hill 

running down to the harbour becoming steeper prior to the turn into Bridge Street.  

These changes in alignment would of course have been a major consideration for the 

parades in both Sydney and Melbourne, and are one of the notable features of my 

footstepping both processions.  The geography of Sydney in particular would also have 

been evident to the participants and observers of the time.  The Age from Melbourne 

reported concerns expressed by spectators viewing veterans from the 1885 Sudan 

contingent, and even older “veterans, white haired men who fought at Alma or 

Lucknow…They’ll never walk the five miles, observes a bystander.”
170

   

 

The observers’ concerns were no doubt warranted.  As well as the previously mentioned 

lack of toilet facilities, there was a limited supply of water in particular for the military 

                                                 
166

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, pp. 22, 25. 
167

 John Sands: Sands’ Sydney and Suburban Directory for 1900, p. 94. This Society was itself founded in 

1901 as a voluntary organisation funded by members and benefactors to “encourage Australians to 

understand more about their history”.  Royal Australian Historical Society: Home Page online database. 
168

 Even in 1885, the military contingent to the Sudan had left from the eastern side of Circular Quay. 
169

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 26. 
170

 The Age: 2 January 1901, p. 5. 



84 

 

participants,
171

 even allowing for the fact that this was in the middle of a hot, muggy 

Sydney summer’s day. “For some reason, and notwithstanding the fact that the weather 

was disagreeably close, the South Australian soldiers were not allowed to carry their 

water bottles, and had to find water as best they could before and after the 

procession.”
172

  While some admired the cut of the marching military personnel’s 

uniforms “with their glittering helmets, their enormous busbies [weighing as much as 

8lb or 9lb –approx. 4 kg]  and their tartan plaids”, others also recognised the limitations 

of these traditional heavy uniforms in the Australian climate.  Again, The Daily 

Telegraph noted the relief that ensued when the “stand at ease order smote on the ears 

of the perspiring Britishers, with what wonderful unanimity came off all that heavy 

gear.”
173

 

 

 

6.  THE MODERN CITY 

 

My footstepping continued along the ridge of Macquarie Street past the site of the still 

to be constructed Mitchell Library to the entrance to the Botanic Gardens, guarded then, 

as now, by the Captain Phillip Memorial fountain.
174

  This ornate structure had only 

been unveiled on 22 July 1897 to commemorate the 60
th

 anniversary of Queen 

Victoria’s ascent to the throne.
175

  Eighteen years earlier, however, this same location 

was the site of one of the first and most extravagant expressions of the developing 

rivalry between the old established Sydney and the new upstart Melbourne.  After the 

stunning success of the Great 1851 London Exhibition at the Crystal Palace, the 

Australian colonies were inspired to present their own public displays, both as a source 

of civic prestige and a means of increasing trade with the Empire and the world.  With 

the realisation that Melbourne was not only planning an international exhibition for 

1880, but actually constructing a massive Exhibition Building in Carlton Gardens, the 

Agricultural Society of NSW proposed a similar trade fair to be held in the confined 

arena of Prince Alfred Park, adjacent to the then Sydney Railway Station at Redfern.
176

 

                                                 
171

 The Daily Telegraph: 2 January 1901, p. 14.  “The Federal troops were all on the seat at the back of 

the Hospital long before 9 o’clock. From 9:15am until shortly before troops fell in the New South Wales 

Catering Corps were busy taking water carts and supplying the water bottles of the tents.”  
172

 The Daily Telegraph: 2 January 1901, p. 9.  
173

 The Daily Telegraph: 2 January 1901, p. 9. 
174

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 28. 
175

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 23 June 1897, p. 3. 
176

 Peter Bridges and Don McDonald: James Barnet, Colonial Architect, 1988, Hale & Iremonger, 

Sydney, p. 74. 



85 

 

 

Although the actual time and date of opening had been planned (1
 
August 1879, at 

noon) very little else had been thought through.  Initially the whole proposal appeared 

half hearted, until the organisers were suddenly taken aback by the enthusiastic interest 

shown by nations such as France and Austria, and the realised that a larger site would be 

required.
177

  The run of events then began to read a little like a comedy script, with the 

scheme progressing in defiance of every tradition of government project 

development.
178

  Authorities heard that Melbourne had allocated ₤70,000 for their 

structure, and consequently the initial Sydney allocation of ₤18,000 was considered 

paltry.  The Agricultural Society requested ₤50,000, but this new amount was rejected 

on the 20
 
November 1878 by the outgoing NSW Government.  On 22 January 1879, 

however, the new Parkes Government approved the finances required, but by then 

public enthusiasm caused the project to take on a life of its own.  Foundations had 

already been laid out by 16 January, with Government Architect James Barnet’s plans 

approved by the Society and footings being dug. It looked as though walls would begin 

to go up before details of the design and the supply and payment for materials had been 

finalised.
179

 

 

In the event the whole exercise was just too rushed and ill-conceived and the exhibition 

in Melbourne was deemed by even the Sydney press to have been a much greater 

success.
180

  The diplomatic comment by the French Commissary-General, Captain 

Mathieu, declining his invitation to the Sydney Garden Palace opening says it all. “In so 

far as concerns my personal presence at the closing ceremony, I am compelled to make 

some reservation, for I believe that an affair of greater importance will call me to 

Melbourne about that time.”
181

  The Agricultural Society was in disarray, with its 

secretary sacked “just in time for the opening of the Exhibition.”
182

   

 

                                                 
177

 Lenore Coltheart: Significant Sites – History and public works in NSW, 1989, Hale & Iremonger, 

Sydney, p. 67. 
178

 Peter Bridges and Don McDonald: James Barnet, Colonial Architect, p. 75. 
179

 Lenore Coltheart: Significant Sites – History and public works in NSW, p. 69. 
180

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 2 March 1880, p. 5. 
181

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 2 March 1880, p. 5. 
182

 Lenore Coltheart: Significant Sites – History and public works in NSW, p. 93.  Geoffrey Blainey: A 

Land Half Won, chapt. 20.  Added to this was the fact that both these grand trade fairs took place shortly 

before the nation entered what would be the greatest economic downturn then experienced, and which 

some commentators still consider to have been more socially destructive than that of the Depression of 

the 1930s. 



86 

 

Ultimately, the Exhibition Building was opened by Premier Henry Parkes on 17 

September 1879, in a howling rain storm.
183

  Visitors to the Garden Palace had to run 

the gauntlet of demonstrations by the unemployed, and the only real success turned out 

to be the public tram system from Redfern Railway Station which anticipated the 

similar route followed by the underground railway half a century later.
184

  After all this, 

the exhibition did apparently become popular with the general citizenry, with over a 

million visitors during its seven month life, although financially and economically, it 

remained a drain on the colony.
185

  It was probably considered to have been almost an 

anti-climax when the stylish but hastily built structure burned down on 22 September 

1882.  According to The Sydney Morning Herald, “The whole of the colony – indeed 

the whole of the Australasian colonies, and we might add, the whole of the civilised 

world (sic) – will hear [the news] with deep regret…..”
186

  The fountain and statuary 

that took its place has remained in place for over a century: a monument to dogged 

determination and vision rather than poorly planned and executed display. 

  

Beyond the fountain, the Federation parade continued down the slope of Macquarie 

Street, to what was then, and has remained, one of the major intersections of the city: 

Conservatorium Road and Bridge Street.  The thoroughfare going off to the right, then 

known as Government House Road, served its primary purpose as the formal entry to 

the large ornate Colonial Government House of NSW. The first edifice on the road at 

that time was the Government Stables, another building designed in 1821 by Francis 

Greenway. In 1901 this monumental structure was still being used for stabling the Vice-

Regal horses, although its role would soon change dramatically.
187

  In 1912 the 

McGowan State Labor Government decided to take advantage of the evolution of 

reliable automobile transport to transform the stables into a State Conservatorium of 

Music.
188

  According to Grace Karskens, this was in response to a perceived need to 

                                                 
183

 Peter Bridges and Don McDonald: James Barnet, Colonial Architect, p. 79. 
184

 Lenore Coltheart: Significant Sites – History and public works in NSW, p. 93. 
185

 Peter Bridges and Don McDonald: James Barnet, Colonial Architect, p. 80. 
186

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 23 September 1882, p. 7. 
187

 Lenore Coltheart: Significant Sites – History and public works in NSW, chapt. 6. 
188

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 28 July 1913, p. 10. Conservatorium of Music, Conversion of the Stables 

full steam ahead.  “As is well known, the suit is directed against the right of the State Government to 

interfere with the property in any way, the attempted conversion of the stables into a conservatorium of 

music being one of the things regarding which the relators asked for an injunction against the decision of 

the High Court, setting aside the injunction granted by the State Supreme Court, the realtors are now 

appealing to the Privy Council; but in the meantime the conversion of the stables into a head centre of 

music is, accordance to a statement made on Saturday by Mr. Carmichael, going ‘full speed ahead.’”  



87 

 

foster “classical…serious…high class music… as morally and aesthetically superior, 

over the widespread and heavily patronised venues of popular music.”
189

   

 

Of all the sites and locations of the original march, Conservatorium Road is the one that 

has since been the most subsumed by the modern world.  The original entry was a broad 

thoroughfare to both Government House on the left and the Government Stables on the 

right.  In the late 1950s the construction of the Cahill Expressway across the top of 

Circular Quay meant that this entry intersection became the point of exit from the 

expressway before it entered the tunnel and gully that was now cutting the Domain off 

from the Botanical Gardens.
190

  Perhaps Jeffrey Smart’s surreal painting of the exit to 

the Cahill Expressway below Shakespeare Place best evokes both the technological 

wonder and social alienation of the construction.
191

 

 

By the time the Sydney Harbour Tunnel was completed in 1992, the 1950s desire to be 

fashionably modern had been superseded by the 1990s need to simply control the traffic 

flow throughout the city and supplement the capacity of the now over-crowded Sydney 

Harbour Bridge.  Adding in the access to the tunnel forced Conservatorium Road to 

become an even busier intersection, with the entry to Government House marginalised 

to an insignificant side road and the whole area becoming another dry concrete spaghetti 

junction.
192

   This final physical marginalisation of the Vice-Regal carriageway 

coincided with an equally abrupt political ostracism.  State Premier Bob Carr announced 

in 1996 that the NSW State Governor, at that time Gordon Samuels, would no longer 

reside in Government House, but in his own private residence in the coastal suburb of 

Bronte.
193

  Government House would become a social and cultural centre for the state, 

                                                 
189

 Grace Karskens: The Colony – a history of early Sydney.  Lenore Coltheart: Significant Sites – History 

and public works in NSW, p. 121. This social conflict between supposed high art, and popular culture has 

remained a characteristic of Sydney, with both its raffish and slightly disreputable history, and its equally 

robust desire to overcome this past.  
190

 Alan Birch and David S Macmillan: The Sydney Scene 1788-1960, pp. 376-377.  Peter Spearritt: 

Sydney’s Century – a history, p. 153. If overseas countries had elevated expressways and road tunnels, a 

new expressway would show that this city was up there with the rest of the world.  Department of Main 

Roads Commissioner H M Sherrard saw the work as a “major contribution to town planning in Sydney.” 
191

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 25. 
192

 UBD: Sydney Street Directory 2000, maps C, D. These maps shows as well as any others the desperate 

need to link the two sides of the harbour, and the sacrifices that have been made over the decades to 

accomplish this.  Fort Street School, the heritage precinct of Circular Quay, the Botanic Gardens and 

Shakespeare Place have all suffered isolation and reduction for the cause. 

Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 31. 
193

 Kerry Jones: The People’s Protest, 2000, ACM Publishing, Sydney, p. 67. 



88 

 

but no longer the residence of the monarch’s representative in NSW.
194

   Ironically, the 

building then adapted to house the NSW State Governor was, at the time of Federation, 

known as the Colonial Secretary’s Office, providing the most tangible administrative 

link to the British Crown.
195

 

 

Previously, Australia’s first Governor General, Earl Hopetoun had stepped ashore at 

Bennelong Point on the western side of Farm Cove at 10:00am on 15 December 1900, 

with Chief Justice Sir Frederick Darley administering the oath of office.
196

  The Man 

O’War steps marked not only this significant event but would also be the landing point 

for the May arrival of the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York on their return from 

the opening of Federal Parliament in Melbourne.  And the same location would again be 

employed half a century later for the 1954 arrival of the newly crowned Queen 

Elizabeth II.
197

  

 

The Floral Pavilion on the harbour was mirrored by the second arch on the route of the 

Federation parade, the Vice-Regal Welcome Arch that spanned the roadway leading to 

State Government House.  After the landing at Farm Cove, Lord Hopetoun’s carriage 

progressed up the slope of Macquarie Street to this entry to Government House, to be 

greeted not by a classical representation of Imperial grandeur, but by a structure 

festooned with greenery, lace, flowers and a gilded welcome sign across its width.  

Palm fronds and ivy would have given a joyous, perhaps almost biblical impression 

during the day, while at night the “wonderfully softening effect of the modern electric 

lights likened the scene to a well-manipulated transformation scene in a pantomime.”
198

  

This was not so much the imperious grandeur of British heritage and authority that was 

being demonstrated to the new representative of the crown, but rather the joyous 

possibility and freshness of a new nation.
199

  Was the greenery of hope and expectation 

in a country that was fluctuating in and out of drought, within a monument that would 

                                                 
194

 ABC Radio: Virginia Trioli 702AM interview with P J Keating, 24 May 2007. With the current 

Governor, Maria Bashir, comfortably ensconced in the former Chief Secretary’s Building in Macquarie 

Street, the most lasting legacy of Carr’s presumptive action was, according to former Prime Minister Paul 

Keating, to alienate enough of the city’s population to aid in the defeat of his government in the 1996 

Federal election. 
195

 John Sands: Sands’ Sydney and Suburban Directory for 1900, Sydney, p. 16. 

Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 29. 
196

 George Forbes: History of Sydney, 1926, William Brooks & Co, Sydney, pp. 27-48. 
197

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 24. 
198

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 2 January 1901, p. 9. 
199

 Compare this floral extravaganza with the equally ebullient floral tributes laid on the earlier statue of 

Queen Victoria at the top of Macquarie Street. 



89 

 

be mirrored by the Wool and Wheat Arches further down Bridge Street, both the 

embodiment of the Australian Bush, but also a reflection of the European vegetation of 

the city?
200

  Certainly The Sydney Morning Herald thought so, spending considerable 

time describing the arch, although also pointing out that the attempt to accommodate the 

structure within the original short narrow sandstone entrance meant that: “The designers 

were met with immovable obstacles in the shape of two heavy stone piers on which the 

main gates ordinarily swing … converting the two piers into stunted obelisks of 

greenery.”
201

  The entry to Bridge Street from Macquarie Street is still guarded by these 

sandstone bastions of civic power, although their modern role has been much 

diminished.
202

   

 

The Chief Secretary’s Building on the upper western corner is still a government 

building, and as mentioned, the previous residence of the NSW State Governor.  In 

1901, ironically next door at number 123 was a lowly boarding house belonging to a 

Miss M J Edwards.
203

  As with the Australia Club this house would have been well 

located to offer accommodation for out of city visitors to the medical establishments 

along Macquarie Street, albeit at a cheaper rate. The house is now the Astor Hotel, 

while the remainder of the block southwards back towards Bent Street and the old 

Mitchell Library comprised at the time medical offices, surgeries and private hotels.
204

  

On the other northern corner of Bridge Street was the State Treasury Building, which 

now contains within it the tower of the Inter-Continental Hotel.
205

   

 

It is again worth remembering that what we now think of as the heritage buildings in 

this precinct would have been newly constructed late Victorian edifices at the time the 

Federation parade passed by.  As Fitzgerald puts it; “Grand public buildings, which 

were conspicuous by their absence in the 1870s according to English and Melburnian 

observers, were very much in evidence by 1890.”
206

  Such grand buildings were part of 

the growing realisation of the role government had to play in organising civic life, and, 

consequently, of the role of taxation in needing to pay for the new instrumentalities.  In 

this they reflected the significance of tariffs and taxes that were raised at the old 

                                                 
200

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 31. 
201

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 2 January 1901, p. 13. 
202

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, pp. 29-30. 
203

 John Sands: Sands’ Sydney and Suburban Directory for 1900, p. 94. 
204

 Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Sydney Street Directory 2011, map B. 
205

 Intercontinental Hotels and Resorts: or “Intercontinental Ballistic Missile”, as it is sometimes referred. 

City of Sydney online database. 
206

 Shirley Fitzgerald: Rising Damp – Sydney 1870-1890, p. 69. 



90 

 

colonial borders, and the consequent significance of the convoluted discussions over 

taxation revenue in the lead up to the adoption of a Federal Constitution.
207

 

 

If the footstepper takes a slight detour at this stage, and continues travelling north down 

Macquarie Street towards Circular Quay, they will reach the site of the original 

Government Analyst’s Office.  On the corner of yet another testament to the monarch’s 

consort, Albert Street, was the Board of Health; now the Ritz Carlton Hotel.  It was in 

this office that John Ashburton Thompson isolated the bubonic plague bacilli, and thus 

unravelled the life cycle of the disease that had caused so much fear and social 

dislocation a mere year prior to the Federation.
208

  In view of the Prince Consort’s 

concern with issues of health and public welfare it was thus fitting that for most of the 

intervening century this site, and the current adjacent Justice and Police Museum, was 

the location of the Blue Light Clinic for the control and treatment of venereal disease 

within the city.
209

 

 

 

7.  INDUSTRY AND AGRICULTURE 

 

Returning to the intersection of Macquarie and Bridge Streets, the Federation parade 

now turned left and plunged down from the fashionable heights of Macquarie Street into 

Bridge Street, and the hustle and bustle of the working city.
210

  Although not indicated 

in any of the photographs of the time, on the northern side at the top of Bridge Street, 

and one of the first locations now passed by the parade, was one of the city’s main 

tramway termini and the office of the tramway manager, James Roberts.
211

 

 

Sydney at the time was in the process of not only expanding the tramway network, but 

also converting from the older steam and cable trams to electric.  Although most of the 

inner city’s streets were paved with hardwood blocks, these were being lifted along the 

main thoroughfares running north to south for the new tram tracks to be laid.  The 

                                                 
207

 Kathleen Dermody: A Nation at Last – the Story of Federation, 1997, The Commonwealth of 

Australia, Canberra, pp. 39-52 et passim. Helen Irving: The Centenary Companion to Australian 

Federation, p. 428.  
208

 Patricia Morison: John Ashburton Thompson Australian Dictionary of Biography online database. 
209

 Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Revised Maxi Sydney Street Directory of Sydney 1988, 

map AA. 
210

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 33. 
211

 John Sands: Sand’s Sydney and Suburban Directory for 1900, p. 16. 

Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 34. 



91 

 

process had begun in 1898, with most of the lines converted by 1910.
212

  However, the 

woodblocks remained on many of the city streets until the 1930s, and the route of the 

Federation parade would have traversed the blocks under George, Pitt and Park Streets.  

As well as providing a rugged surface for horses and wheeled vehicles, the blocks were 

seen at the time as an efficient use for the same local hard wood that colonial architects 

and builders had considered unsuitable for building construction.
213

  Heavier horse 

drawn transport and the later motor car were dealt with by stone blocks at busy 

intersections, the wooden blocks being hammered close together at regular intervals and 

covered by tar and sand. 

 

Although one of the most extensive systems in the world, Sydney’s tram network had to 

respond to the hilly terrain throughout the metropolis, with the result that it operated as 

virtually half a dozen separate systems joined tenuously at various terminus points 

within the city.  The depot in Bridge Street served the expanding Eastern Suburbs, with 

other sites such as the soon to be constructed Central Railway serving the West, and 

Milson’s Point, the isolated North Shore lines as yet unconnected by a bridge across the 

harbour.
214

   

 

As with so many other aspects of the nation’s development, efficient electrified 

transport was the result of the drive and initiative of one individual.  John Job Crew 

Bradfield had joined the NSW Public Works Department in 1891 and set about 

introducing what would become a world class public transport system.
215

  This would 

climax with the construction of the Sydney Underground Railway in 1926 and the 

Harbour Bridge in 1932.
216

  Bradfield also developed a reputation for being “not 

unaware of his own brilliance and [one who] suffered fools none too gladly.”
217

  

                                                 
212

 Peter Spearritt: Sydney’s Century – a History, p. 17.  The Sydney Morning Herald: 12 June 1901, p. 

13.  This could apparently not come soon enough. Tram Derailed, Traffic delayed in Broadway. “Before 

turning out of Broadway, a portion of the gear of the car fell, and caused the rear car to leave the rails.  

The tram continued for some distance after the mishap, and cut up the wooden blocks of the track, but 

luckily the derailed car remained upright.” 
213

 NSW State Government: Sydney Streets online database. “From today’s perspective the use of so 

much hardwood for street making seems profligate, but in 1880 it seemed the Australian bush could yield 

up a cheap and durable source of urban improvement for the foreseeable future, and the roads, which 

were better than anything previously built, were enormously popular.” 
214

 Peter Spearritt: Sydney’s Century – a History, pp. 17, 36. 
215

 Peter Spearritt: John Job Crew Bradfield (1867-1943), Australian Dictionary of Biography online 

database.  Peter Spearritt: Sydney’s Century – a History, chapt 7, p. 17. 
216

 David Burke: Making the Railways, pp. 203-211. 
217

 David Burke: Making the Railways, p. 203. 



92 

 

“Bradfield does not question the ‘divinity’ of this instinct, so captivated was he by his 

vision of Sydney becoming a ‘New York in miniature’.”
218

   

 

By the 1950s, the inner city was becoming choked by both public transport and motor 

vehicle traffic, while the large industrial estates and suburbs in the west were now 

populated by workers who were given no public transport alternative.
219

  So the tram 

lines were torn up within the course of four years, and replaced by buses.
220

  Most of the 

trams themselves were then taken to the Randwick depot and burned.
221

   This ideal of 

progress was not new of course.  It would be the soon to be mentioned demolitions 

along the western side of the city as a result of plague that would provide Bradfield with 

the impetus to continue the “cleansing” process by demolishing the central road through 

the Rocks, and the block behind Wynyard for the road, rail and tram approaches to the 

Sydney Harbour Bridge.  In fact, memory of the still existent tram station under 

Wynyard returned through my walk as I detoured down to Darling Harbour.    

 

What was noticeable most about this section of the route is the steepness of the street.
222

  

Marching soldiers would have coped quite easily going down the hill, but it would have 

been interesting to view the passing of horse drawn vehicles, particularly the heavy 

floats and cars.  Other equally steep city streets with rising grades were to provide more 

of an issue.  Bridge Street also contained the next two celebratory arches on the 

Federation parade route: the Wool Arch and the Wheat Arch.
223

  As representatives of 

commerce and agricultural industry, it was very apt that these two structures should 

have been erected in the business and corporate heart of the city.  More than any other 

                                                 
218

 Lenore Coltheart: Significant Sites – History and public works in New South Wales, p. 151.  Coltheart 

herself is quoting Richard Raxworthy’s 1989 work, perhaps aptly titled: J J C Bradfield: the 

Unreasonable Man. 
219

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 18 July 1933, p. 10.  This has been a perennial issue for Sydney.  

Western Suburbs, Future of Tramway Services.  “Mr. Humphrey M Earl , honorary secretary of the 

Haymarket-Central-square Association, yesterday expressed the fear that if the Commissioner  

for Transport (Mr. Maddocks) had his way, it was more than likely that the districts of Drummoyne,  

Ryde, and adjoining suburbs would be depleted of all tram services.”  
220

  As the Lost Tramways online database notes:  “The last Pitt St and Castlereagh St trams ran in 1957 

on a Saturday night at 1:00am (29 September 1957).  Within minutes of the trams’ run the overhead wires 

were pulled down, and the next morning (a Sunday) the tracks were paved over, to ensure there would be 

no return of the trams even if the buses should prove inadequate.  This shows pretty clearly that there 

were forces at work other than just desire for efficiency here.”   
221

 Sydney Living Museums: Shooting through like a Bondi Tram, Our Heritage online database. 

“Divested of most salvageable items, trams were eventually taken to ‘burning hill’ at the Randwick tram 

workshops.  There, Oswald ‘Mick’ Price, an ageing Gallipoli veteran and Sydney’s only professional 

tram burner, reduced Sydney’s fleet of trams to a pile of ash.” 
222

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, pp. 35, 36. 
223

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, pp. 36-38. 



93 

 

arches, these blended into their locations with a logic that no doubt would have been 

obvious at the time by providing a link between the bustle of the city and the 

agricultural districts in the country that provided so much of this wealth.
224

  The large 

number of agents, brokers and merchants resident in the smaller buildings that ran down 

the northern side of the street was a testament to the commercial nature of the 

location.
225

   

 

Along with a couple of architects: Thomas Tidwell and J H Buckridge, with their 

offices on Bridge Street,
226

 the Sands’ Directory for 1900 also lists: Mrs E MacLellan, 

artist in portraiture; Miss L Wright, teacher of dancing; and Mrs J G Barron, Christian 

healer.  In view of the fact that this would have been a wealthy district, with substantial 

offices even in the minor buildings, it seems notable that at least three women were 

professionally successful enough to be listed in the area.  Perhaps our current view on 

the limitations that the culture of the time placed upon women is over-simplified.  The 

recent Canberra Times article “Women undervalued in the workplace” implies that 

women themselves contribute to their own undervaluing, in the modern era,
227

 and that 

the issue has always been as much about personal initiative as gender.  Certainly a year 

before Federation, women were also being appointed as sanitary inspectors in Sydney:  

“Women as Sanitary Inspectors.  England already had female sanitary inspectors and 

Lady Darley, Miss Macdonald, Miss Rose Scott and a number of other women have 

written to Treasury urging their appointment in Sydney.”
228

 

 

As well as providing a route through this very affluent and potent part of the city, the 

street also offered a creative advantage.  Unlike the wide vista of Macquarie Street, 

Bridge Street was narrow enough for arches to span the width of the roadway, and 

provide a physical concentration for the procession that would become even more 

pronounced as it progressed further into the city, and with most of the current buildings 

already in place in 1901, this sensation is still very evident today.  

 

                                                 
224

 The Daily Telegraph: 15 December 1900, p9. 
225

 John Sands: Sands’ Sydney and Suburban Directory for 1900, p. 15. All manner of industries were 

represented: The Adelaide Steamship Company, Bulli Colliery, Namoi Meat-preserving and Boiling-

down Company, and even sharing 6 Bridge Street was the Year Book of Australia and Publishing 

Company Limited. 
226

 John Sands: Sands’ Sydney and Suburban Directory for 1900, p. 16. 
227

 The Canberra Times: 16 June 1993, p. 13. 
228

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 23 May 1900, p. 10.   



94 

 

Travelling down the southern side of Bridge Street, past the Chief Secretary’s Building, 

the parade would have reached the Department of Works, now occupied by the Museum 

of Sydney.
229

  Soon after Federation the old departmental building on the corner of 

Bridge and Phillip Streets was demolished and the vacant site used for vehicle parking.  

When the site was being planned for high rise development in 1983, colonial wall 

footings were uncovered, and it was realised that this was the site of Governor Phillip’s 

original 1788 Government House.
230

  The Wran State Government then proposed 

setting aside the site for a museum to commemorate the settlement of the city.
231

   

 

What is clear is that the site is still very much a work in progress in that the current 

small size limits the scope and restricts the concept of a true City Museum to one that 

primarily locates this site of national significance.  One of the most notable aspects of 

this museum’s location is the effect that it has had on the immediate surrounds.  The 

corner next to the Museum into Young Street still retains four original terrace houses, 

although even by the time of the Federation March in 1901 these houses were being 

occupied by offices.
232

  At the time of the parade, Mrs C McGlade resided at number 

41, the house on the corner of Young and Bridge Streets, while the other terraces, from 

number 36 to 42, contained the Registrar’s Office for the Friendly Societies and Trades 

Union, the Board of Exports and the Public Service Tender Board.
233

  The only other 

row of terraces now remains around the corner in Phillip Street, along from the other 

side of the Museum of Sydney.
234

  How these residences managed to survive the 

wholesale demolitions of the past still seems quite remarkable: fortuitous may be the 

term; but at least with current attitudes towards heritage and preservation, their chance 

of survival is improved. 

 

Between Young and Loftus Street was the Department of Public Instruction, and still 

remains as the NSW Department of Education.
235

  Originally meant to house the 

                                                 
229

 John Sands: Sands’ Sydney and Suburban Directory for 1900, p. 16. 
230

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 20 November 1993, p. 15. History underfoot in new museum on 

significant site.  Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Revised Maxi Street Directory of Sydney 

1988, map AA. Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Sydney Street Directory 2011, map B. 
231

 Photograph Booklet 1, p. 35. A cynic might have suggested that the premier was still smarting from 

the 1983 demolition of the Art Deco Rural Bank building in Martin Place, and such a new museum would 

help the pacify the growing conservation movement. 

John Haskell: Haskell’s Sydney, p. 72.  
232

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 34. 
233

 John Sands: Sands’ Sydney and Suburban Directory for 1900,  pp. 94, 157.  
234

 Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Sydney Street Directory 2011, map B. 
235

 NSW Heritage Council: The Department of Education Building online database. 



95 

 

Department of Agriculture, the rapidly expanding state education system requisitioned 

these massive offices just as the first stage of the late Victorian Romanesque / 

Edwardian Baroque structure was coming to completion.
236

  One only has to link the 

1887 construction date with the 1882 establishment of Camdenville Public School, and 

the formal resumption of the building by the Department in 1914 to demonstrate the 

rapid expansion of public education in the Federation years.  At the time of the 

Federation parade, this building was only partially complete, with the Bridge Street 

façade not yet constructed.  In its place was a large fig tree that had been “converted 

into a fairy tree, twinkling with hundreds of electric lights,” for the Federation 

festivities.
237

 

 

The next block was, and still is, the State Lands Department.  As with the other stately 

Victorian structures, this building would have been regarded at the time as almost brand 

new, having been completed a decade earlier in 1891.
238

  While the modern footstepper 

may regard the street as one of great heritage significance, at the time this would have 

been the most modern and up to date route to follow.  The Wool Arch was therefore 

suitably located on the corner of Loftus Street, with the Circular Quay end of both 

Loftus and Young Streets containing the major wool centres for the city.
239

  

 

This arch itself was confronted with the same issue as many others at the time; the 

weather.  Constructed of wool, the structure suffered with the rain storm that preceded 

the event, and although dramatic at the time of its construction, was a little bedraggled 

by the time the parade actually passed underneath.
240

  The designer, Hugh Ross, 

engineer and also Legislative Representative for the state seat of Narrabri had envisaged 

classical columns not unlike the Coal Arch, but constructed of solid unpressed wool.  

Had this design gone ahead, the sodden result would have been not only even less 

inspiring, but also quite dangerous.   The next idea offered by the Government Architect 

was to create a giant sheep standing astride the street, under which the parade would 

pass.
241

  As with the giant ram that has fulfilled a similar role at Goulburn for quite a 

few decades now, this form would have mirrored the symbol of the Golden Fleece that 

                                                 
236

 Apperly, Irving, Reynolds: A Pictorial Guide to Identifying Australian Architecture, pp. 116-119. 
237

 The Daily Telegraph: 2 January 1901, p. 8. 
238

 Apperly, Irving, Reynolds: A Pictorial Guide to Identifying Australian Architecture, p. 57. 
239

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 36. 
240

 The Daily Telegraph: 15 December 1900, p. 9.  Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – the story of 

the Celebratory Arches of 1901, pp. 31-32. 
241

 The Sydney Mail: 8 December 1900, p. 1357. 



96 

 

was becoming a pervasive icon in advertising.
242

  But again, cost common sense ruled, 

and a timber and wire frame was constructed supported by solid bales on the ground, 

upon which scoured wool was secured through the holes in the netting.
243

  The usual 

anticipated trophies and flags festooned the structure, although as well, ornamental 

shields on the piers listed the names of pioneer wool growers and merchants.
244

 

 

Milne envisaged a similar mix of responses to this construction as with the earlier Coal 

Arch.   On the one hand, the probable sense of pride in industry on the part of country 

visitors who would have seen their own culture and social contribution recognised, and 

at the same time, the temptation presented to city folk to partake of the fruits of industry 

in a more ad hoc and literal fashion.  Locals again seemed to have flinched pieces of 

wool from the arch, although what they would do with the material if they did not have 

access to carding and spinning facilities, remains a mystery.  Unlike the coal arch, this 

wool would not seem to have been immediately useful in any quantity, and the smaller 

amounts taken were probably more likely mere souvenirs.
245

  It would also appear that 

inter-colonial (to become inter-state) sniping was already evident.  While the West 

Australian newspaper described the overall celebrations as “A Gorgeous Display”, it 

was less impressed with the Wool Arch, noting that: “on one side stood a poorly 

designed model of a merino ewe, and on the other a ram…..both of which 

appeared……to have claims upon the giraffe as an ancestor.”
246

 

 

The next location on my walk down Bridge Street, and one that would have been 

viewed as most significant at the time was Macquarie Place, now Macquarie Place Park; 

originally the geographical centre of the city.  It was from the obelisk in this park that 

all distances in the city and the state of NSW were measured until the decade before 

Federation.
247

  Macquarie Place celebrated Australia’s great pioneers: Governor Lachlan 

Macquarie himself and Thomas Sutcliffe Mort, through his 1883 statue.  According to 

The Daily Telegraph, this statue even played its part in the Federation parade. “Mort’s 

Statue, situated at the apex of the triangle, accommodated a score of boys of all sorts 

                                                 
242

 Ken Arnold: Australian Tins, 2005, Crown Castleton Publishers, Bendigo, p. 14.  
243

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – the story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 32. 
244

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – the story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 32. 
245

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – the story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 33. 
246

 The West Australian: 2 January 1901, p. 12. Alternatively the fact that the same phrase was used in the 

same issue of the South Australian Register and a later issue of the Western Mail would indicate a level of 

syndication on the part of “Our Special Reporter” as much as sniping. 
247

 Grace Karskens:  The Colony – a history of early Sydney, p. 204. 

Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 41. 



97 

 

and sizes.”
248

  Between the time of the Federation Parade and my current retracing of 

the route, a century of re-development had already occurred, and this site reflects much 

of that later social and political history.  By 1934, the short street running from 

Macquarie Place to Circular Quay had been named Arbitration Place,
249

  and has since 

have been subsumed by corporate skyscrapers, while the remaining space renamed 

Jessie Street Gardens. 

 

At the other apex of Macquarie Place, on the corner of Gresham Street stood the other 

homage to agricultural industry, the Wheat Arch; also known as the Agricultural 

Arch.
250

  This structure again reflected the reliance upon the bush for the wealth of the 

new nation, and was erected by representatives of the agriculturalists of the colony 

through Mr Winchcombe MLA and the NSW Minister for Agriculture, Mr Fegan.  

Since the government was paying for two thirds of the cost of the arch, the remainder 

being raised by subscription, control over the design remained with officials McMillan, 

Rickard and McQueen.
 251

 Although it appeared to be another attempt to be modern in 

architectural design, being covered with sheaves of wheat, the structure was also 

classical in its overall arched design and included the words “Ceres Welcomes The 

Commonwealth”.
252

  Milne mentions that images of the time supposedly did not do the 

arch justice.
253

   Perhaps after the earlier rain storm, the thing really did look as 

bedraggled as it appears in photographs. 

 

At the bottom of Bridge Street stood the old Stock Exchange, with its accompanying 

hotel, now replaced by the Exchange Offices.  Photographs of the original Federation 

era building show a strong classical structure that would have been another institution 

that fell automatically into the route of the parade, and in fact provided the pivot for the 

march to turn left into Pitt Street.  The actual Stock Exchange itself was transplanted to 

the opposite corner in 1961 with the demolition by Lend Lease of the ornate building, 

despite another public outcry.
254

  The current modern working institution is quite an 

                                                 
248

 The Daily Telegraph: 2 January 1901, p. 14. 
249

 Gregory’s Publishing Company: Street Directory of Sydney & Suburbs, 1934, map 3. 
250

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 38. 
251

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 19 December 1900, p. 7. 
252

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 34. 
253

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 33. 
254

 State Library of NSW: Don McPhedran images online database, 11 September 1961. 



98 

 

attractive building, with façadism again placing an even more modern skyscraper 

behind and unobserved.
255

 

 

 

8.  JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR 

 

At the bottom of Bridge Street the march took a sharp turn to the left to proceed up Pitt 

Street.  Why the parade did not continue on to the main thoroughfare of George Street is 

interesting to contemplate.  In none of the records or programmes of the time does there 

appear to be an actual explanation of this, although the Citizens’ Commonwealth 

Committee states in Recommendation 6: “That the route of procession should be from 

Circular Quay, through Loftus Street to Macquarie Place, to Pitt Street, to Martin Place 

to George Street, past the Town Hall, To Bathurst Street, into Pitt Street, back to Park 

Street, to College Street, up Oxford Street to Ocean Street, into Centennial Park.”
256

 So 

we must surmise to a large degree.
257

   

 

The next two arches, the French and American, would have represented sentiments of 

independence, modernism and the view to the future, and Pitt Street even at this time 

would have already seemed to exemplify this sense with towering buildings creating a 

canyon reminiscent of the skyscrapers of Chicago and New York.
258

  The route along 

Pitt Street would also have afforded the opportunity for the marchers to then traverse 

the newly created hub of Martin Place. 

 

However, there is another possible explanation.  Almost exactly a year previously, 

plague had broken out on the western side of Sydney, and a large part of the city 

between George Street and Darling Harbour had been quarantined, cleared and even 

demolished as part of the control and eradication process.
259

  The division of the city by 

the gully of the old Tank Stream has remained as a symbolic line of separation between 

the slope to the east from Pitt Street back to Macquarie Street, and the western slope to 

                                                 
255

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 40. 
256

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 30 October 1900, p. 6. Citizens’ Commonwealth Committee. A Series of 

Recommendations. 
257

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 29 December 1900, p. 9.  All such programmes do make a point of 

mentioning the parade route into Pitt Street. 
258

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 10 July 1912, p. 17.  This development was not welcomed by all of 

course “The Skyscraper, should it be sanctioned?” 
259

 Peter Curson and Kevin McCracken: Plague in Sydney – the anatomy of an epidemic, chapts. 6, 7. 

Photograph Booklet 1, p. 43. 



99 

 

George Street and thence to Darling Harbour.
260

  If the influence of the plague had 

remained strong at the time of the Federation parade, then George Street at this point 

would have been a most notable adjacent reminder of the failings of the new society. 

 

Plague of course has been a common occurrence in human experience for millennia, and 

greatly feared for most of this time due not only to its deadly consequences, but also its 

unknown cause.
261

   The outbreak in Sydney that began in January 1900 was, in many 

respects, a watershed representing the cultural bridge between ancient fears and 

attempts to deal with the eternal problem, and the eventual discovery of the cause of the 

disease and the ability of the modern science to render the pestilence relatively 

harmless.   Australia was not the only nation to have been affected at this time, and it 

certainly was not the worst.  At the beginning of the twentieth century, many countries 

around the Pacific Rim found themselves attacked by outbreaks of Bubonic Plague.  

The source is still open to dispute, although most commentators agree that it probably 

came, via shipping, from China.
262

  While Australia would lose 165 people prior to 

Federation, and upwards of 500 over the subsequent two decades, countries such as 

China itself and India suffered fatalities in the tens of thousands, with maritime centres 

as far removed as San Francisco and even Glasgow recording a significant number of 

deaths.
263

 

 

This disease, virulent in both pneumonic and bubonic forms harked back in cultural 

memory to the pestilences of the Middle Ages in Europe, so a level of concern was to 

be expected.  At first however, the reaction was rather different.  While there was 

apprehension with the initial outbreak, the official response was muted to say the least.  

The Daily Telegraph could claim that:  “Some consternation was caused in the city 

yesterday [24 January 1900] by a rumour that a case of the plague from Dawes Point 

had been reported to the health authorities. Inquiries showed that there was some 

foundation for the report, though no great cause for alarm.”
264

 

 

                                                 
260

 Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Sydney Street Directory 2011, maps A, B. For some 

reason, virtually all street directories also break the pages for the CBD of Sydney along the alignment of 

the old Tank Stream. 
261

 Peter Curson and Kevin McCracken: Plague in Sydney – the anatomy of an epidemic, chapt. 1. 
262

 Peter Curson and Kevin McCracken: Plague in Sydney – the anatomy of an epidemic, p. 29. 
263

 Peter Curson and Kevin McCracken: Plague in Sydney – the anatomy of an epidemic, pp. 36-37. 
264

 The Daily Telegraph: 25 January 1900, p. 7. 



100 

 

Thus did Arthur Payne, ship’s carter from Ferry Lane, Dawes Point, become the first 

recorded victim of plague in Australia.  Even by 29 January, The Sydney Morning 

Herald could still state that:  “A surprisingly small amount of interest has been 

manifested by the medical profession of this Colony in the outbreak of plague which 

according to the authorities was experienced by the man Payne.”
265

  The small amount 

of interest extended to the press not even being sure whether the poor man’s name was 

spelled Payne or Paine.
266

  Allowing for the then general ignorance of the specific agent, 

the mode of transmission, and the fact that there was no known cure at the time, the 

initial response of the press and the city fathers was remarkably low key.
267

  

 

One can compare the experience of plague, as reported in Sydney through 1900, with 

that much earlier occurrence in London in 1665, as reported by Daniel Defoe.  While 

Defoe was apparently only five years old when the pestilence actually struck,  his 

famous journal published half a century later in 1722,  must have been based upon a 

mixture of first and second hand resources.  However, his record instils a real sense of 

panic from the very beginning, both from Defoe himself and from the other Londoners.  

“London might well be said to be all in Tears: the Mourners did not go about the Streets 

indeed, for no Body put on black, or made a formal Dress of Mourning for their nearest 

Friends; but the Voice of Mourning was truly heard in the Streets: the Shrieks of 

Women and Children at the Windows, and Doors of the Houses…..”
268

 

 

By the late 1800s, the germ theory had enabled people to see the theoretical link 

between dirt and filth and disease.  Theoretical that is, since actually doing something 

about the living conditions of the times still unfortunately required the impetus of social 

tragedy.  In Sydney, sewerage continued to be discharged directly into the harbour on 

either side of Circular Quay.
269

  Even with the relatively small population of the city at 

                                                 
265

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 29 January 1900, p. 5.  
266

 Peter Curson and Kevin McCracken: Plague in Sydney – the anatomy of an epidemic, 1989, University 

of NSW Press, p. 116.  Note the Sydney Evening News: 9 February 1900 where the spelling is Payne 

while country newspapers such as the Clarence River Advocate: 26 January 1900 spell Paine. 
267

 Note the many issues of The Bulletin, such as March 3, 10, 17 1901, where the issue of plague, the 

connection with rats, and even the bounty of 2d per dozen captured rodents are suitable subjects for 

humour.  The fact that a refreshing ale could theoretically be purchased with the presentation of half a 

dozen rats does strike one as amusing.  When one compares the outbreak of plague in 1900 with the 

arrival of equally incurable agents such as AIDS and SARS eighty and ninety years later, the initial 

mildness of the response seems all the more remarkable. 
268

 Daniel Defoe: A Journal of the Plague Year, 1969, Oxford University Press, Oxford, p. 16. This 

certain contrasted with the muted reaction in Sydney. 
269

 Peter Curson and Kevin McCracken: Plague in Sydney – the anatomy of an epidemic, p. 83. 



101 

 

the time, around 538,000 people,
270

 the stench must have been overpowering.  It was a 

most notable event when the Bondi Sewer was expanded in 1888,
271

  but this certainly 

did not cope with the whole population, and of course could only eliminate waste from 

those latrines that were actually connected in the first place.   

 

John Ashburton Thompson was yet another one of those remarkable individuals who 

were to influence the city of Sydney.  A public health administrator from Britain who, 

ironically, had travelled to New Zealand and then Australia in 1878 for his own health, 

Thompson became, president of the New South Wales Board of Health.
272

   As early as 

1878 French physician Paul-Louis Simond had delivered a paper indicating the 

connection whereby the plague bacillus was transferred from rat to rat, and also from rat 

to human, by the rat’s fleas.  However these findings would not be totally accepted until 

1907.
273

  Meanwhile Ashburton Thompson was able to convince local authorities that 

contagion was limited to this partially understood process.  “The popular notion 

regarding the bubonic plague is that it is dangerous to come within a stone’s throw of a 

patient; but this is an absolute mistake.”
274

 

 

In the end, eradication consisted of direct elimination of the rats that were seen as the 

primary sources of infection and the elimination of the conditions that bred the rats. The 

block bounded by Margaret, Kent and Sussex Streets south to the Haymarket was 

quarantined through much of 1900,
275

 with cleanliness considered an integral aspect of 

control.  According to Thompson, “The reason [why Japanese doctors contracted 

plague] was ascribed to their not always washing their hands after attending upon a 

patient….I think that plague is less dangerous, so far as contagion is concerned , than 

scarlet fever, and between plague and typhus fever there is absolutely no 

comparison.”
276

 

 

                                                 
270

 Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics:  Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of 

Australia 1901-1907, No.1, p. 158. The various outfalls would each have been dealing with only a 

fraction of this number. 
271

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 24 April 1888, p. 5. 
272

 Patricia Morison: John Ashburton Thompson (1846-1915), Australian Dictionary of Biography online 

database. 
273

 Simond, Godley, Mouriquand; Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, volume 91, February 1998, 

Louis Simond and his discovery of plague transmission by rat fleas: a Centenary.  
274

 The Brisbane Courier: 29 January 1900, p. 6.  Extended interview with Ashburton Thompson. 
275

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 10 April 1900, p. 3. 

Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 44. 
276

 The Brisbane Courier: 29 January 1900, p. 6.  Extended interview with Ashburton Thompson. 



102 

 

There may well have been a class based and racially based bias in the ease with which 

streets were closed and premises readily demolished, but according to the evidence, the 

local working class people and the Chinese really were living in filth and squalor.
277

  

The amount of garbage that was taken out from the Darling Harbour precinct beggars 

belief.  According to Curson and McCracken, 28,455 tons of garbage were dumped at 

sea and a further 25,430 tons burnt.
278

  Over twenty seven thousand rats were also 

destroyed, causing one to imagine how many of these difficult to find and catch little 

creatures actually inhabited the not overly expansive quarter.
279

  The lack of sewerage 

and adequate garbage disposal was always the responsibly of civic authorities in 

Sydney, but the general squalor and filthy disease breeding environment was equally 

seen as the responsibility of the people living there themselves.
280

  If the plague did 

originate in China, and if the Chinese living on the edge of Darling Harbour were 

existing in filth, then targeting this community was not totally illogical.
281

 

 

Initially not enough was done, and in the end, probably too much was done.  It should 

be remembered that this was the era before there were any antibiotics and effective 

chemical treatment for the disease; and of course only just when the cause of the plague 

was being widely acknowledged in the first place.  Much of the district bounded by 

Margaret and Clarence Streets, Sussex and Erskine Streets was cleansed, fumigated and 

then demolished.
282

  The deplorable state of affairs was there for all to see, and someone 

needed to be blamed.
283

  Just as the Darling Harbour plague districts were readily 

demolished to safeguard the city’s health, so the original Darling Harbour wharves were 

then demolished, eventually to be replaced with wide concrete arenas necessary for the 

later introduction of containerisation.
284

   

 

The other principal plague outbreak in Sydney was at the southern end of Hyde Park; in 

the district known as Wexford Street.  As with the Haymarket, this area had 

accommodated a changing population that depended upon employment in the docks and 

                                                 
277

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 45. 
278

 Peter Curson and Kevin McCracken: Plague in Sydney – the anatomy of an epidemic, p. 157. 
279

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 17 April 1900, p. 3. Rat Catching Operations. 
280

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 22 March 1901, p4. “They [the old quarters of cities] stagnate, or, worse, 

they degenerate; and become in time the resort of the wretchedness and alien squalor.  It is not always 

practicable, but when practicable it is certainly desirable, to bring these places once more into the main 

stream of civic life.” 
281

 Peter Curson and Kevin McCracken: Plague in Sydney – the anatomy of an epidemic, p.174. 
282

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, pp. 45, 46. 
283

 Peter Curson and Kevin McCracken: Plague in Sydney – the anatomy of an epidemic, chapt. 9. 
284

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, pp. 47, 48 



103 

 

cargo distribution warehouses for the city.  Originally housing the Irish immigrants who 

gave the district its name, by the time of Federation, many of the inhabitants were also 

Chinese.  As the NSW colonial government was already in the process of planning the 

massive reconstruction of what would become Central Railway, and since there had 

already been demolition of plague ridden houses along the dockland front of Darling 

Harbour, it was deemed acceptable to demolish substandard housing in this region as 

well.  In fact, it was apparently the Irish themselves who petitioned that the newly 

cleared area be no longer referred to as Wexford Street, believing that it reflected poorly 

on the aspirations of Irish culture.
285

 

 

The Chinese appeared to be viewed always as a special case due to their numbers, and 

also because so many were returning to China without presenting an obvious loyalty to 

the nation.  The fact that so many of the British settlers were doing the same thing was 

rarely mentioned.
286

  What we would consider to be blatant overt racism appeared 

endemic.  There are ironic comments by author and literary personality Frank Clune, 

born in 1893 in Surry Hills.  Clune describes taunting Chinese in the Haymarket and 

pulling their pigtails as a little boy (prior to the 1911 revolution, Chinese, even in 

Australia often wore the pigtail).  “Many a time I was ‘given a chase’ along Campbell 

Street by an irate Chinese for pulling his pigtail or playing some other prank on him.”
287

  

Either a casual racism or simply the exuberant youthfulness of even a relatively 

sensitive young Australian perhaps reflected the tenor of the times.  What strikes the 

reader today are not so much the actions themselves, as the perceived acceptability of 

repeating the episode in a printed publication. 

 

The complexity of this situation can be gauged by the means with which authorities 

attempted to control the Chinese population of the city, while at the same time 

recognising how much the city was dependent upon Chinese skills.  The very day prior 

to Federation, the NSW Minister for Works stated that “in future, all furniture for 

Government departments shall be obtained only from firms who are supplied by 

European workmen”.
288

  The claimed concern was with the rates of pay and the hours of 

labour, where “the lot of the masses can be improved.”
289

  In other words, the pay and 

                                                 
285

 The Daily Telegraph:  13 April 1900, p. 6. 
286

 Note the experience of members of the Australian artistic community: Melbourne parade chapter. 
287

 Frank Clune: Saga of Sydney, 1962, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, p. 149. 
288

 The Daily Telegraph: 31 December 1900, p. 4. 
289

 The Daily Telegraph: 31 December 1900, p. 4. 



104 

 

conditions of Australian workmen were being undermined.  Yet people were still 

dependent upon Chinese made furniture, and were apparently happy to buy pieces made 

by the non-British.  The degree to which the city of Sydney was equally dependent upon 

food from the Chinese market gardens was significant.  The alluvial flats from Kogarah, 

behind Botany Bay, north to the Gumbramorra Swamp and the Cooks River, supplied a 

large part of the daily requirements of the city until well after the Second World War:
290

 

and many of these market gardens were run by Chinese.
291

  This hub of Chinese 

agricultural enterprise can still be tracked by following the road map from Scarborough 

Park Ramsgate north to Kyeemagh.
292

  The low lying productive land then traces from 

Mackey Park in Marrickville South, north west to Sydenham and the aptly named 

Garden Street.
293

   

 

 

9.  PITT STREET REPUBLICANS 

     

My footstepping now returned to the lower end of Bridge Street and, as did the march a 

century ago, followed the route into Pitt Street and the canyons of commerce.
294

  

Sydney was sited alongside the Tank Stream that provided the original source of fresh 

water for the colony, although it is now little more than an underground covered drain 

running below the gully between Pitt and George Streets.
295

  The alignment of the 

stream is still evident in the low elevation of land from the GPO in Martin Place, 

through the myriad of small lanes past Australia Square to the western end of Circular 

                                                 
290

 Richard Cashman and Chrys Meader: Marrickville – rural outpost to inner city, p. 165. 
291

 Richard Cashman and Chrys Meader: Marrickville – rural outpost to inner city, p. 144. 
292

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 21 December 1886, p. 11.  The large half page article Market Gardens 

describes the methods used and the locations based around the Cooks River and Shea’s Creek. “Whilst 

there are many points in the Chinese mode of cultivating vegetables which are open to criticism [these 

points that were at once “disgusting and prejudicial to health” included using human excreta as fertiliser], 

there are also features which must call forth admiration in every unprejudiced mind.  They are economical 

of everything but their labour; they live amongst us, but are not of us;” 
293

 Evening News: 1 October 1884, p6.  Garden Street Marrickville.  Even in 1884 the perils of developing 

the flood prone agricultural area for residential accommodation had become evident. “Alderman 

Chisholm read a report of the works committee of the Marrickville council on Monday night as to Mr 

Chester’s request to do something to remedy ‘the beastly state of Garden Street’.”   In an amusing piece 

of buck passing, “the mayor said that he believed that all the waterways belonged to the owners of the 

land.” But at least “the report was adopted and the proposed meeting will be held.”  Gregory’s Publishing 

Company: Gregory’s Sydney Street Directory 2011, Universal Press, Sydney maps 373, 374, 403, 404 

and 433.  Since the Great Depression, the presence of a large storm water basin has controlled the 

perennial flooding, and the district is now designated non-residential light industrial. 
294

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 50. 
295

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 2 August 1934, p. 23 supplement. The Tank Stream.  “I wonder if any of 

us, when going through the city, ever think of the Tank Stream, which perhaps is flowing under the street 

along which we are walking?” 



105 

 

Quay.
296

  As a belated commemoration, the northern end of old Hamilton Street that ran 

between Hunter and Bridge Street, virtually on top of the tank stream tunnel has, since 

the 1970s, been renamed Tank Stream Way.
297

  Even the Bridge Street that the Sydney 

Federation parade traversed was named for the bridge that crossed this vital stream at 

Macquarie Place in early colonial days. 

 

Although the naming of Bridge Street reflected a prosaic indication of land use and 

location, most of the other streets through which the march proceeded in Sydney 

reflected the authority of the British rulers of the day, and the power of one man within 

the colony: Governor Lachlan Macquarie.
298

   When Lachlan Macquarie arrived in the 

colony in 1810 he gave early attention to town planning and the state of the roads, with 

few of the main thoroughfares retaining their original names.  George Street was created 

from, at least part of its length, the old High Street.
299

  “Central street names reflected 

Macquarie’s loyalty to the Empire, with the ducal titles of the sons of George III – 

York, Cumberland, Sussex, Clarence, Cambridge and Kent – joining their father and his 

queen, Charlotte, on street signs. To these were added the names of various British 

officers such as Bathurst, Liverpool, Castlereagh, Pitt and NSW governors Phillip, 

King, Hunter, Macquarie and Bligh.”
300

 The governor then named the second most 

significant street in Sydney after his wife, Elizabeth. 

 

                                                 
296

 Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Street Directory of Sydney and Suburbs 1934, map 2.  

Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Sydney Street Directory 2011, maps A, B, C. 
297

 Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Street Directory of Sydney and Suburbs 1934, map 2.  

Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Sydney Street Directory 2011, map B. That such a cultural 

memory still exists was also evident by the creation of the semi-artificial Tank Stream Arcade, linking 

King Street and Pitt Street over the original upper reaches of the watercourse.  Although this arcade has 

now been closed, the simulated, but effective little waterfall gave the visitor the impression that they 

really were stepping over the original stream as they came down the stairs to shop.  The Canberra Times: 

14 October 1972, p. 18. “Sydney’s historic Tank Stream is to be diverted into a city building project and 

will be visible to city shoppers in the form of a fountain and pool.” This in itself was no doubt a reflection 

of the developing sense of heritage of the 1970s.  Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Sydney 

Street Directory 2011, map C. Note the corner of King St and Pitt St, location K4. 

Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 54. 
298

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 26 December 1908  p. 11.    
299

 UBD Australia: UBD Sydney Street Directory 2000, Universal Press, Sydney, maps 1, 3, 12, 18. This 

interesting state of George Street has remained to this day, since this was always the original main road 

from the old docks on the western side of Circular Quay through the suburbs to the settlement of 

Parramatta.  So the same winding main road changes from Hickson Road (which loops around from 

Darling Harbour and is named after Robert Hickson (1842-1923) the first president of the Sydney 

Harbour Trust, itself established on the 1 November 1901 as part of the recognition that something 

needed to be done after the outbreak of plague). The road then changes to George Street, becomes 

Broadway at Railway Square and finally Parramatta Road at the University of Sydney.  
300

 City of Sydney Council: The streets of your town online database. Pitt Street was more likely to have 

been named after the British Prime Minister, William Pitt.  The Sydney Mail: 1 January 1901, p.28.  

Charlotte Place itself was to be later swallowed up, along with much of its partner, Grosvenor Street, by 

the Bradfield Highway and the Sydney Harbour Bridge.  



106 

 

The skyscraper as we know it today did not exist in Sydney in 1901, with a 150 foot 

limit being placed on building heights until 1957.
301

  However, there were still tall 

multi-storey buildings for both government authorities and wealthy private financial and 

insurance firms.
302

  Pitt Street, then as now, was a narrow bustling thoroughfare giving 

the pedestrian the sensation of entering into a gorge between the towering cliffs of what 

Peter Spearritt has called “monuments to renaissance revival architecture” on either 

side.
303

  This canyon effect was recognised at the time, with The Daily Telegraph noting 

that: “the Hunter Street to Martin Place portion of Pitt Street form (sic) the ‘American 

Avenue’….the bunting introduced talks largely of the nationality of the firms by whom 

they have been carried out.”
304

  As was the case with Bridge Street, the very narrowness 

of the thoroughfare would surely have added to the dramatic spectacle as the parade 

passed beneath.  Images from the time demonstrate the degree to which the marchers, 

horses and carriages filled the entire roadway,
 305

 leaving little depth for spectators who 

would have been able to reach out and touch the participants as they passed.
306

   It was 

here that the two arches from those cultures embodying the epitome of modernism and 

the modern world were located: France and the United States of America.
307

  Both these 

nations were in the interesting position of also being both republics themselves (and 

even cultural threats to the motherland, in one way or another), while being represented 

by rather small populations within Australia.
308

  The French Arch location at the 

entrance to Pitt Street is marked even today with a hotel and restaurant christened 

appropriately The Republican.
309

   

 

                                                 
301

 Apperly, Irving, Reynolds: A Pictorial Guide to Identifying Australian Architecture, p. 235. 
302

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 53. 
303

 Peter Spearritt: Sydney’s Century – a History, p. 209. 
304

 The Daily Telegraph: 2 January 1901, p. 16. 
305

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 51. 
306

 The Daily Telegraph: 2 January 1901, p. 16.  From these accompanying drawings from the time, and 

from my own later photographs, the narrowness of Pitt Street is obvious.  One does not need to have 

overly tall buildings on either side to feel the sense of being in a canyon. 
307

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, pp. 52-54. 
308

 Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics: Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of 

Australia 1901-1907, No.1, p. 166.  The Census of 1901 lists populations by place of birth with those 

from France numbering 2 618 and those from the United States of America 5 217.  By contrast those with 

place of birth listed as China, even by 1901 were 29 513 and those from Germany were 25 002. 
309

 Gregory’s: Street Directory of Sydney 2011, map B. This bistro provides both a link to the Federation 

Parade and also a more poignant remainder from the 1999 Republican Referendum that had been 

focussed also in the Central Business District of the city.  In addition to the earlier removal of the State 

Governor from Government House by the Carr Government, the City of Sydney Council, headed by Lord 

Mayor Lucy Turnbull had festooned these same city streets with banners advocating a “Yes” vote and the 

arrival of an Australian Republic in the week leading up to the 6 November ballot. 

Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 50. 



107 

 

Cardinal Moran had also apparently been quite happy to add a sectarian tinge to these 

political views.  A year earlier, while raising funds for the construction of St Mary’s 

Cathedral, he had taken the opportunity to attack the French Revolution, which was of 

course then only a hundred and ten years in the past.  “In France, for instance, the 

enemies of religion at the close of last century left nothing undone to destroy the very 

name of Christian… But their efforts had been in vain. When the Revolution broke out 

in France the entire number of French missionaries spread throughout the world was 

300.  Now the number engaged in mission work was 50,000.”  The more recently 

unified Germany itself also came in for the Cardinal’s rather scatter gun commentary.  

“Germany was another example.  In the beginning of the century [the nineteenth 

century], all the smaller states were most hostile to the Church.  Now they had been 

absorbed by Germany; the church enjoyed almost perfect freedom throughout that vast 

empire, and the present population of Germany was over 20,000,000.”
310

 

 

Although the French community in Australia has always been small their arch was 

funded by “the French Citizens living in Sydney, with the ultimate responsibility falling 

on the French Community Committee.”
311

  The French Arch was recorded as being 

some seven metres high and eight metres wide,
312

 although as the images demonstrate, 

this width was only the opening; the classically styled supports on either side would 

have added another three metres each, and taken up most of the width of the road.
313

 

Erected in the “Gothic” style with imitation masonry blocks, and the motto “Pax et 

Labor”, peace and effort,
314

  the arch contained within it a mixture of representations 

linking French culture, exploration, agriculture and viniculture, and of course support 

for the new nation of Australia.  One evocative touch was the matching supporters on 

the top of the two piers: an Australian styled flag borne by an Emu on one and the 

French Tricolour apparently supported by Chanticleer on the other.
315

   The Age 

newspaper was not too sure about this, and also the included possible configuration of 

the yet to be formally designed Australian flag, although here apparently based upon a 

representation of the Southern Cross, similar to the current state flag of Victoria.
316

 

                                                 
310

 The Daily Telegraph: 22 January 1900. 
311

 The Daily Telegraph: 2 January 1901, p.14. 
312

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 35. 
313

 Photograph Booklet vol. 1, p. 51. 
314

 Milne and other press reports incorrectly reported this as Fax et Labor, fire and work. 
315

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 35. 
316

 The Age: 2 January 1901. According to Elizabeth Kwan: Flag and Nation, 2006, University of NSW 

Press, Sydney  p. 15, this flag was white, with a blue cross containing the five stars of the Southern Cross 

stylised with the small star in the centre of the cross.  The Union Flag still held pride of place in the first 



108 

 

There was also a financial and trade aspect to the arch, with the coats of arms of those 

French cities with which Australia had commercial connections: Paris, Lyon, Marseilles 

and Bordeaux.
317

  Ironically, the French Consul-General actually boycotted the parade 

over another protocol dispute and even missed the formal ceremony at Centennial Park 

after being held up in traffic.
318

 

 

Unlike more numerous non British migrant groups such as the Chinese, Italians and 

Greeks, the French have never really established French Quarters in Australian cities.
319

  

However, since the Second World War, there has been what might be called a Latin 

Quarter in Sydney centred on Abbey’s foreign language bookshop in York Street, the 

Alliance Française behind the Town Hall and the Spanish club further down in 

Liverpool Street.  With no defined central community district, there was no cultural 

logic behind the location of this arch.  However, as with the siting of the American Arch 

further along Pitt Street, the setting would have represented and reflected very much 

“the modern world”.   

 

It would have been interesting, though, to consider the degree to which ideals of French 

liberty, equality and fraternity would have been mitigated by the recent 1894 Dreyfus 

affair.  The Argus in Melbourne still recalled Dreyfus as a martyr, “Imprisoned on a 

lonely island. Surrounded by miasmatic vapours, and deprived of all but the necessaries 

of existence.”
320

  Although Captain Alfred Dreyfus would have been back in France 

from his brutal exile by the time of Australian Federation, he was not fully exonerated 

until 1906.
321

  Anti-Semitism also appeared quite prevalent in Australia at the time, 

although suggestions in the press of the time indicate that it was of a mild stereotyping; 

poking fun at supposed Jewish interests in financial profit.
 322

  “Antisemitism was never 

                                                                                                                                               
quarter canton.  The Sydney Morning Herald: 2 January 1901, p. 13. The Herald appeared to be clear 

about the birds, but also mentioned the flying of the “Australian Commonwealth flag”. 
317

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 36. 
318

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 3 January 1901, p. 8. 
319

 Although, of course, there was the Paris end of Collins Street, designated more through wealth, 

fashion and style than language and culture. 
320

 The Argus: 23 May 1899, p. 6. 
321

 Colin Jones: Cambridge Illustrated History of France, 1994, University of Cambridge Press, 

Cambridge, p. 234. 
322

 The Bulletin: 10 February 1900, p. 11.  Note where support for the Boer War amongst the Jewish 

Community was presented as primarily concern with supplying loans and tenders for the campaign. 

Perhaps Australia’s much smaller Jewish community of around 15 000  was seen as an exotic minority, 

rather than a real cultural or economic threat; although in percentage terms, Australian Jewry, at 0.49% of 

the population was over twice that of France, at a mere 0.22%.   

Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics: Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia 

1901-1907, No 1 – 1908, p. 174.  Those listed as Hebrew, 15 239.  Again compare with 35 666 listed for 



109 

 

part of the Australian mainstream”, observes historian Hilary Rubinstein, noting that no 

social or legislative impediment prevented Sir John Monash or Sir Isaac Isaacs from 

reaching the pinnacle of military and civic leadership in their time.
323

  However, 

Rubenstein then goes on to quote instances where writers and publications such as 

Marcus Clarke, Norman Lindsay, Henry Lawson and 'lesser' contributors to Smith's 

Weekly, Melbourne Punch, The Bulletin, or Labor newspapers such as The Worker, 

Tocsin or Labor Call engaged in stereotypical bigotry.  Perhaps this is an instance 

where the press of the day was expressing ideals at variance to the reality of everyday 

life.  No doubt Australians at the beginning of the twentieth century expressed some of 

the anti-Semitic sentiments represented in the press.  However, this did not seem to 

translate into violent action or the boycotting of businesses that would have been 

evident of stronger feelings.  In fact, Suzanne Rutland mentions that, due to the number 

of practising Jews in the NSW Legislative Assembly in 1917, the House did not sit on 

the day of Yom Kippur.
324

 

 

Pitt Street has always been the business centre and busiest street in the city, and as I 

walked up towards the GPO, the constant vehicle and pedestrian traffic indicated that 

this was still very much the case.  The American Arch was placed at the intersection 

with Hunter Street where the nearby angled Spring and O’Connell Streets still give a 

very “New York” almost claustrophobic feel to the precinct.  This can certainly convey 

to the pedestrian a sensation of vibrancy if they are partial to the hustle and bustle of 

urban life.
325

   The original Sydney Morning Herald Building, angled like the American 

Flat Iron Building, also harks back to the days when all the major social and cultural 

activities took place right in the heart of the CBD.
326

  The American Arch apparently 

                                                                                                                                               
Buddhist, Confucian and Pagan, in other words, Chinese.  Jewish Encyclopaedia: Historical Jewish 

population comparisons online database.   
323

 National Archives of Australia: Anti-Semitism in Australia Research Guide, quoting L.M. Goldman, 

The Jews in Victoria in the 19th Century, Melbourne 1954, pp. 405-6. 
324

 Sydney City Council: Dictionary of Sydney website.  Suzanne Rutland article titles: Jews.  In the 

1930s Sir Daniel Levy was elected as Sydney’s first Jewish Lord Mayor.   
325

 Terry Irving and Rowan Cahill: Radical Sydney, 2010, University of NSW Press, Sydney, 

Introduction. Note in particular the map opposite p. 1, indicating the concentration of radical action in the 

CBD during the first half of the twentieth century. Interestingly, this location (along with the abandoned 

Eveleigh Railway Workshops) is also a favourite with marketing agencies producing automobile 

advertising: imposing a moody sense of the tough, hard bitten and gritty metropolis. 
326

 Sydney Architecture: Sydney Morning Herald Building (former) website. The current structure was not 

completed until 1929, so the march would have passed the original 1856 building. The Sydney Morning 

Herald building as it now exists was sold to the Bank of NSW (now Westpac) in 1954-55 and new 

premises build on Broadway, between Central Railway and the University of Sydney. 

Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Sydney Street Directory 2011, 2011, Universal Press, Sydney 

map 370. By the 1990s the Sydney Morning Herald had again moved; out to new premises in industrial 

Chullora. 



110 

 

required considerable effort to erect.  When one reads of the complexity of the very 

Classical Jeffersonian edifice, it was no wonder that post holes five feet (one and a half 

metres) deep had to be dug in the road side to support the structure.
327

   While the arch 

contained sympathetic sentiments stating that “The United States of America greet 

United Australia”
328

 and “Hail to the New Born Commonwealth”, it was noted that the 

entablature, pediments, scrolls and extensive plaster work made a brave show that was 

“purely American….with golden eagles perched on every flagpole, and the Stars and 

Stripes float on every halliard.”
329

  It was fitting therefore that the American Arch 

should have been located on this corner. As with the other national groups such as the 

Germans, the influence of the Americans on early late nineteenth century and early 

twentieth Australian society is hard to judge dispassionately after a century of European 

history and American cultural dominance.  Although relatively small in numbers, 

visitors and migrants from the United States have had an impact on the way that 

Australian society evolved and departed from that of Britain.  American culture had 

always provided a pressure on Australian society to move forwards, from the Cobb and 

Co transport system at the time of the gold rushes, to Harold Clapp’s later massive 

influence on the development of Victorian and Australian Railways.
330

  Interestingly, 

Trade Unionism had also become strongly inspired by Americans;
331

 Henry George 

prior to Federation, and even Clinton Hartley Grattan later.
332

 

 

While viewing the passing parade, spectators would also have noted the presence of 

another nation itself celebrating recent unification, that of Italy.  Rather than erecting an 

arch, which would have been noticed by all the marchers at some time during the 

parade, the Italians, and Canadians also, took what one might consider to the more 

populist option of entering allegorical cars; in other words, horse drawn floats.
333

  This 

would have meant that most participants, apart from those in the immediate vicinity 

                                                                                                                                               
Photograph Booklet vol,1, p. 52.  
327

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 38. 
328

 Interesting also that, less than forty years after the end of the Civil War, the term United States should 

be used in the plural rather singular form: the United States greet, rather than United States greets. 
329

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 2 January 1901, p. 13. The implication appears to have been that none of 

the actual decorations on the arch related back to Australia. 
330

 Robert Lee: The Railways of Victoria 1854-2004, 2007, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, pp. 

145-152 et passim. 
331

 John Rickard: Australia – a cultural history, p. 147.  This remained more theoretical than 

organisational. As Rickard states, “Although there was a significant American ideological influence on 

the Australian labour movement, from Bellamy to syndicalism, its cultural heritage remained firmly 

British.” 
332

 William H Wilde, Joy Hooton, Barry Andrews: The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, p. 

326. 
333

 The Daily Telegraph: 2 January 1901, p. 14. 



111 

 

would have not have seen them during the parade, but that all members of the viewing 

public at all points along the route would have caught a glimpse as they rolled past.  As 

with the many cartoons and drawn images of the time, where young women were used 

liberally to embody the youth and freshness of newly emerged countries,
334

  the 

Canadian car also relied upon this time honoured attraction, presenting “beautiful girls 

in gala attire on whose charming faces the crowd fixed an admiring gaze.”
335

  The 

Italian car was also “beautiful and artistically –designed”, although relying upon a brass 

band to enliven proceedings.  It continued to demonstrate the disjuncture between a 

desire to restrict non-British immigration, and the apparent attraction of Italian culture 

and language at the time.   

 

The block from the American Arch southward to Martin Place also reflected this 

incongruity in attitudes towards non-British migrants.  The Union Chambers at 70 Pitt 

Street
336

 contained the offices of one Thomas Henry Fiaschi, and his company, Tizzana 

Wines.
337

  Thomas Fiaschi was yet another of those individuals of vision who added 

much to the development of the colony of NSW and the developing nation of Australia.  

Born in 1853 in Florence to an academic family, Fiaschi gained degrees in medicine and 

surgery at Florence and Pisa.  Upon migration, first to Queensland, and thence Sydney, 

he developed into one of the leading surgeons in the city, becoming president of both 

the Sydney Hospital and NSW Branch of the British Medical Association.
338

  Thomas 

Fiaschi was also active in the development of the Australian Wine Industry; no doubt 

understandable, coming originally from the family that had created the Chianti wines 

around Florence.
339

  According to his winery’s website, Fiaschi thus was instrumental in 

                                                 
334

 Note the Kipling poem “The Young Queen” in the Sydney Daily Telegraph: 2 January 1901. 
335

 The Daily Telegraph: 2 January 1901, p. 15.  
336

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 53. One block along from the Malaysian Airlines Office. 
337

 John Sands: Sands’ Sydney and Suburban Directory for 1900, p. 112. 
338

 G P Walsh: Thomas Henry Fiaschi (1853-1927) including Piero Francis Fiaschi, Australian 

Dictionary of Biography online database.  Fiaschi remains commemorated today by the copy of the 17
th

 

century Florentine statue Il Porcellino outside the Sydney Hospital, donated by his daughter Clarissa, the 

Marchesa Torrigiani in 1967. 

Photograph Booklet vol,1, p. 24. 
339

 Hugh Johnson: World Atlas of Wine, 1989, Mitchell Beazley Hugh Johnson, London, p. 192.  In 1882 
Fiaschi founded Tizzana Wines at Sackville on the Hawkesbury River, as well as a winery at Mudgee.  

The Sackville Winery still exists on Tizzana Road, alongside a reach of the Hawkesbury River now better 

known as a water-ski venue. Between these interests, Fiaschi also found time to preside over the Dante 

Alighieri Society and the NSW Wine Association. 

Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Sydney Street Directory 2011, map 68. 



112 

 

introducing “Listerian Surgery” (i.e. sterilisation of instruments and the washing of 

hands) into Australia.
340

  

 

Apart from his own exemplary medical service during the Boer War and the First World 

War, Thomas Fiaschi’s son, Piero Francis Fiaschi also served, rising to the rank of 

Lieutenant Colonel in the Field Ambulance.
341

  Whatever opinions toward non-British 

migrants they may have held at the time, few Australians viewing the parade appeared 

to have had concerns with placing their lives in the hands of the Fiaschi family.  The 

country benefited much from their contribution and no doubt some would have toasted 

the newly created nation with a glass of their wine. 

 

Three doors to the south along Pitt Street, at number 76, was another notable address 

that the Federation march would have passed; the Vickery Building.  The original 

edifice has long been replaced by the Pitt Street Telephone Exchange; however, in 1901 

this site occupied one of the most advanced architectural structures in the nation.  

Ebenezer Vickery, a Cornish Methodist, had migrated to Australia at the age of six in 

1833.  Although expected to take over his father’s boot factory in George Street, 

Vickery had grander plans.
342

  Acquiring various country properties, he became a 

principle behind the Fitzroy Iron Foundry at Mittagong, and in 1864 constructed 

Vickery Chambers using iron girders from the Fitzroy works.
343

  This was a decade 

before the development of the steel framed office building by William le Baron Jenney 

in Chicago.
344

  However, the American move to steel construction (the direct result of 

the disastrous Chicago Fire of 1871) was rapid.  In Australia, the amount and quality of 

the metal produce by our nascent industry was meagre, so the lead taken by Vickery 

was not followed, and it would be half a century before this construction technology 

was available back in Australia for the erection of such buildings as the current 

telephone exchange.
345

 

                                                 
340

 Tizzana Winery: Tizzana Winery – A Brief History online database.  It is worth noting that, according 

to their current releases, Tizzana Winery also now offers a Federation range of vintages. 
341

 Chris Coulthard-Clark: Where Australians Fought – The Encyclopaedia of Australia’s Battles, 1998, 

Allen & Unwin, Sydney, p. 69. 
342

 R Ian Jack and Aedeen Cremin: Australia’s Age of Iron, 1994, Oxford University Press, Sydney, p. 19. 
343

 John Sands: Sands’ Sydney and Suburban Directory for 1900, p. 112.  In light of Vickery’s 

entrepreneurial nature, it was fitting that his chambers should have contained accountants, solicitors and 

the local offices of the New York Life Insurance Company.   
344

 Mike Darton: The Illustrated Book of Architects and Architecture, 1990, Tiger Books, London, pp. 90, 

98. 
345

 Apperly, Irving, Reynolds: A Pictorial Guide to Identifying Australian Architecture, pp. 128,168. Note 

the development from the aptly named Federation Warehouse, which was still reliant upon structural 



113 

 

10.  THE COMMERCIAL CITY 

 

After twenty minutes walking, the marchers would have finally reached Martin Place, 

the point where the parade turned right to enter George Street.  One hundred years ago 

this was already a busy thoroughfare, although the place did not then reach all the way 

up to Macquarie Street.
346

  Filling the block on the southern boundary was the recently 

constructed General Post Office,
347

 with a row of new buildings and bank offices on the 

other northern side.  Once it was deemed necessary to construct a new Post Office for 

Sydney, the City Council realised that the James Barnet designed façade would be lost 

overlooking the narrow Moore Street that then existed at the location.
348

   Between 1870 

and 1890 land was resumed, and Moore Street widened between George Street and Pitt 

Street to form the 1892 Martin Place.
349

  Moore Street was always intended to be 

extended one block further east, and this exercise was aided and abetted by a fortuitous 

fire on 1 October 1890 that destroyed the very block between Pitt and Castlereagh 

Street that was required for the extension.
350

 

 

Martin Place itself had been named after the former NSW Premier and Chief Justice Sir 

James Martin.
351

  The career of this notable State father again epitomised the fluid 

cultural and sectarian relations that existed then (and now) in the city of Sydney.  Born 

in 1820 in County Cork, Ireland, to a staunchly Catholic family, Martin emigrated to 

NSW with his parents the following year.  He was baptised by Father Therry in the 

original St Mary’s Cathedral and, supported by parents who were more than willing to 

make sacrifices on his behalf, commenced a meteoric rise in the colony.
352

  Junior 

contributor to newspapers, journalist, associate of Henry Parkes, acting editor of The 

Australian at nineteen years of age, James Martin then, at the age of twenty, decided to 

enter the Law, having taken a keen interest in constitutional and immigration issues.  

                                                                                                                                               
stone and brick, to the Inter-War Commercial Style of the 1920s, when Vickery’s ideas finally gained 

acceptance. 
346

 Note maps of the time. The Daily Telegraph 2 January 1901, p8, Sydney Mail 1 January 1901, p. 28. 
347

 Peter Bridges and Robin Appleton: The City’s Centrepiece – The History of the Sydney GPO, 1988, 

Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, p. 113.  Perhaps “recently completed” would be more apt, since the building 

was begun in 1871, but the tower not completed until 1891, and even then roof extensions and additional 

floors were being added between 1899 and 1902, both before and after the march passed underneath. 
348

  Peter Bridges and Robin Appleton: The City’s Centrepiece – The History of the Sydney GPO, p. 62. 
349

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 56. 
350

 Peter Bridges and Robin Appleton: The City’s Centrepiece – The History of the Sydney GPO, p. 63.  

Fortuitous fires have long been a hallmark of Sydney’s development and re-development.  One can think 

of the Elizabethan Theatre on Newtown Bridge and the Ultimo Wool Stores in recent years. 
351

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 57. 
352

 Bede Nairn: Sir James Martin (1820-1886), Australian Dictionary of Biography online database. 



114 

 

Combining a mix of “conservative native-born strand” with a social radicalism 

influenced by fellow Irishman Edmund Burke,
353

 Martin’s views were as varied as they 

were idiosyncratic,
354

  and no doubt well known to most of the spectators watching the 

march.  However, at no time does it appear that James Martin’s Roman Catholic 

heritage affected his career.  Perhaps this same plasticity that resulted in the acceptance 

of a knighthood in 1869, coalition governments with Parkes and Cowper and finally 

NSW Chief Justice in 1873 at fifty three years of age, demonstrated an accommodation 

that was not overly concerned with doctrinaire considerations.  Bede Nairn aptly sums 

up the effective pragmatism embodied in Sir James Martin.  “Martin's family was 

strongly Catholic but his own denominational faith weakened as he matured.  

Catholicism was the religion of the Irish and their offspring, a large proportion of the 

colonial lower orders, but it jarred with Martin's dream of personal advancement, 

though he retained warm family links.”
355

   

 

That the march should pass the Sydney GPO would have been no accident.  This 

structure embodied not only all the technological innovations of the late Victorian era, 

but also the advancing role of government itself.  The marvels of electric 

communication were rapidly changing society technically and the creation of a public 

service required to effectively utilise these technologies was also having a cultural effect 

on society.  Photographs of the time demonstrate the adoption of the new developments: 

the telephone and telegraph.   Hardwood telephone posts and the masses of wires that 

would mark city and suburban streets from the 1880s to the present time were by then 

an accepted feature of the landscape and certainly visible along the route of the 

march.
356

  The degree to which the technology that had enabled Australia to be settled 

and federated in the first place had continued to develop, and then served to add to the 

sense of isolation and threat, was noted by Andrew Enstice and Janeen Webb.
357

 

                                                 
353

 Bede Nairn: Sir James Martin (1820-1886), Australian Dictionary of Biography online database.  “In a 

notable council speech in August 1853 he effectively defended the draft constitution and revealed that 

Edmund Burke remained his chief inspiration, but Disraeli rather than Wentworth was looming as his 

political exemplar.” 
354

 Opposed to the advancement of ex-convicts, but against the execution of bushrangers, anti-Jewish, yet 

also apparently religiously tolerant, Martin would have been as difficult to compartmentalise then as he 

would be now. 
355

 Bede Nairn: Sir James Martin (1820-1886), Australian Dictionary of Biography online database.  
356

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, pp. 56, 63. 
357

 Kevin T Livingston, Richard Jordan, Gay Sweely: Becoming Australians - The movement towards 

Federation in Ballarat and the Nation, 2001, Wakefield Press, Kent Town, South Australia, pp. 104-105. 

Eustice and Webb go on to point out that “Xenophobia, which had begun with large-scale immigration 

during the early gold rush period, intensified into a nervous resentment of foreign powers that suddenly 

seemed disturbingly accessible.” 



115 

 

  

Whatever the political complexion of the periodicals, there was a widespread expression 

of belief in the fact of a separate Australian nationhood…All of this changed when, in 

1872, the connection of the submarine telegraph cable link to Britain made international 

news a matter of immediate concern.  Australians might not be any better placed to 

participate physically in European affairs, but the almost instantaneous exchange of 

ideas had become a reality…Where incoming ships once brought news of crises long 

past, the telegraph brought news within hours of the event and an inevitable desire to 

respond.  Anxiety levels soared.
358

 

 

The anniversary publication The City’s Centrepiece dedicates much of its history to not 

only architect James Barnet’s material structure, but also the social significance of the 

wide ranging and secure employment that this new institution offered to aspirational 

working people, both Catholic and Protestant, within the inner city.
359

  The building 

itself embodied this developing national identity, being constructed within a very 

classical tradition but with modern egalitarian touches symbolic of Australian ideals.   

As well as the usual carvings of Queen Victoria and allegories of wealth and bounty,
360

 

architect James Barnet included whimsical representatives of local Sydney trades people 

and their occupations.  Between 1870 and 1890, it was the Italian craftsman Signor 

Tomaso Sani who carved the keystones above the classical arches with male and female 

busts representing both the nations of Europe and the Australian colonies.  There is even 

supposedly a carving of the hero of Italian independence and unification, Giuseppe 

Garibaldi; if true, an understandable source of contention at the time.
361

 

                                                 
358

 Kevin T Livingston, Richard Jordan, Gay Sweely: Becoming Australians - The movement towards 

Federation in Ballarat and the Nation, 2001, Wakefield Press, Kent Town, South Australia, pp. 104-105. 

Eustice and Webb go on to point out that “Xenophobia, which had begun with large-scale immigration 

during the early gold rush period, intensified into a nervous resentment of foreign powers that suddenly 

seemed disturbingly accessible.” 
359

 Peter Bridges and Robin Appleton: The City’s Centrepiece – The History of the Sydney GPO.  Note 

the specific chapter on Ancillary Staff from p. 80, and the many other images and paragraphs reflecting 

upon the significance of employment.  Chris McConville: Croppies, Celts &Catholics – The Irish in 

Australia, 1987, Edward Arnold Australia, pp. 75, 98.  Interestingly, McConville makes the point that, 

“by 1902, 23 per cent of public servants in New South Wales were Catholics.” Since this would have 

been approximately the percentage in the general population, the public service seemed very even 

handed, rather than favouring any one group over another.  Quite telling also is the photograph showing a 

dozen working women, still in their rather restrictive 1895 clothing, staffing the new telephone switching 

board, under the managerial gaze of another woman who is obviously their supervisor. Even at this time, 

women were obviously holding managerial positions within the public service. 
360

 Peter Bridges and Robin Appleton: The City’s Centrepiece – The History of the Sydney GPO, p. 51.  

Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 58. 
361

 Sydney Vista: Sydney General Post Office database. “So was Garibaldi ever found? Rumours persisted 

and eventually a tiny image on the side of the "Italy" head was identified as an image of interest! Some 

believe it is in fact Garibaldi yet others believe it is an image of Barnet kneeling to write his name on the 

building. You be the judge!”  Peter Bridges and Robin Appleton: The City’s Centrepiece – The History of 



116 

 

 

The procession passed down Martin Place, where there would have been additional 

opportunity for the many spectators to view the Vice-Regal party at close proximity. 

Although there was no formal arch in place at this location, Martin Place was decorated 

with a colonnade and bunting that was obviously more apt for this recently constructed 

wide open space.  Where this civic space came into its own would have been later at 

night when the electric lights that covered the colonnade glowed alight:  As The Daily 

Telegraph noted, “The Martin Place façade last night was the cynosure of all eyes.   

Right across the front in huge 12ft letters of light composed of incandescent lights on a 

scintillating silver background stretched the words Welcome to our Governor General.  

Beneath also in 12ft letters, ‘God Save the Queen’.”
362

 

 

From Martin Place, the Federation Parade turned into George Street, Sydney’s principal 

vehicular route.
363

  The marchers now traversed from the governmental and business 

heart of the city, to its commercial and consumer centre, symbolically covering the 

varying roles played by the city in citizens’ lives.  Then, as now, George Street 

represented the haunt of the shopper; jumbled small commercial enterprises interspersed 

with arcades and department stores running along the main north south thoroughfare.  

While the Strand Arcade remains to this day,
364

 many of the other small arcades and 

laneways that formed, depending upon your point of view, rabbit warrens or refuges 

from the hectic traffic, have gone.
365

   

 

Despite these changes, the block formed by Elizabeth, King, George and Liverpool 

Streets has always provided the central quality shopping area of Sydney; as much now 

as it would have been in 1901.  In the days before widespread public transport and 

suburban shopping centres, businesses strove to fit as many stores and services into this 

main shopping precinct as possible.  One only has to look through the Sands Directory 

                                                                                                                                               
the Sydney GPO, pp. 56-57. “A number of years ago there was a rumour that a carving of the Italian 

revolutionary hero, Giuseppe Garibaldi, appears on the General Post Office…one of the major sculptors, 

Signor Tomaso Sani was an Italian from Florence, and as Garibaldi was enjoying widespread popularity 

in Italy at the time…it would have been quite likely that such a carving existed.”  Although the image is 

reproduced on p. 56 of Bridges and Appleton, I did not notice this at the time of my footstepping, and 

have found no reference to the rumour. 
362

 The Daily Telegraph: 2 January 1901, p. 8. 
363

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, pp. 59-61. 
364

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 62. 
365

 Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Street Directory of Sydney & Suburbs 1934, map 2. 

Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Sydney Street Directory 2011, map C.  Note the degree to 

which small lanes and arcades such as the Sydney, Royal and Imperial Arcades have been subsumed in to 

the large complexes of the Sydney Hilton and Westfield Centrepoint.  



117 

 

of the time to appreciate the huge variety of small enterprises that existed along George 

Street from Martin Place to Park Street.  Tailors, booksellers, florists, photographic 

studios, jewellers; the list is endless, and reflected the multifarious needs of the city 

dweller.
366

  Miss K O’Brien: dressmaker, Thomas Cooke: mercer, Madame Polley: 

corset maker and Joseph Pearson: men’s mercer, all give some flavour as to the 

businesses in this precinct.  The millinery of Mrs C and A Marsh must have been 

extensive: the Sydney Arcade at 406 Pitt Street (no longer in existence) contained not 

only their millinery shop at number 20, but work rooms at number 71.  This arcade also 

included, at number 410, the nascent Mick Simmons sports store (est 1877), a later 

Sydney icon.  Having moved to various locations within the city over the course of the 

last century, Mick Simmons has now returned to 478 George Street, a mere one block 

away. 

 

Then as now, the exotic was always a source of attraction, and interest in ‘the other’ 

drove the commercial imperative.  Just the one specific site such as The Strand Arcade’s 

ground floor boasted: George Saleh’s Oriental Store, Miss Van Brakkel’s hairdressing 

salon, Axtens and Le Rossignol Glovers and Hatters, the “Tosca” Mercery Studio and 

the Shamrock Tea Rooms.
367

  One of the continuing conjectures throughout my thesis is 

the degree to which formally presented ideals and even civil laws contrast with the 

everyday lived experience of ordinary people.  The newspapers and magazines such as 

The Bulletin may have poked fun at the Irish, Jews,
368

 ‘Orientals’, and Southern 

Europeans,
369

 but when it came to the commercial sphere, patrons and customers 

seemed always to have voted with their feet and their purses.  

 

However, at the time these small bustling enterprises were coming under pressure from 

a commercial rather than cultural or political threat; the rise of the department store.  

With the development and expansion of the train and tram networks, many of the new 

department stores that could take advantage of these large numbers of customers began 

to expand.  Small enterprises such as Gowings Men’s Tailoring established themselves 

                                                 
366

 John Sands: Sands’ Sydney and Suburban Directory for 1900, p. 57. 
367

 John Sands: Sands’ Sydney and Suburban Directory for 1900, p. 57. 
368

 Jewish Herald: 8 June 1900, p4.  Quoting the Argus of last Saturday  “Lord Roberts, it seems has 

found time amid the pre-occupations of a great campaign to write a letter to Lord Rothschild in warm  

‘praise of the fighting quality of his Jewish soldiers’…It is difficult, indeed for the human imagination to 

picture Tommy Atkins with a Semitic nose and well-oiled ringlets…” 
369

 The Bulletin: 3 March 1901, Irish Blarney and anti-German sentiments of false patriotism. The 

Bulletin: 11 February 1901, Jews profiting from the Boer War.  The Daily Telegraph: 2 January 1901, p. 

9. The chief Rabbi, A B Davis pleads for sympathy for Jews. 



118 

 

in the centre of the city; originally opposite the Queen Victoria Markets, thence later to 

the corner of Market Street, where they remained until closing in the 1990s.
370

  Others, 

such as Grace Brothers, Anthony Hordern’s and Marcus Clarke’s, moved closer to 

Broadway and Central Railway to capture the newly arriving suburbanites as they 

alighted from the trains and trams.  Anthony Hordern’s fate reflected the era more than 

most.  On 10 July 1901, shortly after Federation, the Great Haymarket Fire burned the 

block bounded by George and Liverpool Streets to the ground, including the premises 

of Anthony Hordern, Family Draper.
371

  His son, city alderman and Federation parade 

planning committee member, Samuel Hordern subsequently rebuilt the massive family 

store on the site, to become one of the city’s icons for over seventy years.   Mark Foy’s 

extravagant faience covered façade was built later in 1909 at the southern end of Hyde 

Park, again linking in with the new Central Railway and the expanding tram lines.
372

  

 

Over the intervening century this retail role of the city has changed.  The development 

of suburban shopping malls meant that many of the big department stores were fated to 

become white elephants.
373

  Marcus Clarke’s and Grace Brothers found new leases of 

life as tertiary educational institutions: Sydney’s Technical College and accommodation 

for Sydney University.  Anthony Hordern’s acquired no such saviour.  Closed in the 

1970s, the entire block was demolished and then left vacant for over a decade.
374

  The 

site of generations of family purchases of clothes and furniture was finally replaced with 

the World Tower complex, completed between 1999 and 2004.
375

  Mark Foy’s, the 

queen of Hyde Park, has at least survived intact as Sydney’s Downing Centre Court 

Complex, although long gone are the days when the widespread phrase used to 

comment on political or mercenary bravado; “having more front than Mark Foy’s,” paid 

homage to the gloriously embossed façade.
376

   With the return to city life over the last 

few decades, quality shopping has again returned to the district that, in 1901, would 

have surely been regarded as the obvious route for the Federation parade.  Perhaps this 

renewed district of quality consumption would have been more recognisable to a 

                                                 
370

 John Sands: Sands’ Sydney and Suburban Directory for 1900, p. 58. 

Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 63. 
371

 John Sands: Sands’ Sydney and Suburban Directory for 1900, p. 59. 
372

 Peter Spearritt: Sydney’s Century – a History, p. 214.  This location became even more lucrative with 

the 1920s construction of the underground railway and the opening of the adjacent Museum Station.  In 

fact, the dominance of the large Mark Foy’s advertising poster so overwhelmed the less significant 

Museum sign that for decades people automatically called the station itself Mark Foy’s.   
373

 Peter Spearritt: Sydney’s Century – a History, p. 215. 
374

 George Forbes: History of Sydney, 1926, William Brooks & Co, Sydney, pp. 234-235. 
375

 Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Sydney Street Directory 2011, map E.  
376

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 24 June 2009 online database. 



119 

 

Sydney resident viewing the parade in 1901 than through much of the subsequent 

century.  It was also noteworthy that the relatively long expanse along George Street, 

from Martin Place to Market Street and then Park Street did not contain any arches 

since the wide vista of George Street itself, with its wealth and variety of shops and 

stores, would have been reason enough to celebrate the prosperity of the nation.   

 

On the right approaching Park Street still rises the warm yet commanding sandstone 

veneer of the Queen Victoria Building, followed by the Sydney Town Hall and St 

Andrews Cathedral.  In 1901, these were also new and imposing buildings, with the 

Queen Victoria Markets, as they then were known, having only been formally opened 

on 12
 
July 1898.

377
  As well as providing a suitable backdrop to the event, the imposing 

aspect and height of the Queen Victoria Building combined with the other commercial 

edifices along George Street to provide excellent (if not particularly safe) platforms for 

viewing the march.
378

  I experienced this myself when attempting to overlay some of the 

photographs of the time with current images taken from their original locations.
379

   

 

Approaching the architectural restoration offices, an executive assistant from the QVB 

management group introduced my photographer and me to Pascal Antunes, the project 

manager for the current re-development of the Queen Victoria Building.  With his 

guidance we were able to locate almost the exact spot far up on the roof documented by 

the intrepid recorder a century ago.  Of course in 1901 there would not have been the 

same air-conditioning ducting that we had to traverse, and health and safety legislation 

was not quite so stringent.  To capture the original march would have required the 

photographer to cart his heavy equipment out onto the overhanging sandstone parapet of 

the building, putting both his life, and the lives of the unknowing spectators below at 

considerable risk.
380

  However, the temptation at the time must have been 

overwhelming.  This would have been one of the highest vantage points from which to 

view the parade, symbolically embodying the pride of the city.  We thus experienced a 

                                                 
377

 Suzanne Stirling and Helen Ivory: QVB – an improbable story, 1998, IPOH Ltd, Sydney, p. 13. 
378

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, pp. 64, 65. 
379

 My photographer took some images from inside the front of the building where the Hobbyco store is 

currently located, and then (she herself having more front than Mark Foy’s) decided to find out whether it 

would be possible to photograph from the same position on the roof as the accompanying picture taken in 

1901. 

Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 65. 
380

 The magnificent view today mirrors the same impressive view of the Federation Parade in 1901. The 

1901 photograph may well have been regarded as being even more spectacular since at the time this 

would have been one of the highest points in the city. 

Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 65.  



120 

 

level of trepidation that was apparently not shared by the original, un-named artist.
381

  

Perhaps his bravado was not well founded since a young man by the name of Richard 

Wiseman, engaged in decorating a portion of the Queen Victoria Building for the 

parade, had earlier fallen off the lower four metre awning, breaking his arm and injuring 

his legs.
382

 

 

Although the Queen Victoria Building is now valued as a great heritage reminder of a 

bygone age, at the time of its design by architect George McRae, its opening on 21 July 

1898, and the Federation march that passed by in 1901, it was viewed as the height of 

modern style and construction.
383

  Rather than utilising the more ornate Victorian 

Second Empire style that had been incorporated for the earlier and adjacent Sydney 

Town Hall,
384

 an iron framed construction faced in blocked but light sandstone was 

employed to give the building not only the suitable level of grandeur, but also the open 

airy and light filled interior necessary for its purpose as the city’s primary market.
385

  

Taking his cue from the world wide fashion for the Romanesque that had been adopted 

after the rebuilding of fire ravaged Chicago a decade earlier, McRae conceived of a 

building that would not only serve its practical function as a retail and market centre for 

the city, but also as a symbol of the reinvigoration of the city following the disastrous 

Australian depression of the early 1890s.
386

 

 

Again, individuals would have been noted by the people viewing the parade at this 

point, with one of the most significant and influential residents of the Queen Victoria 

Building being the Chinese merchant Quong Tart.  Born Mei Quong Tart in the Canton 

district of China, the businessman and community leader was nine years of age when he 

migrated with his uncle to the New South Wales goldfields near Braidwood.  He joined 

the household of the Simpsons, a Scottish family who converted him to Christianity and 

taught him to read, write and speak English (albeit apparently with a Scottish accent).  

From an early age he used his language skills as an interpreter, becoming a government 

                                                 
381

 Helen Ennis: Cazneaux, the Quiet Observer, 1994, National Library of Australia, Canberra, p. 8. 

Whoever it was, it surely would not have been the twenty two year old nascent Sydney photographer 

Harold Cazneaux, who also felt our mutual apprehension at relying upon slippery sandstone. Cazneaux’s 

letter to journalist Nancy Cato in 1952 admitted that: “The only subjects that I did not like were those in 

which I was to be hoisted to the top of a tall smoke stack or dangled over a wall by rope.  My dislike was 

natural to a high strung nervous person.” 
382

 The Sydney Daily Telegraph: 2 January 1901, p. 17. 
383

 Suzanne Stirling and Helen Ivory: QVB – an improbable story, p. 27. 
384

 Apperly, Irving, Reynolds: A Pictorial Guide to Identifying Australian Architecture, p. 68. 
385

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 66. 
386

 Apperly, Irving, Reynolds: A Pictorial Guide to Identifying Australian Architecture, p. 118. 



121 

 

official for the districts of Braidwood, Araluen and Majors Creek.  In 1883 Quong Tart 

was appointed to a commission of inquiry into the disturbances in the Chinese camps in 

the Riverina and during the increased anti-Chinese activity in 1887 spent much of his 

time assisting his countrymen as an interpreter.
387

 

 

Quong Tart had become a naturalised British subject in 1871, entitling him to buy land 

and to vote, and in 1886 he married Englishwoman Margaret Scarlett.
388

   Quong Tart 

campaigned passionately against the opium trade and its effect on his fellow Chinese, 

was the first Chinese to be elected to an Oddfellows Lodge in New South Wales and 

became a Freemason in 1885.  As a businessman, his crowning success was the Elite 

Hall Tea House, occupying two floors of the Queen Victoria Building; an exclusive five 

hundred seat function hall with a stage and dining saloon.  Across town at 137 King 

Street (the location of the current Tea Centre in the Sydney Shopping Mall) was another 

of his businesses, the Loong Shan Tea House.  Opened in 1889, it boasted marble 

fountains, golden carp and a reading room.  Both institutions became the place to be 

seen by high society, including members of the 1891 Federation Convention, who dined 

at the Elite Hall.
389

 

 

Quong Tart’s social position was not determined solely by the opinions of the Anglo 

Saxon community.  His biographer, Errol J. Lea-Scarlett claimed that; “Quong was the 

only Chinese who succeeded in being accepted fully by the New South Wales 

community, but the popular view of him as a Chinese leader was not that of the Chinese 

community which was split by factions and separated from him by a wide social and 

cultural gap.”
390

  The circumstances of Quong Tart’s death also clouded the issue of 

race relations, since it appeared that his was killed as the result of a bungled robbery, 

rather than any racial motivation.  On 19 August 1902, an engineer named Frederick 

Duggan had walked into Tart’s office, hit him with an iron bar, and stole £20.
391

    The 

Chinese merchant never recovered, and died a year later, much to the consternation of 

                                                 
387

 National Museum of Australia: Harvest of Endurance online database. Mei Quong Tart.  
388

 Apparently, in the spirit of ecumenism, Quong Tart and his wife baptised each of their six children in a 

different Christian denomination. 
389

 E. J. Lea-Scarlett: Mei Quong Tart (1850–1903), Australian Dictionary of Biography online database. 
390

 E. J. Lea-Scarlett: Mei Quong Tart (1850–1903), Australian Dictionary of Biography online database. 
391

 Gavin Souter: Lion and Kangaroo – the initiation of Australia 1901-1919, 1976, William Collins, 

Sydney, p. 87.  Apparently as many people were perturbed by the leniency of the twelve year prison 

sentence then as they would be today.  “The published evidence at Duggan’s trial did not reveal whether 

the attack was to any extent racially inspired.  It is true, nonetheless, that for whatever reason, the most 

distinguished and best assimilated Chinese in Australia met the same fate as many lowlier members of his 

race.”  



122 

 

the community of Sydney.
392

   News of his death reached even the south west slopes of 

NSW,
393

 and today his ghostly presence apparently remains in the restored building.
394

 

 

The Queen Victoria Building too was soon to become a victim of its own success, and 

the technological and social change that its design had heralded.  The site bounded by 

George, Druitt, York and the aptly named Market Streets had always been the site of a 

city market place, going back to the 1820 creation of colonial architect Francis 

Greenway.
395

  This, as with later structures, had been pulled down to accommodate the 

expanding use of the site.  By the time the city council decided upon the grand edifice to 

cap off decades of planning and financial uncertainty, the original role for the building 

was inextricably changing.  Public transport was expanding and the move to suburbia 

meant that the need for a central produce market became less important for the city.  

Consumers would travel in greater numbers into the city to buy clothes, furniture and 

new electrical items for their homes: they would not do so to buy potatoes, cabbages 

and meat.  Locales that had been the residential areas for Sydney’s working class Irish 

and English near the Darling Harbour docks, and the Haymarket and Goulburn Street 

districts, were now more significant as centres of the city’s Chinese population, and 

these residents were served by their own supply stores.
396

  Bulk produce was catered for 

with the expansion of Paddy’s markets down in the Haymarket, while family produce 

was being purchased direct from shopping strips in the inner suburbs such as 

Newtown’s King Street.  This ambivalent attitude was reflected in the press reportage of 

the Federation parade.  Beyond providing an elevated vantage point, little mention was 

made of the Queen Victoria Building in the press, certainly compared with other sites 

such as Martin Place and the Sydney Town Hall.
397

   

 

Within two decades, the grand vision faded as the financial viability of the building 

became less secure.  In 1917 and then 1934 “modernisation” took place to try to attract 

                                                 
392

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 27 July 1903, p. 6.  Death of Mr Quong Tart. “The news of the death of 

Mr Quong Tart, which took place as his residence, Ashfield, last night, will be received with general 

regret.” 
393

 The Gundagai Times and Tumut, Adelong and Murrumbidgee District Advertiser: 28 July 1903, p. 3. 

Death of Quong Tart.  “Mr Quong Tart, the well-known Chinese merchant and philanthropist, died at 

Ashfield last night.” 
394

 Suzanne Stirling and Helen Ivory: QVB – an improbable story, p. 36. “Although Quong Tart met with 

an untimely end and was mourned by many, he provided the QVB with its only ghost. After a brutal 

attack during a robbery and his subsequent death, Quong Tart’s spectre was seen walking the QVMB’s 

arcades at night…even today.” 
395

 Suzanne Stirling and Helen Ivory: QVB – an improbable story, p. 27. 
396

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 26 December 1908, p. 11. Sydney Streets. 
397

 The Sydney Daily Telegraph: 2 January 1901, p. 8. 



123 

 

any available rental clientele.
398

  The ornate tessellated floors and open gallery spaces 

were concreted over as the structure was divided into money making pigeon holes for 

low end clothing, wine cellar storage and even the city’s council library.
399

  In the end, 

the building was saved from demolition by political pressure from the growing 

environmental and heritage lobby, and the growing realisation that modernism was not 

producing the kind of city that all people wanted to inhabit.  In 1983, the Malaysian 

Businessman Yap Lim Sen and his company Ipoh Garden Berhad, Sydney Lord Mayor 

Doug Sutherland and heritage architect Ross Gardner, combined to bring the building 

back to life
400

.   The Second Opening of the Queen Victoria Building took place on 18 

November 1986.  Pierre Cardin described the redeveloped centre as “the most beautiful 

shopping centre in the world”,
401

 but it would still take another two decades to return 

the structure back to its true Federation era design. 

 

It also became fitting that the city that hosted the Federation of the nation should boast 

as its showcase a building named for the monarch who was the very epitome of Empire.  

The current Queen Victoria Building not only contains glass cased displays of imperial 

regalia but an imposing statue of Victoria, Queen of the British Empire and Empress of 

India, who dominates its forecourt.
402

  Originally unveiled in 1908, in the grounds of 

Leinster House, Ireland, home of the Royal Dublin society, the statue was placed into 

storage in 1948 at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham.  Eventually, Doug Sutherland 

arranged to have the bronze placed on permanent loan proudly in front of the newly 

restored building. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                 
398

 Suzanne Stirling and Helen Ivory: QVB – an improbable story, p. 41. 
399

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 1 July 1927, p. 11. “Dr Bradfield had pointed out that it might not be 

necessary to demolish the Queen Victoria Building until 1932.”  Sydney Morning Herald: 16 February 

1954. Ironically, by 1954 Premier Cahill was happy to present the building as part of the city’s 

celebration for the visit of the new monarch Queen Elizabeth II. 
400

 Suzanne Stirling and Helen Ivory: QVB – an improbable story, pp. 57-59. 
401

 Suzanne Stirling and Helen Ivory: QVB – an improbable story, p. 68. 
402

 Inside History: Story of the statue in front of Sydney’s Queen Victoria Building online database. “The 

statue in question is not regarded as a valuable or attractive work of art; nevertheless, it is not thought that 

its effect on popular taste is so debasing as to necessitate the expenditure of public funds on its removal.”   

Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 67. 



124 

 

11.  CELEBRATION AND COMMONWEALTH 

 

After the Federation parade passed the majesty of the Queen Victoria Building it then 

veered left into Park Street.  The march organisers would have preferred the procession 

to continue past Sydney Town Hall and St Andrew’s Cathedral, although this would 

have meant then turning up Bathurst Street, which halts at Hyde Park, thereby requiring 

another tight right hand turn along Elizabeth Street.
403

  The other alternative would have 

been to continue down to Liverpool Street, and then turn left for the straight march up to 

Oxford Street and the route to Centennial Park.  However, the gradient down George 

Street would have been rather prohibitive, and the short sharp climb back up Liverpool 

Street at the corner now occupied by the Mark Foy’s Building Law Courts is, even 

today, much steeper.
404

   There was apparently an even more convoluted plan to turn up 

Park Street, back down Pitt Street to King Street, up to Elizabeth Street and then along 

the side of Hyde Park to Park Street.
405

  It would seem obvious today that this would 

have been quite impractical for the marchers and horse drawn vehicles, as well as 

adding considerable distance to the march.  Whatever the reason, the formalisation of 

this section of the route was also left very much to the last minute.   

 

It was thus notable that the Sydney Federation parade (and the later Melbourne march) 

turned prior to passing the city’s Town Hall.  While this symbol of civic pride was 

festooned with decorations,
406

  the marchers did not proceed past the forecourt and 

allow the civic fathers the opportunity to preside over events from the steps.  St 

Andrew’s Cathedral, being located next to the Town Hall, suffered from the same 

geographical fate.  In the intervening years since Federation, this major intersection and 

civic space in front of Sydney’s Town Hall has continued to fulfil its role as the focal 

point of the city.  For example, during the Second World War troops returning from the 

Middle East marched down George Street, past the Queen Victoria Building and into 

                                                 
403

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 69. 
404

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 70. 
405

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 24 November 1900, p. 9.  The Route To Be Reduced.  “It may be taken 

as practically settled that the route of the procession formally agreed to at a conference between the 

Premier and the Citizens’ Committee, but since strongly objected to on account of the ‘doubling 

back’…will be modified.  Strong representations upon the danger to life of such a route being adopted 

have been made to the Premier by the Mayor of Sydney and the Inspector General of Police… In addition 

to this, the Citizens’ Committee, being impressed with the consensus of public opinion against the longer 

route, will, it is understood, approve of the shorter one being adopted.” 
406

 The Daily Telegraph: 2 January 1901, p. 8. Even then, the Telegraph could note that “The open space 

on which the noble pile stands is a relief to the eye after the incessant rows of business premises that shut 

out the sky”. 



125 

 

the Town Hall Square for their salute to be taken by the Governor General Lord Gowrie, 

prior to being sent up to New Guinea to stem the 1942 Japanese advance.
407

   

 

Australia was similarly embroiled in foreign wars at the time of Federation.  The Boxer 

Rebellion was a relatively minor operation militarily, but of political and cultural 

significance, while the Boer War was the major military campaign that had occupied the 

media for the previous year or more.  Disillusion would eventually set in as soldiers 

discovered that fighting a guerrilla war entailed activities that were far from the 

soldierly ideal.
408

  However, at the beginning of 1901 support was still high, indicated 

by the reception given Boer War veterans, where, “the enthusiasm of the spectators was 

most boisterously manifested when the returned soldiers from South Africa and a group 

of veterans displaying their well-earned medals get into line.”
409

  Interestingly, for a 

parade of military pageantry, the Boer War contingent did not shy away from the less 

glamorous aspects of military life; “whilst an ambulance wagon brought up the rear.”
410

   

Of the ten thousand troops lining the route, many were Boer War veterans themselves, 

and The Sydney Morning Herald at least looked upon the Federation parade as also 

serving the purpose of honouring the returned soldiers.
411

  

 

Thus did the procession skirt the edge of Town Hall square and turn left into Park 

Street, to be greeted by the Melbourne Arch.
412

  This particular edifice was financed by 

the Corporation of Melbourne,
413

 with particular instructions telegrammed to the march 

organisers that it be constructed at a prominent point along the route.
414

  However, the 

actual planning and erection was left too late, and required the eventual assistance of the 

NSW Government Architect.  Consequently, the arch ended up being cheaper and more 

                                                 
407

 Australian War Memorial: Photograph image 026512.  Lord Gowrie taking the salute of the 16
th

 

Brigade in September 1942. 
408

 Craig Wilcox: Australia’s Boer War, 2002, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, pp. 162, 311-320. 
409

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 2 January 1901, p. 9. 
410

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 2 January 1901, p. 9. 
411

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 20 November 1900, p. 5. The Imperial Guard of Honour Honouring 

Returned South African Soldiers. “A parade of 10,000 troops expected.”  Livingston, Jordan, Sweely: 

Becoming Australians – The movement towards Federation in Ballarat and the Nation, 2001, Wakefield 

Press, Kent Town, p. 2.  Not all subsequent commentators have shared the original enthusiasm. While 

“others note the warmth of the reception given to the soldiers who had just come from the South African 

War”, Steven Alomes described the Commonwealth Inauguration as a display of British power and of 

‘jingoism rather than antipodean democracy’.” Journal of Australian Studies, no. 20 of May 1987, p. 50. 
412

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 71. 
413

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 40. 
414

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 2 January 1901, p. 10. 



126 

 

austere than originally intended, with the £1,000 allocated for a more elaborate structure 

being underspent by some £600.
415

 

 

Perhaps the photographic images of the time do not do the arch justice.  Milne claims 

that the “beautiful structure” was well received and apparently popular, at least with The 

Sydney Morning Herald.
416

  Amusingly, Milne also mentions the quote of Central 

Organising Committee chairman John Portus; to the effect that the erection of the 

Melbourne Arch would serve: “to show that they had forgiven us and that the long 

tradition of inter-state (inter-colonial) jealousy was about to be eclipsed.”
417

  One could 

argue that, in this at least, he would be proven gravely mistaken.  The Corporation of 

Melbourne could certainly not have been more pleased with this location of their arch.  

Even in 1901, this intersection was one of the primary hubs of the city; on the main 

thoroughfare of George Street, presided over by the Town Hall and Queen Victoria 

Building, and on the significant crossing of Park Street before it becomes William 

Street, still the main route to the harbour side Eastern Suburbs. 

 

Park Street remains one of the few locations along the route where whole rows of 

commercial buildings can still be viewed very much as they would have looked in 

1901.
418

  The block between Pitt Street and Castlereagh Street, on the northern side, 

retains many of the original business premises, with numbers 44 to 48 in 1900 having 

been the Kelly fruiterer, a tailor and Frederick Petley, tobacconist, with the then Barley 

Mow Hotel on the corner.
419

  How long this small isolated precinct will remain is a 

moot point.  The period from the 1930s to the 1970s had seen the construction of the 

T&G Building taking up the southern block bounded by Park, Elizabeth and 

Castlereagh Streets, only to then be demolished for the current Pacific Power tower 

complex.  This is merely the latest phase of a long unfolding process.  If you view the 

image of the Melbourne Arch, you will note that Park Street appears narrower than in 

current photographs.
420

  As part of the widening process for both the main route to the 

Eastern Suburbs, and the creation of the precinct in front of the Town Hall, Park Street 

                                                 
415

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 12 December 1900, p. 8. “The Melbourne city surveyor arrived by the 

mail train yesterday, and interviewed the Citizens’ Committee in regard to the erection of a Victorian arch 

at a cost of about £1,000.”  The arch ended up costing only £400. 
416

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 2 January 1901, p. 10. 
417

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 20 December 1900, p. 5.  Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The 

story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 41. 
418

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 72. 
419

 John Sands: Sands’ Sydney and Suburban Directory 1900, p. 108. 
420

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 71. 



127 

 

was broadened in the early 1930s.
421

  This was accomplished by merely demolishing the 

southern side of the street and moving the roadway back by some eight metres.  

Consequently, while the heritage northern side has remained, the entire southern side of 

the street was totally replaced with Art Deco era structures.
422

 

 

The parade then made the short journey along the original Park Street to the Elizabeth 

Street corner of Hyde Park. This flat expanse which would have so benefited the 

marchers and the horse drawn carriages harked back to a strange geographical anomaly 

that had been already overlaid with a century of alteration by the time of Federation.  

The slight low gradient from this intersection back down Elizabeth Street, past the Great 

Synagogue to the new Sheraton on the Park hotel, was the site of the original source of 

the Tank Stream: in effect a hanging swamp.
423

  Although the wider landscape of 

central Sydney falls away sharply to Circular Quay in the north, to Woolloomooloo in 

the east, and to Darling Harbour in the south and west, there existed a strange little 

swampy lake sitting on the edge of Hyde Park.
424

  By 1901, this had been well filled in 

and drained, and as with the Tank Stream itself, lost from sight.  While the Tank Stream 

has remained in the city’s historical memory, if physically in the subterranean, the 

stream’s source has been all but forgotten.
425

   

 

Hyde Park itself has been a reserve of green within the city of Sydney from the earliest 

settlement, initially as a parade ground, racecourse and playing field for the adjacent 

Hyde Park barracks in Macquarie Street.  To the footstepper, is now obvious that the 

original existence of this swamp dictated that the surrounding land be zoned for open 

space free from built structures.  The park had therefore been laid out with formal style 

in the 1870s and 1880s, always with the intention of it remaining the premier city’s 

green belt.  The diagonal walkways are already evident in photographs from this period, 

as are the newly planted trees lining the paths.
426

 

 

                                                 
421

 Sydney Streets: Then and Now Gallery online database. 
422

 Apperly, Irving, Reynolds: A Pictorial Guide to Identifying Australian Architecture, pp. 149-171. 
423

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p 73. 
424

 Peter Bridges and Robin Appleton: The City’s Centrepiece – The History of the Sydney GPO, p. 20. 

Photograph Booklet vol.1, p 74. 
425

 While not claiming to be an expert on the history of Sydney, I grew up with a fairly sophisticated 

appreciation of the heritage of my own city, yet did not know of even the existence of this colonial site 

until researching my thesis. 
426

 Alan Sharpe: Pictorial History City of Sydney, 2000, Kingsclear Books, Sydney, pp. 60-61. 

Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 75. 



128 

 

The Commonwealth, or Citizen’s, Arch dominating this significant part of the city was 

both the largest and the most expensive for the Parade.
427

  “Two or three of the eight 

[arches] have been put up by the government.  The most noble and ornate of all of them 

– the Citizen’s Arch – is being erected at the expense of the citizens of Sydney, by a 

committee of which the Mayor is the head, and to which subscriptions have been 

liberally sent.”
428

  The cost of the structure was significant at £1,000;
 429

  a sum, quipped 

The Age as being “by far the most pretentious”,
430

  and while the southern paper did 

mark that this amount had been raised by contributions from “a patriotic people”, it 

strangely failed to point out that the original allocation for the Melbourne Arch had 

been an identical amount.  The size certainly was needed to accommodate the span of 

Park Street, as well as provide a suitably imposing spectacle.  As previously argued, it 

then does become an interesting question as to why such a monumental statement of 

civic moment was to be merely a temporary structure.  Although giving the effective 

impression of solid masonry, the arch was constructed only of plaster and board;
431

  

however its construction was considered significant enough at the time to have had 

Varney Parkes, the son of Sir Henry as its supervisor.   

 

Even today, the site appears to be perfect for a solid masonry structure permanently 

commemorating the Federation of the Australian nation.  Many, including march 

organiser Edward William O’Sullivan and Varney Parkes themselves, also called for a 

permanent arch to be erected.
432

  Total cost would have been some £17,000; within even 

the sometimes dubious organising capabilities of O’Sullivan.  The size of even the 

temporary structure certainly would have been impressive, with a main arch being 

twenty six feet wide (eight metres), and the two side arches each twelve foot six inches 

wide (four metres), accommodating not only general traffic but also “sufficiently wide 

                                                 
427

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 76. 
428

 The Argus: 1 January 1901, p.5.   
429

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, 2000, The 1901 

Centre, University of Technology, Sydney  pp. 41-42. Apparently there had been four such arches 

planned, possibly to cover all four corners of the Park Street bisection of Hyde Park, though eventually, 

only the one was constructed, 
430

 The Age: 2 January 1901. 
431

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 43. 
432

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 15 January 1901, p. 5.  Proposed Permanent Record.  “In anticipation if 

the matter being considered by the [Citizens’ Celebrations] Committee, Mr Varney Parkes, architect of 

the Commonwealth Arch, has furnished Mr Hennessey with a drawing of an entirely new structure, which 

would be a distinct architectural triumph and an object of beauty for all time, besides worthily recording 

the momentous event which occurred on the first day of the new century.”  



129 

 

to accommodate two lines of tramways should it ever be necessary to lay them along 

Park Street.”
433

  

 

Obviously a considerable degree of thought and planning had actually gone into this 

proposal, with the still very classical form being based on a modern concrete shell 

which could later be veneered with marble, bronze or copper.
434

  As The Sydney 

Morning Herald claimed, “The concrete would be everlasting and if the veneering 

…ever became defaced it could be removed and new veneering put on.”
435

  A large 

permanent classical reproduction of the original temporary structure would not be out of 

place within the formality of the Hyde Park precinct, and could even cope with the ever 

larger buildings constructed on the adjacent corners of Park Street. “Complaint has been 

made that nothing in this pageant will be a lasting memento of the great event.  It is 

therefore proposed to have marble models made of all this ephemeral magnificence and 

to store in the national museum.  The Citizen’s Arch will stand for a few months – at 

least until the Duke of York arrives, and probably after.”
436

   The grandiosity of such 

permanence would no doubt have been out of place with the sentiment of the times; the 

celebration of a dramatic event, but then the conscious return to the everyday; ‘moving 

forward’ to create a modern nation.  As The Daily Telegraph itself stated, “We are a 

practical people all the time, and when we have recited the titles of the Queen, or the 

Governor General, and read the engrossing formalities of a State document, we are 

satisfied that we have accomplished all that it is necessary to do.”
437

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                 
433

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 15 January 1901, p. 5.  Gregory’s Street Directory of Sydney & Suburbs 

1934, map 3.  Within the decade the major tramline to Kings Cross and the harbour side Eastern Suburbs 

was indeed constructed. The re-alignment of the corner from Elizabeth Street into Park Street still exists 

as a palimpsest to the city’s tram network. 

Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 76. 
434

 The Argus: 1 January 1901, p.5.  The state premier Sir William Lyne was apparently against the 

“ornamental Corinthian style….. but the citizens through their committee took matters into their own 

hands and three months’ work was compressed into a fortnight.” 
435

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 15 January 1901, p. 5. 
436

 The Argus: 1 January 1901, p.5. 
437

 The Daily Telegraph: 2 January 1901, p. 14. 



130 

 

12.  THE CLASSICAL EAST  

 

The Federation parade, and my therefore footstepping, continued down between the two 

divisions of Hyde Park to where Park Street melds into William Street.  As mentioned, 

this road was the main thoroughfare to the harbour side Eastern Suburbs, although the 

traveller would first have to traverse the less than salubrious gully of Darlinghurst and 

Woolloomooloo.
438

   As the accompanying image indicates, it was this very view back 

from Kings Cross and Potts Point to the city across the poverty stricken wastes of the 

“Loo” and “Darlo” that inspired town planners to adopt the concept of the City 

Beautiful and the movement to suburbia.
439

   The Picturesque Atlas of Australasia that 

supplied the original of this image of the city was edited by journalist and politician, Dr 

Andrew Garran.
440

  The pro-Federationist Garran would go on to edit The Sydney 

Morning Herald and, along with those such as Sir James Martin, follow the well 

trammelled path from young liberal to “a colonial conservative incongruously 

upholding laissez faire against a rising tone tide of state control.”
441

  Andrew Garran’s 

son, Sir Robert, would also go on to distinguish himself as lawyer and secretary to many 

of the Federation Conventions and Committees, secretary to the Attorney General’s 

Department from 1901 to 1916, and be acclaimed as Australia’s first public servant.
442

 

 

It is now realised that it was not the physical environment and housing either here, or in 

Darling Harbour or the Haymarket that was the source of misery, but the poverty of a 

people in the throes of economic depression.
443

  The same inner suburbs spreading north 

and south from William Street now provide some of the most desirable and expensive 

housing in the city.  This gentrification was well underway by the early 1960s with 

Woolloomooloo resident Frank Clune noting in 1961 that, “The streets and alleys of the 

Loo have been replanted and rebuilt, sweeping way many old slum tenements.”
444

  The 

process still had a way to go in 1910 when Henry Lawson penned his descriptive picture 

of William Street.
 445

 

                                                 
438

 Gregory’s Publishing Company: Sydney Street Directory 2011,  maps D, 4. 
439

 John Archer: Building a Nation – a History of the Australian House, 1987, William Collins, Sydney p. 

117. 

Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 78. 
440

 Andrew Garran: The Picturesque atlas of Australasia, 1888, The Picturesque Atlas Publishing 

Company, Sydney. 
441

 E K Bramsted: Andrew Garran (1825-1901), Australian Dictionary of Biography online database. 
442

 Helen Irving: The Centenary Companion to Australian Federation, pp. 375-376. 
443

 Geoffrey Blainey: A Land Half Won, chapts. 20, 21. 
444

 Frank Clune: Saga of Sydney, p. 39. 
445

 Henry Lawson: A Fantasy of Man – Complete Works 1901-1922, p. 485. 



131 

 

 

 Beginning where the shadow streets 

 Of vacant wealth begin, 

 Street William runs down sadly  

 Across the vale of sin…. 

 

 ‘Tis William Street that rises 

 From stagnant dust and heat, 

 (Old trees by the Museum 

 Hold back with hands and feet) –  

 

 And where the blind are plying 

 Deft fingers, supple wrists –  

 ‘Tis William Street, exclusive, 

 Where pray the Methodists. 

 

The blind courts see the clearer,  

Side lanes grow trim and neat,  

The wretched streets are cleaner  

That run from William Street.
 
 

 

It was at this geographical point that the German Arch was located.
446

   This structure 

was financed by the German residents of Sydney, although constructed by the same 

contractors as the Commonwealth Arch; Hudson Brothers.
447

  It also embodied the 

concept of unity: “United Germany Greets United Australia”, which had originally been 

intended as “United Germany greets the Commonwealth of Australia.”
448

  The change 

in text would have reflected the rather late confirmation of the use of the term 

Commonwealth in the title of the newly unified nation.
449

  A confused mixture of 

respect, mockery and fear of an expanding Germany was evident within the press not 

                                                 
446

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 79. 
447

 The Argus: 28 February 1882, p. 7. By 1882 this company was already “well known timber merchants, 

manufacturers of joinery work and of railway rolling stock.” 
448

 The Daily Telegraph: 15 December 1900, p. 1. 
449

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 5 April 1897, p. 6. The use of the term Commonwealth was not 

universally popular, with at least one commentator mentioning the risk of a Cromwellian Commonwealth 

being imposed, and the poet James Brunton Stephens also indicating a preference for “The Dominion of 

Australia”.  Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, pp. 46-

47. Helen Irving: The Centenary Companion to Australian Federation, pp. 348-349.  



132 

 

only during celebrations for Federation, but over other wider issues such as German 

influence in South East Asia.  Such notions were not confined to Australia, although 

German civilisation was often considered preferable to others.  “The decision must soon 

be made,” says the Hon John R Proctor, president of the United States Civil Service 

Commission, “which will determine whether the principles of constitutional liberty and 

self-government represented by the civilisation of the Teutonic races or the repressive 

absolutism of the Slav [assuming to mean the Russian Tsar] shall dominate the 

world.”
450

 

 

Clearly, there was a mix of admiration for yet another nation that had united only thirty 

years earlier, as well as grudging respect for the technical strength that was then both 

threatening the British Empire, and acting as a spur to the previously mentioned 

expansion of education.
451

  Cartoons in The Bulletin, as often the case, seemed to 

capture the mixture of mockery, fear and tension.
452

  

 

A Casus Belli: “What defence can you offer for knocking him [a man of German 

heritage] about like that?” 

[Anglo Australian defendant] “He walked past my house with a German sausage 

in his hand.” 

[Anglo Australian judge]  “Case dismissed”; [defendant] leaves court without a 

stain. 

 

Sydney’s Daily Telegraph dedicated a full paragraph to summarise the culminating 

fears that many Australians felt at the time.  These issues further added to the impetus 

for Federation, again with Russia being viewed as great a threat as Germany.  “The 

vested interest of Russia in the Chinese Empire [this was just prior to the Boxer 

Uprising] is now almost too great to relinquished without a struggle…..So the 

question…is whether Russian power in China shall be permitted to attain fuller 

development….Japan has taken the island of Formosa and want to add Fokien province 

on the mainland opposite to it; Italy more feebly demands part of Che-Kiang 

province…..”
453

 

                                                 
450

 The Daily Telegraph: 20 January 1900, p. 8. Originally written in a 1900 issue of Harper’s Weekly. 
451

 Neville Kingsley Meaney: The West and the World 1789-1914, 1972, Science Press, Sydney, vol.1, 

chapt. 12. 
452

 The Bulletin: 3 March 1900, p. 18. 
453

 The Daily Telegraph: 20 January 1900, p. 8. 



133 

 

 

At this geographical point the parade turned safely to the right into College Street where 

were (and still are) located two of the city’s primary, and oldest, educational 

institutions: the Australian Museum and the Sydney Grammar School.
454

  The 

Australian Museum building dated from as early as 1849, with extensions being added 

as recently as the 1980s.
455

  Along with the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, 

located below Central Railway Station in Ultimo, this was one of the few substantial 

museums open to the general public for most of the last century and a half.
456

  Although 

Anderson discusses the role of museums in the relationship between western society 

and the exotic cultures being presented in their galleries,
457

 it is also the relationship 

between the museum and other educational institutions, and the population they are 

meant to serve, which is significant.  It was such access to knowledge that had 

previously been the preserve of a limited few that served to widen the concept of 

community.  In contrast, next door stood the Sydney Grammar School opened in 1857, 

ostensibly to prepare students for the recently established University of Sydney.
458

  The 

journalist and poet Andrew Barton “Banjo” Paterson attended the school from 1874 

before matriculating to study law at the university.
459

  This remains an institution for the 

limited few and has provided an exclusive education for those able to pay the fees,
460

 or 

those granted scholarships.
461

   The Federation parade would thus have passed, within 

the course of one hundred metres, a symbol of the aspirational working class utilising 

state institutions to gain access to newly available scientific knowledge, and a most 

potent symbol of traditional education still restricted by cost to the wealthy elite.
462

   

                                                 
454

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, pp. 80, 81. 
455

 Frank Clune: Saga of Sydney, p. 258. 
456

 Graeme Davison and Kimberley Webber: Yesterday’s Tomorrows – the Powerhouse Museum and its 

precursors, 2005, Powerhouse Publishing, Sydney, p. 222.  Daniel Potts and Karin Sowada: Treasures of 

the Nicholson Museum, 2006, University of Sydney, Sydney, p. 9.  The Museum of Applied Arts and 

Sciences has subsequently expanded into the Powerhouse Museum, adding to the Nicholson Classics 

Museum and Macleay Museum of Natural History at the University of Sydney, the WEA institute in 

Bathurst Street and the previously mentioned new Sydney Museum in Bridge Street. 
457

 Benedict Anderson: Imagined Communities, pp. 178-185. 
458

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 25 March 1859, p. 9.  Even a mere two years later, the perennial issue of 

state aid for non-government schools raised its head with the vote for £1,000 for Sydney Grammar from 

state coffers being postponed. 
459

 Clement Semmler: Andrew Barton (Banjo) Paterson (1864-1941), Australian Dictionary of Biography 

online database.  And if the “Banjo’s” middle name sounds familiar, he was distantly related through his 

mother’s side to Australia’s Prime Minister at Federation, Edmund Barton. 
460

 Sydney Grammar School: School Information online database.  It is worth noting that Sydney 

Grammar School has a separate website dedicated purely to the fees charged by the school. 
461

 Photograph Booklet 1, p. 81. 
462

 Benedict Anderson: Imagined Communities, pp. 180-181. Although referring to the development of 

colonial education in Burma, Anderson’s quote perhaps could also apply to post-colonial Australian 

culture. “Progressives – colonials as well as natives – were urging major investments in modern 



134 

 

 

The last formal structure to be passed as the Federation parade made its way out of the 

city was the Military Colonnade located at the intersection of College, Liverpool, 

Oxford Streets, and Wentworth Avenue.
463

  A colonnade was chosen by Government 

Architect Walter Liberty Vernon, rather than another heavy triumphal arch providing  a 

welcome break from the preponderance of more formal arches at all the earlier 

locations.  This may have been rather incongruous at the time, since would have been 

one structure along the route of the march intended to convey an overt sense of military 

pride.  Friezes on both sides carried lettering meant no doubt to demonstrate military 

solidarity with both Britain and the Empire, but also with New Zealand.  “To our 

Comrades from Over the Sea” was inscribed on the northern side, while “To our 

Comrades of the Southern Seas” was on the southern side and thus unfortunately 

probably unnoticed by the marchers.
464

 

 

While this location has been designated as Whitlam Square since 1983,
465

  the name 

appears to be rarely used, and is certainly not a common geographical identifier in the 

manner of Martin Place or Queen’s Square.
466

  Although one of the major traffic 

intersections in the city, filtering the vast majority of those in both cars and buses to the 

Eastern and South Eastern Suburbs, this square’s modern claim to fame is as the 

beginning of Oxford Street, and the point of either commencement or termination for 

the annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.  Participants and floats usually assemble 

further along at Taylor Square before conducting their own procession down Oxford 

Street to Hyde Park, thus reversing this brief section of the Federation parade from a 

century earlier.
467

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                               
schooling. Against them were arrayed conservatives who feared the long term consequences of such 

schooling, and preferred the natives to stay native.”  
463

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 82. 
464

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 48. 
465

 Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Revised Maxi Street Directory 1988, map BB. 
466

 The Australian: 25 July 2013 online database. Councillors agree to put Gough on the map. “Although 

the intersection at the southeast corner of Hyde Park was named Whitlam Square in 1983, signage has 

since disappeared and the landmark is often not signposted on maps.” 
467

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 30 July 2013 online database. Plan to rename Taylor Square to mark gay 

pride.  



135 

 

13.  CITY REDEVELOPMENT 

 

Once through the Military Colonnade, the parade turned into Oxford Street for the 

gentle incline up to Taylor Square, and then out of the city to the formal inauguration 

ceremony at Centennial Park.  Oxford Street is another thoroughfare that would have 

looked quite different in 1901, primarily due to its width.  At the time the street was a 

standard 60’ (18.3m) wide, but was about to change dramatically.   The later 1908 

Royal Commission into the Improvement of City and Suburbs recommended the 

widening of William, Elizabeth and Oxford Streets.  “Everyone admits that Sydney has 

outgrown her plan (if her casual growth can be called a plan), as a child outgrows its 

swaddling clothes.”
468

  In 1909 work began on demolishing the northern side of the 

street and widening the roadway to its present 100’or 30.5m.
469

  One of the inevitable 

losses included the original Burdekin Hotel on the Liverpool Street corner, prophesying 

the later loss of the family home in Macquarie Street two decades later.
470

 

 

It was again an outsider who pushed hardest for these city improvements.  John Daniel 

(Jack) Fitzgerald was a compositor and union activist from Shellharbour in Wollongong 

who rose through the ranks of the developing labour movement to find an eventual 

home within the establishment of Sydney.
471

  Perhaps it was the range of experiences 

from his youth that broadened his interests and attitudes.  Although from a strong Irish 

Catholic family, Fitzgerald attended the local state school and Fort Street Selective 

School in Sydney, as well as St Mary’s Cathedral School.  An early member of the 

Socialist and Republican Leagues he had, through the party political shenanigans of 

1893 “lost some of his trade union, Labour pragmatism and now sought social and 

political improvements by democratic, knowledgeable, alert and concerned 

professionals, operating at various levels of government.”
472

  What was significant to 

the footstepper in Fitzgerald’s career was his trip to England in 1890 to publicise the 

                                                 
468

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 11 June 1908, p. 5.  City Improvement, The Royal Commission. The 

importance of expanding the rail network was also recognised. “Mr T R Johnston, Chief Railway 

Commissioner said the great need of Sydney now was a system of suburban railways.”  Peter Spearritt: 

Sydney’s Century – a History, p. 15. 
469

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 25 October 1906, p. 9. 
470

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 91. 
471

 Bede Nairn: John Daniel (Jack) Fitzgerald (1862-1922), Australian Dictionary of Biography online 

database. 
472

 Bede Nairn: John Daniel (Jack) Fitzgerald (1862-1922), Australian Dictionary of Biography online 

database. 



136 

 

great Australian Maritime Strike within the British union movement.
473

  While in 

Europe, he not only saw the grinding poverty among British workers and the squalor in 

which they lived, but more importantly, a possible solution in Baron Haussmann’s 

radical modernisation of the centre of Paris.
474

  The plague outbreak in 1900 and the 

construction of the city’s new railway terminus provided the ideal impetus to 

experiment upon a rather small confined festering eyesore.   

 

For the first half a century of rail transport in NSW, the main terminus for the ever 

expanding country and suburban network remained at what was known as Redfern 

Station.  Both names and locations for stations through the late nineteenth century were 

remarkably flexible, with Sydney’s Redfern Station originally sited in the gully between 

Chippendale and Surry Hills, adjacent to the current Cleveland Street overpass, while 

the current large Redfern Station was named Eveleigh.  All that remains of the original 

terminus is the Mortuary Station that used to load Sydney-siders for their last ride to 

Rookwood Cemetery.
475

 

 

Plans had long been in train to create a major rail terminus actually within the city; at 

Hyde Park.  However, there were two issues that remained unresolved: the public outcry 

that would have occurred if Hyde Park had been resumed, and the existence of 

Brickfield Hill that would have forced trains to travel up the same steep slope that 

precluded the Federation parade from following this route.
476

  Finally, the same NSW 

Minister for Works Edward William O’Sullivan (apparently known as “Owe Sullivan” 

due to “the variety of his expensive projects”
477

) put forward his proposal to move 

Redfern a mere six hundred metres north, into land that was currently occupied by the 

city’s heritage Devonshire Street Cemetery.  A bluff good natured man who also rose 

through the printing industry into the Labour establishment, O’Sullivan even submitted 

plans for the new station.  “O'Sullivan's sketch for it had all the salient features of the 

                                                 
473

 The Sydney Morning Herald:  26 November 1915, p. 4.  The Labour Party Jubilee, letter to the editor.  

“ I [T J Houghton]would like to correct one of the statements made by Mr Black to the effect, as 

published by you, that Mr Fitzgerald was sent to Great Britain by the Labour Defence Committee (of the 

maritime strike in 1890) to raise funds for the support of the strikers.  At the time I was secretary of the 

Labour Defence Committee…so I should know something of the subject. The truth is, Mr Fitzgerald was 

going to England on his own account, and the Labour Defence Committee gave him credentials, through 

me, to place before the trade unionists of the old country the facts connected with the strike in Australia.” 
474

 Colin Jones: Cambridge Illustrated History of France, 1994, University of Cambridge Press, 

Cambridge p. 214. 
475

 Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Street Directory of Sydney & Suburbs 1934, 2006, The 

Australian Book Guide Company, Sydney, map 6. 
476

 David Burke: Making the Railways, 1995, State Library of NSW, Sydney, pp. 139-140. 
477

 David Burke: Making the Railways, 1995, State Library of NSW, Sydney, p. 140. 



137 

 

Colosseum [sic], St Paul's, the Kremlin and a Yankee skyscraper.”
478

  Fortunately for 

posterity, the government stuck with Walter Liberty Vernon, the Colonial Architect, to 

come up with the glorious Federation Free Classical styled structure that exists today.
479

  

 

An additional four hundred metres would have brought the city’s new rail hub under the 

lee of Brickfield Hill, at the point beneath Goulburn Street where the current City Circle 

line enters the underground.  This is a mere two hundred metres down from Hyde Park 

and would have been easily accessible by foot from the Central Business District; but it 

wasn’t to be.  When the grand station was eventually finished the premier Sir John See, 

prior to blowing the golden whistle that would formally open the complex, could not 

resist making mention that Central had actually “been built in the wrong place”.
480

  But 

O’Sullivan’s heritage has remained as a much loved part of Sydney’s landscape.
481

  

“His reputation was based on his honesty, enthusiasm and humanity; his very blunders 

seemed to endear him to the hearts of the people.”
482

 

 

As mentioned earlier, the construction of the station entailed the removal of the 1,145 

bodies from the old Devonshire Street Cemetery to Botany by steam tram.  This was 

actually being planned while the Federation Parade was passing above along Oxford 

Street, and by 5 January 1901 the Minister for Works had published a letter, “to state 

that the utmost reverence and respect will be shown in regard to the human remains and 

tombstones in the Devonshire Street Cemetery.  Before any workmen are allowed to 

disturb the ground for railway purposes, the remains will be removed to the cemetery 

indicated by the descendants or friends of the deceased.”
483

  It is interesting to note the 

comment of the old British and Manchester radical, Elijah Dixon in Paul Pickering’s 

work Chartism and the Chartists in Manchester and Salford.  Apparently, in May 1839, 

local Mancunians had rallied to protest the expansion of the recently constructed Leeds-

Manchester railway through their local cemetery, requiring the removal of graves in 

their thousands.
484

   That the Devonshire Street site was no longer being used, and that 

Sydney residents were actually looking forward to the construction of a brand new 

                                                 
478

 Bruce E Mansfield: Edward William O’Sullivan (1846-1910), Australian Dictionary of Biography 

online database. 
479

 Apperly, Irving, Reynolds: A Pictorial Guide to Identifying Australian Architecture, p. 104. 

Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 84. 
480

 Alan Sharpe: Pictorial History of the City of Sydney, p. 134. 
481

 The Adelaide Register: 31 May 1910, p. 7.  O’Sullivan’s fame even spread interstate. “When Mr 

O’Sullivan designed (sic) the Central Railway Station, Sydney, he was laughed at…” 
482

 The Catholic Press: 7 January 1909, p. 16. 
483

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 5 January 1901, p. 4. 
484

 Paul Pickering: Chartism and the Chartists in Manchester and Salford, pp. 11-12. 



138 

 

railway terminus, would have been reason enough for them, however, to acquiesce to 

the State Government’s requirements.   

 

With the “uncovering” of the abysmal conditions of the poor, notably the Chinese, in 

the plague struck district of Darling Harbour;
485

 the civic authorities would also take up 

the mission of cleansing the whole adjoining Wexford Street district.
486

   This area was 

bounded by Liverpool and Oxford Streets to the north, Elizabeth Street to the west, the 

cemetery and future rail centre to the south, and the equally poor, but slightly less 

congested Surry Hills to the east.  As mentioned, the Irish, who had earlier inhabited the 

district, felt that the dilapidated state of the area cast aspersions on their culture.  “The 

new Irish League in this city has found a cause of complaint in the name of Wexford 

Street.  At its last meeting, one of the members said that until 1872 this place was 

known by quite another name, and he wanted to know why it had been changed.  

Wexford, he contended, was insulted by the present designation.”
487

  The Irish League 

member was, of course, quite right.  An 1865 map of the city shows the area to have 

then been called Market Street, linking the area directly with the Haymarket to the 

west.
488

  Photographs did present the district in a very poor light, although as Peter 

Burke has commented regarding the general attitude of city photographers: “According 

to their political attitudes, the photographers chose to represent the most run-down 

houses, in order to support the argument for slum clearance, or the best looking ones, in 

order to oppose it.”
489

 

 

Wexford Street was subsequently razed and replaced by the wide expanse of Wentworth 

Avenue.
490

  The alignment of the maligned Wexford Street still remains as Foy Lane, 

now a small back delivery access lane that also references to the, then under 

construction, Mark Foy’s department store one block away on Liverpool Street.
491

  The 

                                                 
485

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 12 September 1891, p. 8. 
486

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p 85. 
487

  Newcastle Morning Herald and Miner’s Advocate: 4 May 1900, p. 3.  An alternative opinion on the 

issue was put forward by professor Anderson Stuart of the University of Sydney. “Wexford Street we 

have merely accepted as a name and we have never at any time connected it with the county to the latter’s 

detriment.  It is generally accepted that street names have no outside application at all, and certainly none 

to their residents, and if the contrary opinion is to prevail as a result of the league’s decision, what of the 

many other thoroughfares which are even more libellously named than Wexford Street.” 
488

 Suzanne Mourot: This Was Sydney – a pictorial history from 1788 to the present time, 1969, Ure 

Smith, North Sydney, p. 54. 
489

 Peter Burke: Eyewitnessing – the Uses of Images as Historical Evidence, p. 86. 
490

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 88. 
491

 Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Sydney Street Directory 2011, map F. 

Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 88. 



139 

 

whole district was converted to light industrial and commercial as both social change 

and government policy was encouraging this very development.  The new department 

stores needed storage warehouses for their goods that were close to the railway yards 

and close enough to the stores themselves that items could be transported by cart or 

lorry.  As the new Australian Government sought to expand the protection for 

Australian industry that had brought Victoria into the Federation,
492

  businessmen 

looked for sites where clothing and footwear factories could utilise the nation’s raw 

materials of wool, leather and cotton, while then being close to the same department 

stores for sale to the public.  The newly modernised Wentworth Avenue arrived just in 

time.
493

  Even after this massive redevelopment, the quarter continued to evolve into the 

district for car and then motorcycle sales.
494

   With the rise of the 1950s Bodgies and 

1960s Mods, the prevalence of large British motor bikes and cool Italian motor scooters 

lent an air of disreputable thrill to the avenue.
495

  As happened with Oxford Street 

above, a period of abandonment has been followed by the current expansion of 

upmarket accommodation for those wishing, and able, to return to inner-city living. 

 

 

14.  MARCH OUT TO CENTENNIAL PARK 

 

From the urban confines of Darlinghurst, the Federation parade then marched out to 

Centennial Park for the formal Inauguration Ceremony.
496

  The route originally taken 

has remained almost identical, as it follows the eastern ridge along modern Oxford 

Street from the city to Centennial Square, Paddington.
497

   However, specific sites 

passed along the route to Centennial Park do demonstrate the great changes that can 

occur to both the built and social environment over the course of a century. 

 

                                                 
492

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 19 July 1916, p. 14. “The Minister for Customs, Mr Tudor, was waited 

on today by a deputation from the Federated Clothes Trades of Australia, which sought similar duties  for 

men’s ready-made clothing as were already in operation under the present tariff for women’s clothing.” 
493

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 89. 
494

 The Sydney Daily Telegraph: 18 November 1999 supplement. 
495

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 13 December 1951, p. 2. “There are two kinds of bodgies and widgies, 

the old and the young. The young walk on their own feet, the old have fine motor cars. The young are 

fools; but the old are evil. However, there is no excuse for evil, young or old…. In the 1880s bodgies and 

widgies of the day were called ‘pushes’ – originating, I think, in Melbourne.” Of course! 
496

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 91. 
497

 Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Revised Maxi Street Directory of Sydney 1988, maps 11, 

12.   Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Sydney Street Directory 2011, maps 4, 21.  The one 

immediate difference noticed is that the route is now punctuated by twelve sets of traffic lights, these 

having increased from about eight sets twenty five years ago.   

Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 95.  



140 

 

As a newly established European nation being settled from virgin bushland, it is 

understandable that rapid changes in the physical surroundings would occur over the 

course of a century.  Suburbs along the Oxford Street ridge such Darlinghurst and the 

inner east of suburban Sydney to Paddington were opened up through the long Victorian 

era, from the 1830s to the start of the twentieth century.
498

  The spread east through the 

sand hills was slow, with the initial grand estates such as Elizabeth Bay House and 

Vaucluse House finding themselves gradually absorbed within the rows of terrace 

houses and bungalows.  Maps from the 1860s show the city proper to have still halted at 

Darlinghurst, with Paddington just expanding as a suburb.
499

  Waverley and Woollahra 

were isolated belts of sand hills, estates and hobby farms that would have taken almost 

an hour to reach from the city by horse and cart.  As the parade progressed along this 

route the participants and spectators must have been aware of travelling from a city 

already a century old, into suburbs that were still under development.   It is worth noting 

that, unlike today, public transport at this time often preceded settlement.
500

  The image 

of electric trams in 1905 on Rose Bay Road (now South Head Road, the main 

thoroughfare north of Oxford Street), then running through virgin scrub to the isolated 

settlements further out gives a good indication that there will soon be houses along this 

route.
501

    

 

Unlike the deteriorating Darlinghurst, by the time of the Federation march, Paddington 

was an established and fashionable shopping precinct for these newer, comfortable 

upper working class suburbs that could now readily be reached from the city by public 

transport.
502

  As the march itself demonstrated, even walking to and from the city every 

day was always quite feasible, with Centennial Square at the corner of Centennial Park 

still only a distance of around four kilometres from the GPO.  By the Second World 

War the district had also then declined to the point of being virtually a slum; “still seedy 

and unloved, but with a bohemian, cosmopolitan atmosphere.”
503

   However, with the 

                                                 
498

 Brian Turner: The Australian Terrace House, 1995, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, pp. 60-61,81. 

Compare the compact early Victorian terraces in Surry Hills, the up market early Victorian terraces in 

Redfern with the mass of later terraces (now including adequate toilet facilities) spreading over the hills 

of Paddington. 
499

 Suzanne Mourot: This Was Sydney – a pictorial history from 1788 to the present time, pp. 54-55. 
500

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 93. 
501

 Alan Birch and David Macmillan: The Sydney Scene 1788-1960, p. 204.  The Sydney Morning Herald: 

29 March 1923, p. 10. Bondi Beach Land Sale.  Even in 1923 Crown Land on the flat plain behind Bondi 

Beach was available for purchase for brand new homes 
502

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 26 July 1906, p. 9.  Raine and Horne were also offering brand new 

terraces in Glenmore Road five years after the Federation Parade. 
503

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 8 April 1937, p. 15. Slum Clearance, Paddington Council. “The 

Paddington Council has agreed to meet the Housing Board to discuss plans for the abolition of slum areas 



141 

 

move back to the city from the 1960s, and recognition of the value of inner suburban 

living, Paddington in particular became extremely attractive, and a valuable 

conservation district now only available to the wealthy.
504

   

 

After passing Darlinghurst Courthouse and Taylor Square on the way out from the city, 

the march would have reached the precinct formed by the meeting of Oxford Street with 

Darlinghurst Road, Barcom, Victoria and South Dowling Streets.  Although the 

intersection has always been significant for traffic, linking Kings Cross and the Eastern 

Suburbs with the southern route out of the city, it is only now that residents have 

pressured both the City of Sydney Council and Woollahra Council to accord it 

recognition and a name: “Three Saints’ Square”.
505

  This interesting example of the 

deliberate creation of heritage is centred on the Christian religious centres of St 

Vincent’s Hospital, St Sophia’s Greek Orthodox Church and the large Catholic Sacred 

Heart and Notre Dame Complex dominating the quarter.
506

  In 1901, both the Sacred 

Heart and St Vincent’s had already been in existence as notable institutions for decades.  

St Sophia’s, Australia’s first purpose built Greek Orthodox Church, was still twenty six 

years into the future, although indicating that there were many Greek settlers already in 

the city.
507

   In a way, this site also reflects the interaction of geographical and cultural 

nuance.
508

  The flat Square between the gradual rises to the east and west still marks a 

subtle border between the racy end of Oxford Street running back to Taylor Square and 

the city, and the more settled and suburban Paddington.   

 

                                                                                                                                               
in the Paddington zone.”  In view of the number of houses that remain, it would appear that the plans did 

not eventuate. Brian Turner: The Australian Terrace House, 1995, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, p. 84. 
504

 Sydney Morning Herald: 26 June 1935, p. 10.  “Restriction on Flat Building.”  Even in 1935, the threat 

to the Paddington streetscape by the developers’ newfound love for blocks of flats is apparent. 

Interestingly, one of the perceived threats is the increased risk of disease.  “It must be remembered, too, 

that an epidemic is a danger to which cities of Sydney’s size are always susceptible.”  Peter Spearritt: 

Sydney’s Century – a History, p. 207. 
505

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 92. 
506

 Sydney Morning Herald: 21 September 2008 online database.  Project convener Sue Ritchie has said: 

"It's an area which everyone knows but it's never had an identity. It is the only five-way intersection on 

Oxford Street which doesn't have a name…..The area is a real mess…..We decided the only way there 

can be any unity is to get the community together and do something ourselves.”  

Gregory’s Publishing Company: Sydney Street Directory 2011, map 4.  It is worth noting that, even in 

this 2011 edition, Three Saints’ Square has not yet been listed with the established Taylor Square, 

Whitlam Square etc.  It will be interesting to see whether the location really does become accepted in the 

future. 
507

 St Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral Group: Statement of Significance NSW Government Office of 

Heritage and the Environment online database. 
508

 As mentioned earlier, the hilly nature of eastern Sydney has meant that cultural distinctions such as 

suburbs and cultural connections such as roads have always been defined by landforms: hills, gullies and 

ridges. 



142 

 

Footstepping along Oxford Street from the city, skirting the edge of Darlinghurst and 

then up through Paddington, thus reflects both social change and social class.  From 

Hyde Park to Victoria Barracks, a distance of one kilometre there are, for example, now 

six hotels, while from the Barracks to Centennial Square at the edge of Paddington, 

covering the same distance, there are four hotels, with many more within close 

proximity to the main road (the road map lists a further six on the two relevant 

pages).
509

  The borders between Darlinghurst and Paddington, and Paddington and 

Woollahra, still provide clear breaks in the congestion of these watering holes.  While 

there remain hotels in the main shopping areas of Bondi Junction and Double Bay,
510

 

the prevalence is far less noticeable.  And remembering too, that there are now quite a 

few inns such as the “Millers” at Taylor Square and the “Exchange” and “New 

Burdekin” on the slope back to Hyde Park that would have been sites of refreshment at 

the time of the parade, but no longer function as hotels.
511

   It is obvious that hotel 

culture was a cornerstone of working class society.
512

 

 

The consumption of alcohol was therefore also a social issue at the time.
513

  Alcohol 

abuse was seen as a serious concern at the beginning of the twentieth century, invariably 

reflecting social pressures and individual reactions to economic pressures.  Temperance 

societies were strong at the time of Federation, notably amongst the Evangelical and 

Methodist Christian Churches, and many of the associations such as the Women’s 

Christian Temperance Union were equally fervent in their role supporting the 

Federation movement.
514

  On the other hand, Norman Lindsay’s cartoons disparaging 

Christian teetotallers and snickering at the misdemeanours of drunks,
515

 and Sydney 

cartoonist William Edwin Pidgeon’s drunken tour of the hotels of the city even later in 

                                                 
509

 Gregory’s Publishing Company: Sydney Street Directory 2011, maps 4, 21. 
510

 Gregory’s Publishing Company: Sydney Street Directory 2011, maps 4, 21. 
511

 City of Sydney County Council: Oxford Street online database. 
512

 Alan Sharpe: Pictorial History of Newtown, 1999, Kingsclear Books, Sydney, p. 70.  Even today, 

every second corner on the main roads of most inner city suburbs features the ubiquitous pub. 
513

 Australian Bureau of Statistics: Crime in Twentieth Century Australia online. “While we can focus on 

significant differences, some similar threads run right through the century. Alcohol-related crime was a 

predominant cause of criminal justice involvement in 1900, while today it is substance abuse in general, 

but alcohol still remains a major component in criminal activity.”  Interestingly, the national figure for 

assault (offence against a person was 2.62 per 1000 of the population in 1901, while a century later in 

1999, it was 7.04 per 1000.  The ABS describes this as a decline! 
514

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 8 November 1900, p. 5.  The Temperance Cause. “Great United 

Demonstration. A Temperance Political Party. Monster Meeting at the [Sydney] Town Hall.” Although 

Temperance organisations did not march, their influence was strong during the Federation process. 

Helen Irving: The Centenary Companion to Australian Federation, p. 429. 
515

 The Bulletin: 5 January 1901, p. 15. The effects of intoxication are presented by Norman Lindsay as 

amusing, if socially embarrassing.  The wider implications of, for example, “manoeuvres with Jane” and 

the sexual assault of young domestics is glossed over. 



143 

 

1933, implies a more easy-going attitude. 
516

  The issue, then and even now, was that 

pubs provided both a vital social hub for a less mobile society and a sink hole for the 

limited finances of the poor.
517

  Social reformers, such as Mona Ravenscroft from the 

Department of Anthropology of the University of Sydney, even in 1943 recognised this 

conundrum;
518

 “far more money is spent [by the working class] on non-essentials, such 

as beer, cigarettes, cakes, tawdry articles (sic), than by middle class people… [Yet] 

there is a vast system of clanship ties operating in these localities, and this background, 

deeply rooted in tradition, is greatly valued by people in depressed areas.”
519

 

 

As Oxford Street gently climbs to the east the Federation parade would have passed the 

significant site of Victoria Barracks.
520

  Unlike most other public and private structures 

along the route, this would not have been a glistening new building even in 1901.  The 

barracks were the first construction in the area, built by convict labour between 1841 

and 1848, to move the military out from the centre of the city to the then isolated 

Eastern Suburbs.
521

  The sand hills that backed onto the coast and formed the source of 

the lakes running down to Botany Bay were long considered good for little else other 

than sporting arenas, waste disposal and the city zoo.
522

  However, the supplementary 

water supply for Sydney between 1830 and the 1870s consisted of Busby’s Bore, fed by 

a tunnel from the nearby Lachlan Swamps adjacent to the current Sydney Cricket 

Ground, to an outlet in Hyde Park, near the current entry to St James Underground 

                                                 
516

 Peter Spearritt: Sydney’s Century – a History, p. 216. 
517

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 3 September 1907, p. 10. “The city of Sydney is notoriously over-

licensed. The slums would scarcely remain but for the liquor bars.  The Sydney Morning Herald: 14 April 

1909, p. 8.  Again, such continual complaints that there are too many hotels in Sydney would indicate that 

this really was a serious problem, at least as far as Herald readers were concerned.  
518

 John Rickard: Australia – a cultural history, p. 183.  “The accommodation reached between the 

hedonism of the ‘workingman’s paradise’ and the morality of Protestant wowserism was symptomatic of 

Australian social practice.  Thus most approved, or at least accepted strict laws relating to drinking and 

gambling, while at the same time sardonically acknowledging sly grog, off course SP betting and two-up 

as an authentically Australian sub-culture.” 
519

 Peter Spearritt: Sydney’s Century – a History, 2000, p. 206. Quoted from Social Horizons No1 July 

1943: Ravenscroft, The Housing Problem.  John Gascoigne: The Enlightenment and the Origins of 

European Australia, p. 116.  “As Elizabeth Windschuttle points out, its base [female temperance] was a 

growing Australian middle class which sought to reshape the behaviour of the working classes in 

particular.” 
520

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 93. 
521

 Suzanne Mourot: This Was Sydney – a pictorial history from 1788 to the present time, p. 120.  Philip 

Cox and Clive Lucas: Australian Colonial Architecture, 1978, Lansdowne Publishing, Sydney, pp. 222-

223. 
522

 Sydney Mail: 1 January 1901, p. 28.  Even the map for the Federation Parade notes this aspect of land 

use. 



144 

 

Railway Station.
523

  The new barracks would thus also provide security for the water 

pipe that ran through the military site on its way under Oxford Street to the city. 

 

At the top of what would have been quite a substantial climb for the marchers and for 

horses carrying riders or pulling cars, stands Paddington Town Hall, and the beginning 

of the fashionable Paddington shopping strip.
524

  Although quiet and sober in 1901, and 

certainly quiet and refined today, Paddington Town Hall has hosted significant episodes 

throughout Sydney’s recent history.   Rock Concerts, Trades Union meetings and even 

Homosexual Conferences
525

 have all used the facility strategically placed at the hub of 

eastern and south eastern Sydney.  From this locale it is a flat eight hundred metres, and 

a less than ten minute march, along the top of the ridge to Centennial Square and the 

entry point for Centennial Park. 

 

It was more than apt that the Federation Parade organisers should have chosen 

Centennial Park for the location of the actual declaration of an Australian Federation.  

Established in 1888 to commemorate the centenary of first settlement, the vast space 

was then only twelve years old, and still close to its original sand and grass banked lake 

shore appearance.  Even The Sydney Morning Herald noted its level of isolation. “Until 

yesterday the Centennial Park was, even to Sydney residents, almost a terra incognita, 

heard of only dimly, through the occasional reports which have appeared in the press 

with regard to the progress of the [Centenary commemoration] work.”
526

  Although the 

region may have been described as terra incognita, it certainly would not have been 

unknown to most local residents of East Sydney.  A few years earlier, the city was 

divided over a notorious rape incident that took place at nearby Mount Rennie.
527

  On 9 

September 1886, sixteen year old Mary Jane Hicks was essentially kidnapped by a cab 

driver and taken to the spot that was then an isolated tip and waste area near the old 

Sydney Zoological Gardens.  Today Mount Rennie is located adjacent to the Moore 

                                                 
523

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 11 September 1852, p. 4. Mr Busby and the Sydney Water Works. 

“Amid all the discussions which have of late taken place respecting the Water Supply for our 

metropolitan city, one material fact has been lost sight of – that the venerable gentleman to whose 

forethought, perseverance, and scientific skill the citizens are indebted for their present Water Works has 

never been suitably rewarded for that great and most successful enterprise.” 
524

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 94. 
525

 Terry Irving and Rowan Cahill: Radical Sydney, p. 326. 
526

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 27 January 1888, p. 3.  “The Scene at the Park, the day after the 

dedication.”  Alan Birch and David Macmillan: The Sydney Scene 1788-1960,  p. 203. 
527

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 14 September 1886, p3. The Moore Park Outrage. “Two more prisoners 

before the court.”  Sydney Mail: 1 January 1901.  Again, the Federation march map is the most accurate 

for locating this site with Anzac Parade, the golf course and Mount Steele (fundamentally the same hill). 



145 

 

Park Golf Course, and can be seen clearly from the Southern Distributor as the 

expressway crosses Cleveland Street.  The Mount Rennie / Mount Steele complex is 

used now for primarily for grass skiing: it is still an isolated location at night. 

 

Apparently the cab driver attempted to assault the girl, when she was ‘rescued’ by a 

group of larrikins, the Waterloo Push, and then raped by around a dozen of the youths.  

The case caused a storm of controversy: the obvious suffering of the young girl, 

authorities attempting to clamp down on the rise of ‘Larrikinism’,
528

 who was actually 

guilty, and of course, why the gang just happened to be in the location at the time.  The 

girl not only had the trauma of rape to contend with, she was then required to face her 

attackers (while still under sedation)  and indicate by a nod or shake of her head who 

was responsible; knowing that she was then likely condemning the youths to death.
529

   

The authorities were adamant. “On the day before the Executive met to consider the 

matter a deputation waited upon his Excellency the Governor urging that the prerogative 

of mercy should be exercised.”  However, the Judge, Sir William Windeyer 

“characterised the crime that had been committed on the woman, Mary Jane Hicks, as 

so atrocious and horrible that every lover of his country must feel that it was a disgrace 

to our civilisation.”
530

   

 

By now the march would have reached Centennial Square and turned right to proceed 

down Lang Road rather than enter through the main Oxford Street gates.  At the time, 

this side road was called Green Street, no doubt referring to the greenery that would 

have lined the road prior to the large 1920s and 1930s houses being built, but would 

later be changed to commemorate Presbyterian Minister John Dunmore Lang.
531

  The 

steepness of the slope from the formal Parkes Drive to the short Hamilton Drive must 

                                                 
528

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 12 February 1892, p. 7. Verdict of Wilful Murder. “John Smith… having 

seen the deceased placed in a cab… He had seen three men near the fire station a few minutes previously, 

but had not recognised them.  The coroner said…I am perfectly certain of that, and that the Government 

will take such steps, seeing the length to which larrikinism has gone, to protect you from coming to any 

harm…” 
529

 Alan Sharpe: Pictorial History of Newtown, p. 104. 
530

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 23 December 1886, p. 3. 7 January 1887, p. 3. The Mount Rennie 

Outrage.  Alan Sharpe: Pictorial History of Newtown, p. 105.  In the event, four youths went to the 

gallows on 7 January 1887, five were sentenced to long prison terms, and the cab driver, Charles 

Sweetman, received fifty lashes and fourteen years gaol.  As a postscript, one of the accused, Mick 

Donnellan, released after ten years behind bars still claiming his innocence, devoted the rest of his life to 

social work in the local district, and later became a city alderman. 
531

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 15 December 1926, p. 20.  NSW State Government Office of 

Environment & Heritage: Martin Road Heritage Conservation Area online database. 



146 

 

have been an issue, so the parade entered the now named Jervois Avenue
532

 gates and 

preceded around the Grand Drive to the Pavilion.
533

   Ironically, this would have meant 

by-passing the marble 1897 statue of Sir Henry Parkes, the Father of Federation
534

 

located at the intersection of Parkes Drive and Hamilton Drive
535

  This edifice would 

suffer a further indignity in 1970 when the marble itself was damaged by vandals,
536

  

and it was not until 1996 that State Premier Bob Carr unveiled the current Alan 

Somerville bronze statue in its place.  As can be seen in the photograph, this statue 

resides on the original plinth, still bearing the gold letters: Sir Henry Parkes GCMG.
537

 

 

The Federation parade came to a close with the formal Inauguration Ceremony 

conducted in the temporary but inspiring amphitheatre.  The numbers that were 

accommodated at the ceremony were as enormous as those that viewed the march 

through the city and would also have required just as much logistical planning.
538

  These 

included seven thousand five hundred formally invited guests, ten thousand school 

children, one thousand four hundred members of choir and chorus, not to mention the 

one hundred and fifty thousand members of the general public in the surrounding 

natural amphitheatre.
539

  The majority of these spectators who had been awaiting the 

arrival of this parade would not have walked the distance from the city.  The newly 

expanded and upgraded tram network had been put to good use in transporting the 

thousands from as early as 7:00am, although even this system was overloaded by the 

crush.   The Sydney Morning Herald correspondent listed some of the tram routes that 

were covered trying to get people to and from the event:  “Park Street, Crown Street, 

Cleveland Street” trams all linked in to the original Redfern Railway Station.
540

   

                                                 
532

 Robin W Winks: Sir William Francis Drummond Jervois, Australian Dictionary of Biography online 

database. Jervois Avenue was named after this former Governor of South Australia and New Zealand.  
533

 For those interested in the history, landforms and vegetation of Centennial Park, the NSW 

Government’s Centennial Parklands online database is of interest. 
534

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 96. 
535

 Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Sydney Street Directory 2011, map 21. 
536

 NSW Government Centennial Park and Moore Park Trust: Centennial Parklands online database. Sir 

Henry Parkes.  The Sydney Morning Herald: 9 April 2005 online database. Killed off by vandals, griffins 

come back from the shed. “Unfortunately, those [griffins] in Centennial Park could not put up such a 

good fight, unable to defend themselves against a more modern enemy; vandalism.”  
537

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 96. 
538

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 10 December 1900, p. 6.  “Mr Vernon, the government Architect, has 

prepared the plan for the seating of the distinguished guests who have been invited to witness the 

swearing-in of the Governor-General at Centennial Park. Provision has been made for seating 7,000 

guests.” 
539

 Australian Broadcasting Commission: Australia’s Centenary of Federation, 2000, ABC 100 years 

online database, Sydney, Inauguration notes, quoting unnamed newspaper cutting. 

Photograph Booklet vol.1 p. 98. 
540

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 1 January 1901, p.16.  One is left wondering, however, why such 

important information was placed back on page 16.  Many newspapers mention the real danger of loss 



147 

 

 

The dispersal after the Inauguration of the Commonwealth of Australia event was 

apparently as efficient, with public transport again providing an effective service.  

“Trams could also be lined up in Flinders Street.  This would relieve the overcrowding 

in the street at once… And as the last cheer died away, drowned in the resonance of the 

National Anthem, the brilliant company which had graced the pavilion moved 

homewards, and the bright and brilliant inauguration of the Commonwealth of Australia 

was a thing of the past.”
541

  This natural amphitheatre is still occasionally used for 

performance and entertainment today, judging by the signage,
542

 although the area that 

saw the Inauguration of Federated Australia in 1901 now appears isolated, and only 

regularly visited by passing residents walking their dogs.
543

 

 

                                                                                                                                               
and injury to the large number of children whose schools and families would have been reliant upon the 

transport system. 
541

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 2 January 1901, p. 9. 
542

 Photograph Booklet vol.1, p. 99. 
543

 Gavin Souter: Lion and Kangaroo – the initiation of Australia 1901-1919, p. 324. Writing in 1976, 

Gavin Souter was able to reflect on the level of cultural memory of the event.  “Although the 75
th

 

anniversary of Federation passed almost without notice, the jubilee in 1951 was celebrated with great 

assiduity throughout the Commonwealth.  A commemorative plaque was erected on what remained of the 

pavilion in which the Commonwealth had been proclaimed in Centennial Park.  This hexagon wooden 

structure, minus its original white exterior, was moved in 1901 to Cabarita Park, beside the Parramatta 

River, where it stands to this day as shabby and forgotten memento of proclamation day.”  Australian 

Government Department of the Environment: Federation Pavilion (former), Cabarita Rd, Cabarita, 

NSW, Australia website. “The former Federation Pavilion is located near the centre of Cabarita Park. The 

pavilion is much altered from its original 1901 appearance, with most of its ornate features gone.” 



148 

 

MELBOURNE FEDERATION PARADE 

 

 

1.  POINT OF COMPARISON 

 

After investigating and analysing the principal Federation parade in Sydney, I now 

prepared to follow a similar methodology in Melbourne.  Part of my evaluation process 

was to compare and contrast both the marches in the two capital cities with a view to 

making a contribution to the public record through the analysis of my footstepping 

methodology.  As well as undertaking an historical study of the actual marches 

themselves, I also intended to explore the more general interpretive process whereby 

similar studies could be replicated and analysed in a more general form.  To this end, 

the different experiences of the two cities that I brought to the interpretation of the two 

parades would not only provide a contrast, but also a valuable guide as to the true 

effectiveness of my theoretical approach. 

 

Determining the degree to which a researcher could use the footstepping technique, 

interpreted through the process of thick description would be partially dependent upon 

the degree to which this process is independent of personal knowledge and previous 

experience.
1
   Consequently the parades in the two cities offered a unique opportunity to 

contrast levels of familiarity and background knowledge and their influence on the 

footstepping and thick description: the degree to which personal experience influences 

analysis of the historical process. 

 

Having grown up in the inner suburbs of Sydney through the late 1950s and 1960s, I 

brought to my analysis of the first march both a strong familiarity with this urban 

environment and, even as it has changed over the last half a century, a feel for the city 

and a level of knowledge of its history and its culture.  My analysis of the Sydney 

Federation inauguration parade would therefore be both consciously and unconsciously 

supplemented by an appreciation that I was able to constantly draw upon to add to the 

                                                 
1
 As I mentioned in the Introduction, my purpose in analysing the two Federation marches was twofold:  

Firstly, to actually determine how people at the time thought of the emerging Australian identity through 

the process of footstepping: investigating whether those without an Anglo Saxon or Anglo Celtic cultural 

and racial heritage could, or should, participate in the new nation that was being created,  Secondly, to 

evaluate the methodology itself, and determine whether it is even viable to attempt to rely upon this non-

literate technique of footstepping to uncover these attitudes, particularly for a community rather than for 

individuals. 

 



149 

 

investigative process.   Living in an environment not only enables one to absorb the 

culture first hand as it is directly experienced, but also through family recollections, 

remembered incidents and even articles in the daily newspapers coming into the 

household; and these can traverse generations.  My own memory of trams in Sydney is 

fleeting, since they had all gone by the time I was nine years of age.  However I was 

always aware, through family stories and through observation of the tracks still 

embedded in local concrete roads, the empty sheds and altered street alignments, that 

the city had once boasted one of the most extensive tramway networks in the world.
2
 

 

In the case of Melbourne, I was totally reliant upon the information that could be 

gleaned from the experience of footstepping, and from what I could learn from the press 

and commentaries of the time, as well as written historical observations over the 

intervening years.  The practical process that I undertook for this thesis corresponded 

with only the second time that I had visited Melbourne, and the first time that I had 

walked the streets of the southern city.
3
  Consequently, I intended to discover whether 

there is indeed validity in evaluating experiences and attitudes from the past without 

either total reliance the written record or reliance upon personal memory.  Is this a 

viable approach for the many instances when historians attempt to analyse past 

circumstances of which they have effectively no prior personal experience and only 

second and third order knowledge? 

 

Many of the other writers inspiring the methodology behind my thesis were in a similar 

situation to that which I found myself in Melbourne: be it Clifford Geertz in Morocco, 

George Orwell in Wigan, Richard Holmes in France and Italy, Michael Wood at Troy, 

or Jonathan Raban in the Modern Middle East.  In each case, they were approaching the 

physical reality of their studied cultures for the first time.  The tenor of their travelogues 

through time and space is partly centred on the very novelty of their circumstances.   

While most rely upon written texts, and have often been inspired by these written texts, 

there is little personal referencing back to these locations either at the time they were 

describing, or through experience of the intervening years.  Geertz’s thick description 

and E P Thompson’s attempting to enter into the very essence of the event and bringing 

                                                 
2
 Note chapter 7 and footstepping the Sydney parade; the development and expansion of the Sydney tram 

network from Federation, to its height during the immediate post-Second Word War migration boom, and 

its virtual overnight destruction at the beginning of the 1960s. 
3
 Photograph Booklet vol.2, pp. 2, 3. 

 



150 

 

to life even the most apparently mundane aspects then becomes not only the most 

effective way, but really the only way of analysing these experiences.
4
 

 

This approach has both the positive and negative aspects that were covered in the 

Introduction to this thesis, and ones that would quite likely have also affected my 

interpretation of the Melbourne march.  On the one hand, coming with an essentially 

clean slate gives an immediacy unencumbered by expectations that may overlay 

immediate revelation with subconscious ideas and interpretation from the past.  

However, in viewing such foreign locations, there is the risk of simply missing out on 

much that is important, while compensating by reinforcing cultural ideals from one’s 

own background.  The interpreter may be coming to a situation with a blank canvas 

regarding the new experience; however, they cannot come devoid of memory with 

respect to their own past social or professional life.  For example, what Ryle and Geertz 

claim to be mundane aspects of the cultures that they are analysing may not be mundane 

at all, and it could very well be their preconceived view of what constitutes lesser and 

greater significance that is colouring their interpretations.
5
  “Culture, this acted 

document, thus is public, like a burlesqued wink or a mock sheep raid,” Geertz notes. 

“Though ideational, it does not exist in someone’s head; though unphysical, it is not an 

occult entity.”
6
  One could argue that although the physical expression of culture has to 

be physically visible, the interpretive and emotive aspects are precisely what do exist in 

people’s minds.   

 

There was also the other notable distinction between my approach to the footstepping 

process in Melbourne and that previously followed in Sydney.  This centred on the 

analysis of one specific parade against a combination of events that took place over the 

course of a week.  In Sydney, the inauguration of Federation was planned for the first 

day of the new century, and therefore all significance centred on that day; Tuesday 1 

January 1901.  There was the one primary celebratory march through the city on this 

day, and consequently I was able to accurately trace the route of this procession.  The 

                                                 
4
 As mentioned in the Introduction, this becomes the practical method for approaching the E P Thompson 

ideal of viewing past historical analysis through specific episodes. 
5 
Clifford Geertz: The Interpretation of Cultures, pp. 7, 8.  As mentioned earlier, although Geertz is 

describing Ryle’s famous sheep raid in central Morocco in 1912, he is still using the European third order 

description of the event to relate to the audience what happened.  It would be interesting to have had as 

second order description from Cohen himself, or the local commandant, Col Dumari, or even one of the 

sheep raiders. 
6
 Clifford Geertz: The Interpretation of Cultures, p. 10.  Thus, while some previous knowledge of the 

community may both colour and skew interpretation, it may also uncover valuable knowledge that would 

otherwise be ignored.   



151 

 

significant events in Melbourne centred on the opening of the Federal Parliament.  This 

was, of course of equal importance, but more of an administrative occasion that was less 

focused on the one specific day.  There was thus a series of parades, from the Monday 6 

May 1901 arrival of the vice-regal party, to the Thursday 9 May formal opening of 

Parliament, and even further parades through to Saturday 11 May.  Consequently, my 

methodology compressed the process into primarily an evaluation of the Monday parade 

through the city, but also included aspects of the other marches that also utilised the 

same established routes and arches. 

 

The Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York arrived at St Kilda Pier on 6 May 1901, 

and proceeded to the Princes Bridge for their formal welcoming by the Lord Mayor of 

Melbourne before progressing through the city along the route that I would follow over 

a century later.
7
  Although the Governor General Lord Hopetoun returned to 

Government House and would not take part in any parade until the summoning of the 

new Federal Parliament, the other officials continued on for this very public march 

through the city.
8
  The Royal Party would again parade through the city to the formal 

opening of Parliament three days later, on 9 May, following a similar route and passing 

under most of the same arches, although in a different sequence, since the primary 

purpose was now to arrive at the Royal Exhibition Building for the actual formal 

ceremony.
9
  If this was not complicated enough, along with these previously mentioned 

events would be the other smaller parades and celebrations, including the Chinese 

Procession and Australian Stockmen Parade on the Tuesday.
10

  Even Sydney’s Daily 

Telegraph became confused, publishing the map of the initial Vice Regal and Citizen’s 

Parade as that for procession to the Exhibition Building opening of Parliament.
11

 

 

Whatever views may have been expressed at the time regarding Chinese immigration 

and those Chinese resident in Australia, it is worth noting that the formal program for 

the week long Melbourne celebrations included the Tuesday Chinese procession.
12

  

                                                 
7
 The Argus: 6 May 1901, p. 6. 

8
 The Age: 6 May 1901, p. 9. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 14. 
9
 The Age: 6 May 1901, p. 9. The Age: 9 May 1901, p. 7. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 5. 
10

 The Age: 6 May 1901, p. 9. 
11

 The Daily Telegraph: 7 May 1901, p. 8. 
12

 The Argus: 8 May 1901, p. 8. The Chinese Procession “Novel and picturesque display. If there is any 

virtue that can be laid at the doors of the Chinese, it is that responsible for first-class processions.” The 

Stockmen’s Procession. “An interesting exhibition. A piece of back-blocks life was set down in the city 



152 

 

Their part in the celebrations was listed in print along with that of the most Australian 

of icons, the Stockman’s parade.  With such a plethora of activities, one could at least 

claim that the arches and other decorations produced for the Melbourne festivities were 

not wasted.  For example, the Stockmen’s march began at 2:00pm on the afternoon of 7 

May, beginning at the William Street Law Courts, and proceeding in reverse of the 

other parades, to Collins, Spring Street and Parliament House, then Bourke and 

Swanston Street, ending at Government House.
13

  That same evening there was also a 

march of Fire Brigades commencing at 8:30pm on the eastern Parliament Hill along 

Gisborne Street from the Fire Headquarters, heading down Bourke Street and Swanston 

Street to Government House.
14

  

 

As was the case with Sydney, consideration was taken regarding the route of the 

primary parade, not only in the buildings passed but also time and distance to be 

traversed.   These had to be long enough for the parade to pass through the main centre 

of the city and provide the opportunity for as many members of the public as possible to 

view the proceedings, but not too long for the marchers themselves.  Early May is no 

longer the middle of summer, but daytime temperatures can still be quite high.
15

  The 

Monday parade through Melbourne from and to Government House was timed to run 

from 11:00am to 2:00pm, with the Vice-Regal party previously taking a little over an 

hour to travel the five and a half kilometres from St Kilda to Government House.   From 

there it was still one kilometre to Flinders Street Station, taking a further twelve 

minutes, and then five kilometres for the City march itself, returning to Princes Bridge 

after an estimated forty five minutes.  

 

As was the case with the Sydney footstepping, my timings also varied, since Melbourne 

now possessed the same level of restrictions posed by traffic lights, unclosed roads and 

far denser traffic.  A century after the event, the walk from Government House to 

Princes Bridge took at least fifteen minutes, while the route of the march within the city 

                                                                                                                                               
yesterday.  The Australian bushman was taken from his home amid the eucalypts and presented as 

faithfully and full as the exigencies of a procession would admit to the ‘poor little street-bred people’.”  
13

 The Age: 6 May 1901, p. 8. 
14

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 4. 
15

 The Age: 3 May 1901, p. 5.  Although both The Age and The Argus dedicated a large part of their 

newspaper columns to the organisation of the marches; routes, participants etc, there appeared to be very 

little coverage of the weather, once the events were underway. It was up to external press reports to 

confirm the positive hopes of the Victorian Government Astronomer.  Zeehan and Dundas Herald, The 

Charleville Times:  These were only some of the press outlets that described the weather on the day as 

magnificent, bright and fine.  However, according to the Bunbury Herald of 25 April 1901, the weather a 

fortnight earlier had been bad with high rainfall and even “heavy floods are the consequence.” 



153 

 

now extended out to fifty five minutes.  In this respect, the processions in the two cities 

actually mirrored one another.  Sydney’s celebration began with a parade through the 

city’s streets and was then followed by a long straight march to Centennial Park.  

Melbourne’s celebration began with an equally long straight march from St Kilda, to be 

then followed by a similarly distanced parade through the streets of the city.  

 

 

2.  ARRIVAL IN MELBOURNE 

 

The second half of my footstepping methodology analysing Australian attitudes to 

citizenship at the time of Federation therefore centred on retracing the Melbourne 

Federation parade held prior to the opening of Parliament.  Although there had been 

celebrations in Melbourne on the first of January 1901, the day that Federation was 

proclaimed in Australia, it was the formal opening of Federal Parliament on 9 May later 

that year which gave the southern city the rationale for its own major celebrations.  

Sydney may have had the initial festivities with the march to Centennial Park and the 

declaration that united the separate colonies into the one new nation, but it would be 

Melbourne that would play host to the new Federal Government; at least until a suitable 

site for a permanent capital city could be decided upon, and then constructed.
16

   

 

My initial footstepping was arranged for February 2009, so one important facet of the 

Melbourne parade was no longer going to correspond: the time of year and the season.  

However, in May 2011, I was again able to journey to Melbourne to retrace the route, 

this time at the corresponding time of year. As was the case with Sydney, this second 

evaluation would also include a further analysis of significant sites that were adjacent to 

the actual march route.  This initial research thus took take place at a very sobering time 

in Melbourne’s recent history.  I set off for Melbourne on Monday 16 February 2009, 

merely one week after Black Saturday, when the region north of the Victorian capital 

had been devastated, and the whole state traumatised, by the worst bushfires in the 

nation’s history.
17

  Although now aware of what I would be travelling into, the journey 

                                                 
16

 The Argus: 4 April 1908, p. 17. The Canberra Site. “In the Legislative Assembly, Colonel Ryrie asked 

the Premier (Mr Wade) whether, in the event of the Federal Government choosing Canberra as the capital 

site, he would be prepared to deal liberally in regard to the area of land required.”  Sunday Times: 28 

November 1909, p. 12. Yass-Canberra Capital Site. “The Federal Capital Territory Acceptance Bill has 

passed through all stages without amendment in the House of Representatives.” 
18

Australian Geographic: 9 August 2012 online database. Perfect storm led to Black Saturday bushfires 

“The Black Saturday bushfires, which swept across Victoria in February 2009, were the most devastating 



154 

 

had been planned prior to the outbreak of these fires.  Unlike the inter-state and inter-

colonial visitors a century earlier, I had the dubious benefit of being able to fly to the 

capital of the former colony of Victoria, and therefore had to book my expedition well 

in advance.   

 

Air travel really has two compensating advantages; it is the quickest way to traverse the 

vast distances that, a century ago, would have taken days, or even weeks, and modern 

day air travel has the significant advantage of cost.  While those of an earlier generation 

are able to look back nostalgically to the great post Second World War era of 

comfortable and efficient rail travel, the availability of even this mode of transport in 

1901 would have been more financially restrictive than air travel is today.  Geoffrey 

Blainey points out that in the late 1890s, for example, a train and coach trip from 

Adelaide to Birdsville on the Queensland, South Australia border would have cost the 

equivalent of one month’s wages for a skilled tradesman.
18

  An equivalent air trip today 

costs about two day’s wages, and a bus trip of equal distance, half that.  Henry 

Lawson’s poetic recollection of travelling by train from the Central West of NSW to 

Sydney, even in 1922,
19

 would have been a relatively rare and luxurious experience.
20

 

 

Have you seen the Bush by moonlight, from the train, go running by, 

Here a patch of glassy water, there a glimpse of mystic sky? 

Have you heard the still voice calling, yet so warm, and yet so cold: 

“I’m the Mother-Bush that bore you! Come to me when you are old.” 

 

However, the very fact that relatively fast reliable rail transport could now connect the 

very isolated colonial capital cities, and connect the political and cultural leaders of the 

colonies, meant that by 1901 political unity was also possible.  Anderson mentions the 

significance of transport and communications in establishing the physical parameters 

for the mental concept of a community to be created.
21

  In practical terms, one could 

argue that the Federation of Australia was only made possible through a modern rail 

network that would later be paralleled by the evolution of air travel.  While rail 

                                                                                                                                               
in Australia’s recorded history. They caused 173 fatalities, destroyed more than 2100 homes and 

decimated a number of townships, including Marysville and Kinglake 
18

 Geoffrey Blainey: A Land Half Won, p. 186. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 7. 
19

 Henry Lawson: A Fantasy of Man – Complete Works 1901-1922, Table of Contents, p. 6. 
20

 Henry Lawson: Poetical Works of Henry Lawson, p. 37. On the Night Train. 
21

 Benedict Anderson: Imagined Communities, pp. 22-25. 



155 

 

technology was available from early in the nineteenth century, it was not until the 1870s 

and 1880s that it would be utilised for mass transport.
22

  Similarly, air transport had 

been pioneered during the 1920s and 1930s, but only became available as an affordable 

and integrated system during the 1960s.
23

 

    

Since domestic air travel has ceased to be a financial luxury, the train traveller of the 

modern era is now left with only the luxury of time for reflection.  The famous rail 

journey taking George Orwell into the North of England in 1936 to essentially 

commence his literary career through footstepping the Lancashire coal villages gave 

cause for reflecting on the social conditions that he was to be reporting.  “The train bore 

me away through the monstrous scenery of slag-heaps, chimneys, piled scrap-iron, foul 

canals, paths of cindery mud criss-crossed by the prints of clogs.”
24

  It would thus be 

interesting to surmise the effect that the same isolated hours of refection and drafting 

during the rail journey back from Queensland, had on the effectiveness of Henry 

Parkes’s Tenterfield Oration delivered on the 24 October 1889.
25

 

 

The necessary ordering of the travelling public also tells something of changes in wider 

social expectations that have occurred since Federation.  Rail passengers in 1901 were 

divided by travelling class: either first, second or in the case of Victoria, third; perfectly 

mirroring the classical social classes: upper, middle and lower.
26

  The cost differential 

meant that travellers were accommodated in circumstances to which they would have 

been accustomed, with the added bonus that they would be travelling with folk of a 

similar background.  This caused disquiet to the democratic Henry Lawson.
27

 

 

 

                                                 
22

 Patsy Adam Smith: Romance of Australian Railways, 1973, Rigby Ltd, Adelaide, p. 127.  The miners 

leaving for Temora in 1880 would have been one of the first groups to have been able to take advantage 

of the expanding country rail network. 
23

 Jill White: Dupain’s Sydney, 1999, Chapter & Verse, Sydney, pp. 71-73.  Note the images of air travel 

in the 1950s when it was still culturally prestigious enough for women to dress up in hat and gloves for an 

airline journey. 
24

 George Orwell: The Road to Wigan Pier, pp. 14, 15. 
25

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 25 October 1889, p. 8.  
26

 Patsy Adam Smith: Romance of Australian Railways, p. 47. Or in the more egalitarian NSW system at 
least, first and second. 
27

 Henry Lawson: Poetical Works of Henry Lawson, p. 126. Second Class Wait Here.  This poem, written 

in 1899, not only describes the cultural norms of the time as they applied to the experience of rail travel, 

but also reveals a social radicalism that sought to practically expunge such class distinctions in a future 

Australia. ”And the second class were waiting in the days of serf and prince, and the second class are 

waiting – they’ve been waiting ever since.”  One wonders how the poem would have scanned if Lawson 

had to contend with the Victorian third class! 



156 

 

At suburban railway stations – you may see them as you pass –  

There are signboards on the platform saying “Wait here Second Class”; 

And to me the whirr and thunder and the cluck of running gear 

Seem to be for ever saying “Second Class wait here –  

Wait here Second Class,  

Second Class wait here.” 

Seem to be forever saying, saying “Second Class wait here.” 

 

By the 1960s, the nation appeared more socially egalitarian, with only two classes 

available Australia wide to both rail and air travellers: first and second; but still with the 

implication that, through cost, it was material quality and social position that made the 

distinction.  Now however, the two classes generally offered by air travel are listed as: 

business and economy.
28

  The new elites are businessmen with (supposedly) important 

work to do, rather than those with purely social eminence.
29

 

 

Rail transport was not only one of the determining factors driving Federation; it was 

also one resulting from national unity.  Western Australia was enticed into the 

Federation largely through the promise of a rail connection with the Eastern States, and 

eventually a direct line to Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
30

  After another half 

century of bickering, and the disruptive influence of depression and war, the final 

standard gauge link between Sydney and Melbourne was completed in 1962.
31

  The 

introduction of the modern overnight Southern Aurora train occurred just as affordable 

air travel was taking off, and this iconic train and her two sisters, the Victorian Spirit of 

Progress and the Inter-capital Daylight Express would enjoy a mere two decades of 

viable service.
32

   

 

                                                 
28

 The Argus: 31 March 1954, p. 6. Even by 1954, British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines and Qantas 

Empire Airways were boasting of offering “Two Classes of Travel to America and England! Luxury 1
st
 

Class and Economy Tourist Class.” 
29

 Qantas: Flying with Qantas travel home page online database: The International Business Class link 

still spends as much space promoting the greater legroom and in-flight entertainment as it does laptop 

ports and work tables. 
30

 Helen Irving: The Centenary Companion to Australian Federation, pp. 413-414. 
31

 Geoffrey Harry Fearnside: All Stations West, 1970, Haldane Publishing, Sydney, p. 145. 
32

 Rail Corporation of New South Wales Media Release: Southern Aurora celebrates 50 years of rail 

travel online database. In August 1983 the celebrity trains ceased, and were replaced by the more prosaic 

Countrylink XPT The eleven hour trip by rail could no longer compete with an hour and half by air, or 

with the far cheaper airfares.  The Sydney Morning Herald online database: 15 April 2012. “They built 

her [The Southern Aurora] for comfort, not speed, but she could still give the XPT a run for its money.” 



157 

 

It therefore seemed ironic to commence a significant historical evaluation and foot-

stepping expedition through old Melbourne town, by departing from the concrete, 

laminex and industrial carpeted Canberra Airport terminal.  I was also commencing my 

investigation of an event that took place over a century ago from the Federal Capital 

city of Canberra; a place that in 1901 was still a series of isolated sheep runs. 

Planning for a national capital had involved buying NSW support for the notion of a 

Federation in the first place.  Part of the incentive offered to NSW to lift the colony’s 

support for union was the offer of locating the new National Capital somewhere in 

southern NSW.  The site had to be more than 100 miles from Sydney, to prevent the 

nation’s city of origin from surreptitiously absorbing the new capital through the 

expected expansion of transportation available at the time.
 33

  

 

 The capital was also intended to be in the higher and cooler regions.  Federation fathers 

John Forrest and King O’Malley adhered to the prevailing notion that European 

Civilisation flourished only in cold climates, although O’Malley was quite prepared to 

place sensible limitations upon the degree of chill that European Civilisation actually 

required.  He recorded his preference for the Molonglo Valley over a southern Monaro 

that was “an Arctic zone where a man went to bed at night a flesh-and-blood human 

being and woke in the morning a glistening iceberg!”
34

  The final siting of Canberra 

meant that a rail connection had to be driven through from the main southern line at 

Goulburn, eventually going as far south as Cooma and Dalgety, with a spur from 

Queanbeyan to the national capital at Kingston.  Although Walter Burley Griffin’s plan 

for Canberra included an integrated rail system throughout the city,
35

 this never 

eventuated, and the rail connection to the outside world would always remain one track 

and fragile.
 36

   

                                                 
33

Commonwealth of Australia, ed. Cheryl Saunders: The Australian Constitution. Section 125, p. 118. 

“The seat of Government of the Commonwealth shall be determined by the Parliament…and shall be in 

the State of New South Wales, and be distant not less than one hundred miles from Sydney.” 
34

 Dorothy Catts: King O’Malley – man and statesman, 1938, Publicity Press, Sydney, p. 180. 
35

 The Canberra Times: 17 June 1947, p. 2.  Griffin Plan of Canberra under review to meet modern 

conditions. “The keys to the future Canberra plan are the lakes scheme and the city railway, and until the 

levels and route of the railway can be determined and the plans for the ornamental lakes on the Molonglo 

River revised, many aspects of Canberra development will remain indefinite.” 
36

 The Argus: 5 February 1927, p. 14.  Railway to Canberra, Route from Yass favoured.  By the beginning 

of 1927, a definite decision had been made for “the provision of direct railway communication between 

Canberra and the south.”  It was not until rail connections with Sydney and Melbourne were established 

that the Federal Parliament was able to move from Melbourne to Canberra. As with the later direct 

standard gauge connection between Sydney and Melbourne, the indispensable railway was only used by 

politicians for few decades before bowing to the inevitability of air transport.  Bede Nairn: James Scullin, 

Australian Dictionary of Biography, 1988, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne vol.11, p. 554.  

Initially, this link was vital, with parliamentarians utilising the line to Sydney and Melbourne; and the 



158 

 

 

No doubt the earlier spread of the suburban railways in both Melbourne and Sydney 

was greeted with the same mix of trepidation in the face of the new, and wonder at the 

possibilities now available to ordinary citizens.  One only has to look at the road maps 

for the inner suburbs of the two cities to see the devastation that must have occurred in 

the late 1800s as new rail alignments were pushed through closely knit residential 

communities.  Melbourne seems to have dealt with the problem with level crossings and 

boom gates,
37

 while in Sydney, the authorities merely demolished houses, butted the 

remaining streets up to the rail easements and then renamed one side, as though nothing 

had happened.
38

 

 

Once I had landed at Melbourne’s Tullamarine Airport, I then made my way into the 

city by fast and efficient taxi.  It is always amusing to reflect upon the rapidity with 

which attitudes to such developments in infrastructure adjust to the whims of personal 

interest.  Normally the sprawl of modern expressways, concrete bridges and overpasses 

can appear offensive and degrading to the scale of the city: like giant tapeworms 

aggressively pushing their way through the neat streets and houses of established 

suburbs.  However, when relying upon a quick, calm and inexpensive journey from the 

airport to the city centre, the ribbon of four lane roadway can suddenly seemed like a 

very progressive idea.   

 

After twenty minutes I arrived at my hotel: Punt Road apartments in Flinders Lane.  Not 

only would this location be close to the actual route of the Melbourne Federation 

parade, but is now one of the most atmospheric cosmopolitan locations in the whole 

CBD.
39

  Melbourne has, of course, undergone a similar inner city resurrection to that of 

Sydney, although perhaps with a richer streetscape pallet to begin with.  Up until the 

Federation era, both cities were centres of commerce and industry, but also the 

                                                                                                                                               
arrival of a newly elected Prime Minister, such as James Scullin on the 21 October 1929, was cause for 

the small station to be festooned with bunting. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 7. 
37

 UBD Australia: Melbourne Street Directory 2008, map 9.  Note the seven rail crossings on this one 

map for the northern suburban line in a little over two kilometres; from Parkville to the station named for 

the famous Labor firebrand, anti-conscriptionist and supporter of White Australia, Frank Anstey. 
38

 Gregory’s Publishing Company: Sydney Street Directory 2011, maps 373, 374.  Many examples still 

exist on the Western, Illawarra and Bankstown Lines. Note Council Street St Peters and John Street 

Newtown, which were originally the one road, and Marrickville and Sydenham Roads which originally 

both went through to Unwin’s Bridge Road.  
39

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 8. 



159 

 

residential and social hearts of their respective colonies.
40

  With the development of 

public transport, there followed three quarters of a century of movement away from the 

city centre to the newly evolved suburbs,
41

 and now, again as with Sydney, the cultural 

flow is in reverse. 

 

At the time of Federation this immediate district around Flinders Lane was a place of 

industry, business and work; certainly not a centre of relaxed indulgent food and 

fashion.  In 1901, the one short block contained various importing and manufacturing 

agents, including Cornelius Lister’s wine, coffee and spirit store at number 281.
42

  My 

own accommodation at 267-269 had been the wool warehouse of Brooks, McGlashan 

and McHarg at the time of the Federation march, and would itself spend most of the 

twentieth century as an integral part of the ‘Schmatte’ (Jewish) rag trade.
43

   

 

A little further along, at number 305, was the dealership for the Austral Cycle 

Company.
44

  With the development of the chain driven safety cycle in 1876, bicycling 

became the new high-tech mode of transport throughout the Western world, freeing 

working people from reliance upon limited public transport and the expensive to 

maintain horse.
45

  One could argue that much of modern society that developed at this 

time did so as a result of the freedom brought about by the bicycle; attending sporting 

events and even the development of trade unionism (particularly in country regions).
46

  

People were now able to find work further than one or two miles from home, leading to 

the evolution of industrial areas separated from residential districts.  Austral Cycles was 

also the promoter of the Austral Wheel Race; since 1887 one of Melbourne’s most 

                                                 
40

 The Argus: 26 January 1934. What the Census Showed, Outer Suburbs Grow, Fewer in Melbourne.  

“The census taken on June 30 1933 showed that there had been a great growth of population in some of 

the metropolitan municipalities since the census of 1921.”  Note the table showing the reduction in the 

population of Melbourne City from 187 261 in 1878 to 42 180 in 1911 while most suburban areas showed 

an increase in population.  
41

 John Archer: Building a Nation – a History of the Australian House, 1987, William Collins, Sydney, 

chapt. ‘Modern as Tomorrow’s Milk’ 1940-1960. 
42

 Sands and McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory 1901, p. 41. As was the case with 

Penfold’s wine store in the Queen Victoria Building in Sydney, this facility puts paid to some of the 

notions a lack of sophistication in the pre-1970s Australian diet. 
43

 National Trust of Australia (Victoria): Walking Melbourne, p. 37.  eMelbourne: The City Past & 

Present online database. Flinders Lane. 
44

 Sands and McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory 1901, p. 41. 
45

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 9. 
46

 Michael Cannon: Australia – a History in Photographs, 1983, Currey O’Neil Ross, Melbourne, p. 129.  

Gordon Cheers: Australia Through Time, 1993, Random House, Sydney, p. 80. “[The bicycle] seems 

destined to be a favourite vehicle not only for health…but as a safe and rapid means of locomotion.” 1884 

quote by D E McConnell, publisher of: Australian Etiquette, Or, The Rules and Usages of the Best 

Society in the Australasian Colonies. 



160 

 

notable sporting events and the oldest track cycle race in the world.
47

  By 1888 there 

were even races for women, with Miss Dot Morrell winning an inaugural event in 

Ashfield, Sydney.
48

   

 

Cycling had thus become both a relatively cheap and very effective form of 

transportation and it therefore seems pointed to note the lack of bicycles in both the 

Sydney and the Melbourne parades.  The more antiquated and formal horse drawn 

carriages were evident for dignitaries, while the mounted military personnel were also 

on horses.  Perhaps the raffish new contraption was not considered stately enough for 

such an august occasion, although there were cycle races included in the Federation’s 

accompanying sporting events.
49

   Authorities were, however, quick to warn those many 

bicycle riders amongst the spectators that they were under restrictions and not permitted 

in any street through which the parade was to pass. “Bicycle traffic became so 

troublesome both to the riders themselves and other in the streets that Chief 

Superintendent O’Callaghan issued a police order  directing sub-inspectors  to notify the 

men on duty today that bicycles come within the meaning  of the words “vehicles” used 

in the general instructions already made  known.”
50

 

 

What I also first noted about Melbourne was the width of the streets and the fact that so 

many people were taking advantage of the flat terrain to rediscover bicycles as an 

efficient means of travelling into the city.
51

  It was interesting to see the degree to which 

the new and exciting personal transport of a century ago was returning to the city, again 

providing quick and effective everyday commuting; granted that these cyclists would 

possibly come from the better off inner areas of Melbourne and had the advantage of 

public transport when the weather turned inclement.
52

  The wide streets that allowed for 

the retention of trams in the city has allowed for the establishment cycle ways between 

tram tracks and the footpath.  This strikes the newly arrived visitor as a potential source 

                                                 
47

 The Argus: 20 December 1946, p. 12.  Austral Wheelrace: The Austral Wheelrace online database. 
48

 Australian Almanac: November 8 1878-1892. “The Austral track race was started in Melbourne in 

1886 as an amateur event with a grand piano as first prize, but four years later it became a cash race.  The 

world’s first women’s race, a two mile title event at Ashfield, Sydney, in 1888, was won by Miss Dot 

Morrell.” 
49

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 1 January 1901, p. 3. “Grand cycling and athletic carnival for next 

Friday.” 
50

 The Age: 6 May 1901, p. 8. 
51

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 9.  
52

 It also seemed that the fashion was now for single gear or even fixed gear track racing frames with road 

wheels and brakes, perhaps reflecting a minimalist reaction to the ever increasing complexity of modern 

road racing cycles.   



161 

 

of accidents, although both cyclists and tram drivers appear more than skilful in 

rendering this a non-issue. 

 

One only has to read through a guide to the city of Melbourne published in 1956, half a 

century earlier, to discover quite a different Flinders Lane at its lowest ebb of cultural 

abandonment.  At the time of the great post Second World War migrant boom and the 

move to suburbia, W H Newnham found “Flinders Lane at this point is like an old page 

of the city’s history. On a cold wet morning it looks little different to the prints of the 

same place a hundred years ago, with grim-faced bluestone buildings huddling together 

on either side of the narrow thoroughfare.”
53

  With the demise of the clothing industry 

and its industrial warehousing, Flinders Lane has now joined many of Melbourne’s 

other little streets and opened up with cafes, restaurants and clubs.  Fortunately, the 

bluestone structures have proven sound enough to be adapted rather than demolished, 

and citizens now continue to demonstrate their architectural preferences by flocking to 

the district for food and socialising.
54

    

 

 

3.  FIRES IN VICTORIA 

 

Despite my personal preference for dated rail transportation, in this particular instance 

there was an advantage of sorts in flying over country Victoria to Melbourne.  Looking 

down from on high I was able to view the result of what had become the most 

destructive (certainly in human terms) natural disaster in Australia’s history.
55

  The 

February 2009 fires that ravaged the Victorian bush north east of Melbourne had 

resulted in the deaths of 173 people.
56

 

 

A week earlier, the ongoing national drought that had been cutting into the nation for 

years, came to a head with Black Saturday, 7 February 2009 recording one the highest 

                                                 
53

 W H Newnham: Melbourne – the Biography of a City, 1956, F W Cheshire Angus & Robertson, 

Melbourne, p. 54. 
54

 National Trust of Australia (Victoria): Walking Melbourne, 2008, National Trust of Australia, 

Melbourne, p. 37. 
55

 The number of civil disasters in Australia’s period of white settlement has been relatively low, 

compared with shipwrecks during the days of sail and the wars that have affected other nations in the 

world.  For this reason bushfires, floods and cyclones are more likely to stand out in the nation’s history. 
56

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 11. 



162 

 

all-time temperatures in Melbourne’s history: 46.4°C,
57

  and the country to the north 

east of the city exploding into flames.  From 7 to 14 February, more people would die 

than in Cyclone Tracy and the Gundagai flood combined,
58

 and over four and a half 

thousand square kilometres would be lost to fires that were believed to have been 

caused by heat, arcing power lines and arson.
59

 

 

By the time of my flight on Monday 16 February, the bushfires of a week earlier had 

died down.  But the grey haze remained and plumes of smoke rising from the dark 

maroon burned bushland showed that the battle against the elements had not ended.  

What was bizarre looking down from the aircraft was the realisation of just how 

difficult it was to appreciate the level of devastation.  The whole nation had been 

drought affected for so long that it was quite hard to distinguish areas that had been 

burned from those that were simply dry and dead from lack of water.  The smouldering 

smoke and grey powdery patches where buildings had once stood marked the path of 

the fires but the destruction that had been shown on television every evening during the 

previous week appeared eerily muted from the air.  I therefore arrived in a very sombre 

city.  While Melbourne itself was not marked by fire, or even really threatened, the 

smoke still hanging over the airport reflected the sense of shock still hanging over the 

community.  Even my taxi driver still seemed stunned by the event, and talked about the 

fires in the halting subdued manner of one still coming to terms with an event that had 

touched him directly. 

 

By the time of Federation, Australians had become well used to the threat and reality of 

bushfires.  From the Black Thursday conflagration of 6 February 1851 that surrounded 

Melbourne to the east and north,
60

 there had been a steady list of ‘black days’ that 

marked the late summer fire season.
61

  Artists had recognised the social and physical 

                                                 
57

 Black Saturday Bushfires: Australian Standards HB 330 Living in bushfire-prone areas online 

database. 
58

 The Sydney morning Herald: 27 June 1902, p. 5. Fiftieth anniversary of the flood, when “81 of the 

inhabitants were drowned.” Figures for the Gundagai flood vary from 80 to over 100 due to the transient 

nature of the population resident in the town at the time.  The Canberra Times: 11 January 1975, p. 7. 

Police deny death toll higher. The death toll of 49 for Cyclone Tracy was likewise disputed due again to 

the transient nature of the population. 
59

 The Age: 4 March 2010, Royal Commission Report. 
60

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 12. 
61

 The Argus: 28 August 1939, p. 4. Prevention of Bushfires. “New control plan by experts. Formation of 

a Ministry of Rural Fire Protection and Defence by bringing the Forests Commission of Victoria and bush 

fire brigades under one control was recommended by the conference of interstate forests authority chiefs 

in Melbourne on Saturday.”  



163 

 

significance of these disasters, from William Strutt’s depiction of this Black Thursday
62

 

to Charles Harpur’s poem “The Bush Fire” from his 1851 collection the “Wild Bee of 

Australia”.
63

 

 

When, with the dreams of Egremont, a strange 

And momently approaching roar began 

To mingle, and insinuate through them more 

And more of its own import – till a Fire 

Huge in imagination as the world…. 

On it came! 

Devouring with a lapping hungriness 

Whatever shrivelled in its scorching breath- 

A dreadful Apparition! such as Fear 

Conceives when dreaming of the front of Hell.  

 

Helen Irving mentions that even the delegates to the January 1898 Federation 

Convention were interrupted by the smoke from the bushfires that were surrounding 

Melbourne at the time.
64

  Through the subsequent century, there have been Black Friday 

in 1939, the Tasmanian Black Tuesday fires of 1967, the Ash Wednesday fires of 1983 

that destroyed much of the farming land in South Eastern Australia and the 1994 

Sydney fires that actually entered residential suburbs of the city, destroying houses and 

killing four people.  The 18 February 2003 Canberra bushfires brought the reality of the 

annual fire month home to even the residents of the national capital.
65

 

 

The traditional approach to taming the Australian environment has always been to enter 

virgin bushland and clear it for agriculture.  Fires that erupted occurred either during 

this clearing process, where they really were bushfires that were unstoppable due to the 

limited technology of the time, or grass fires that were fast travelling but relatively less 

                                                 
62

 James Gleeson: Colonial Painters 1788-1800, 1971, Lansdowne Press, Melbourne, p. 120. 
63

 Michael Ackland: Charles Harpur – Selected Poetry and Prose, 1986, Penguin Books, Melbourne, p. 

142. The Bush Fire 1851.  The poem was originally published in both The Age: 31 March 1851 and The 

Argus: 31 March 1851, p. 4. 
64

 Irving: The Centenary Companion to Australian Federation, 1999, Cambridge University Press, 

Melbourne  p. 368. “Melbourne’s weather was inordinately hot for almost the entire session, and at one 

point they could smell the smoke from the bushfires surrounding Melbourne.” 

Photograph Booklet vol.2 p. 12. 
65

 The Canberra Times: 19/20 January 2003, virtually the entire newspapers dedicated to the disaster. 



164 

 

damaging.
66

  Ironically, as I will mention later, one of the groups notably absent from 

most of the Federation celebrations were Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders.  The 

people who had inhabited the continent and managed the environment for millennia 

now had no place in the political and cultural future of the nation: those who perhaps 

had much to offer in teaching the later arrivals how to accommodate to the landscape 

and the environment were to be ignored.
67

  This may have been understandable (if still 

inexcusable) at the time of first settlement, but the process continued into the next 

century.  Geoffrey Blainey dedicated an entire chapter of his 1975 publication Triumph 

of the Nomads to firestick farming,
68

 and Bill Gammage’s recent publication The 

Biggest Estate on Earth – How Aborigines made Australia further explores how 

Aboriginal people consciously created an environment that white settlers incorrectly 

considered to have been natural.
69

  However, this Aboriginal familiarity with the 

landscape had rarely been acknowledged, although the survivors of the disastrous 1852 

Gundagai flood were forced to concede that they had been warned of impending doom 

by local Aboriginals.
70

 

 

White Australia’s relationship with the environment has thus been expressed through 

various myths.  Initially this was the myth of the rugged bushman setting out into the 

wilderness to clear his land; to control and civilise the country.
71

  This was romanticism 

in both senses of the word: the Romanticism embodied in Richard Holmes Footsteps
72

 

as a reaction against the logical scientism of the Enlightenment, but also an impractical 

romanticism that refused to face up to the reality of every day existence.  Since the 

                                                 
66

 The Gundagai Independent/Advocate: 19 December 1921. The Illabo Fire. “The fire at Illabo on 

Tuesday started in the middle of one of Mr Moroney’s cultivation paddocks…Mr Moroney lost 90 bags 

of wheat, 90 acres of beautiful standing crop of wheat and 80 acres of a lighter crop.  None of it was 

insured.”  But no lives were lost. 
67

 Grace Karskens: The Colony – a history of early Sydney, p. 36. Geoffrey Blainey: Triumph of the 

Nomads, chapt. 5. The Burning Continent. 
68

 Geoffrey Blainey: Triumph of the Nomads, chapt. 9.  Harvest of the Unploughed Plains. 
69

 Bill Gammage: The Biggest Estate on Earth – How Aborigines made Australia, p. 8.  Thomas Walker 

thought the [Omeo] valley ‘the prettiest piece of country I have seen since leaving the Murrimbidgee 

[sic], very thinly timbered, indeed in many parts clear, with here and there interspersed a few trees or a 

clump or a belt, the soil sound and good . . . the sward close . . . the whole being intersected by lagoons: it 

is quite like a gentleman’s park in England’. 
70

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 5 July 1852, p. 2.  The Gundagai Times…Advertiser: 30 June 1925, p. 2. 

A Memory of the Past, Floods at Gundagai. “Gundagai was originally built on the river flats, and was 

washed away in June 1852 when 72 people were drowned. Though warned in time few took advantage of 

it. Several lives were saved by an aboriginal named Yarrie in a small dark canoe.” Camperdown 

Chronicle: 9 October 1930, p. 6. “Yarrie, the blackfellow, or one of the sable heroes who saved many a 

settler from death on the occasion of the disastrous flood at Gundagai in the long ago.”  Cliff Butcher: 

Gundagai – a track winding back, 2002, A C Butcher, Canberra, p. 84. 
71

 John Rickard: Australia – a cultural history, p. 65.  “From one perspective, the function of the 

[Australian] myth was to idealise the men and women who confronted the environment.” 
72

 Richard Holmes: Footsteps – Adventures of a Romantic Biographer, part 3, Exiles. 



165 

 

1970s there has been a sea change in attitudes towards the bush and the mass clearings 

of the past.
73

  Along with an increase in the number of hobby farmers wishing to return 

to a way of life more in tune with the natural environment, but still of course close 

enough to take advantage of the cultural rewards of the cities, has come an increase in 

the risk of fire.
74

  Perhaps one effect of disasters such as the Victorian bushfires is to 

return the community back to a realisation of a social inter-connectedness that was well 

recognised by people at the time of Federation.  Recommendations from the inevitable 

inquests into these disasters have always included better warning, more support from 

government authorities and greater communal co-operation.
75

   

 

Even during the lead up to the celebrations for the Federation of the nation, there were 

fires raging throughout the Riverina.  The area from Gundagai and Wagga Wagga south 

to the Victorian border at Albury was ablaze, with crops also consumed by fires as far 

away as Parkes and Grenfell.  Sydney recorded the extreme temperature of 104ºF 

(40ºC) on 17 December 1900;
76

  fortunately to be punctuated by the same storms that 

then threatened the Federation celebrations.  Men, women and children were lost to the 

flames, with the individual suffering brought home to local Gundagai residents through 

The Daily Telegraph’s description of Mr Patrick James O’Donnell Jnr who was burned 

so badly as to require the local Dr Gabriel to “send to Sydney for a special nurse to 

watch his case, which is very serious”.
77

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                 
73

 John Archer: Building a Nation – a History of the Australian House, p. 230. 
74

 The Canberra Times: 12 November 1994 online database.  First-time hobby farmers sought. “Nine 

hectare Wamboin property for auction through Realty World Rural has all of the features eagerly sought 

after by first-time hobby farmers without the hefty price tag.” 
75

 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission: Final Report July 2010 online database. 

Note Recommendations 37, 38 and 39 centred on the management of undeveloped rural lots (in other 

words, hobby farms), and allowing State and Local Governments to limit the number and size of such 

lots, and Recommendation 63 centred around State and Local Government Organisational Structure and 

the ability of authorities to legislate the control of previously uncontrolled districts. Alessandro 

Antonello: Learning and Settling – An Environmental History of the Federation Drought in New South 

Wales, 1895-1903, pp. 109-124. 
76

 The Sydney Daily Telegraph: 18 December 1900, p. 6. 
77

 The Sydney Daily Telegraph: 19 December 1900, p. 8. 



166 

 

4.  ENTERING THE CITY 

 

As was the case with Sydney’s Federation parade, so too in Melbourne the climate 

played a significant role in the Federal Parliament celebrations of 1901.  Inclement 

weather was forecast for both these major events, with the Victorian Government 

Astronomer Mr Baracchi stating that prospects for fine weather for the march on 

Monday 6 May were not very promising.
78

  The final forecast on the day was for “light 

mist clearing during the day”.
79

 

 

Whatever views Australian governmental officials may have had towards Southern 

European immigrants at the time of Federation, this obviously did not affect their 

willingness to accept the opinions of the talented Pietro Baracchi.   While Italians may 

have appeared to have been in a precarious numerical position within the new society,
80

 

with an Australia wide population in 1901 of only 5,678,
81

  well-educated Northern 

Italians were still welcome enough to become respected members of the community.  It 

is also worth noting that, according to The Argus, it was British-Italian journalist 

George Augustus Sala who had actually christened the city ‘Marvellous Melbourne’ 

during his 1885 visit.
82

  

 

Pietro Baracchi, as with Thomas Fiaschi, had been born in Florence (in 1851) and 

trained as a civil engineer before emigrating, initially to New Zealand.  Finding work 

unavailable, Baracchi moved to Melbourne in 1876, where he joined (and was permitted 

to join) the Victorian Public Service.  By November 1877, Pietro was an assistant at the 

Melbourne observatory, and after moving back and forth between departments, gaining 

training and promotions along the way, was appointed acting government astronomer in 

1895.  Although not enamoured of his role as official weather forecaster, believing 

“popular meteorology to be of little practical value except as an amusement”,
83

  Pietro 

                                                 
78

 The Age: 3 May 1901, p. 5. 
79

 The Argus: 6 May 1901, p. 6. 
80

 The Argus: 4 May 1904, “A White Australia No Italians Wanted,” notably Italian labourers into 

Western Australia. 
81

 Australian Bureau of Statistics: Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia 1901-1907, No.1, 

p. 168.    
82

 The Argus: 31 August 1885, p. 7.   “So farewell Melbourne the Marvellous, city of towering 

warehouses, Parliament Houses…” 

The Age: 10 January 2004 online.  According to the British writer Matthew Arnold, “His style was 

overblown – and he pandered to the sensation-loving nature of the populace" - but Sala also seemed 

engagingly aware of his own pomposity. He tagged his articles with the initials, G.A.S.” 
83

 J L Perdrix: Pietro Paolo Giovanni Ernesto Baracchi (1851-1929), Australian Dictionary of Biography 

online database. 



167 

 

Baracchi continued to fulfil this role until after Federation.  He was then instrumental in 

turning meteorological functions over to the Commonwealth,
84

 and in fact inaugurated 

the Mount Stromlo observatory, just outside the recently established site for Canberra.
85

  

As with Thomas Fiaschi, Pietro Baracchi not only had a genius for science, but also for 

the organisational politics that enabled him to play a pivotal role in the professional 

associations of the time; becoming president of the Royal Society of Victoria in 1908.
86

   

 

So too in Melbourne, the position of non-British peoples and cultures was complex.  

The Honorary Secretary of the Citizens’ Committee actually organising the Melbourne 

Parade was one Douglas Buzolich,
87

 an influential member of Australia’s Croatian 

community
88

 and one of Melbourne’s principle dress hatters and business 

entrepreneurs.
89

  Other members of the committee of course still represented the 

traditional British base of the society, as their March 1901 meeting testified:  “The 

citizens’ demonstration committee met yesterday at the Town-hall.  The Mayor 

(Councillor Gillott) was in the chair, and there was a big attendance of committee men.  

The secretary (Mr D Buzolich JP) informing the committee that representatives of the 

Indian citizens of Melbourne had waited upon him with the request that they should be 

permitted to take part in the decorations of the city… Mr James McDougall and Mr 

Frank Stuart were proposed as vice-chairmen of the citizens’ committee.”
90

 

 

One of the most significant events arranged for “guests of the Government” was also a 

“Conversazione” held at 8:00pm on Tuesday 7 May at the Exhibition Building.
91

  This 

                                                 
84

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 17 December 1907, p. 4. 
85

 The Argus: 18 April 1923, p. 22. Solar Observatory Established at Canberra. “Approval has been given 

by the Federal Ministry of the establishment of a solar observatory at Mount Stromlo in the Federal 

capital to link up with existing institutions in England, India, America and certain European countries. 

The site for the observatory at Mount Stromlo was originally selected by Mr P Baracchi, formerly 

Victorian Government astronomer.” 
86

 J L Perdrix: Pietro Paolo Giovanni Ernesto Baracchi (1851-1929), Australian Dictionary of Biography 

online database. Ironically perhaps, although having married into one of the wealthiest families in 

Melbourne and leaving, on his death, an estate “valued for probate at £32,779, his only son Guido became 

a foundation member of the Communist Party of Australia.”  It was ever thus. 
87

 The Argus: numerous references through March and April 1901 to Buzolich’s organisation behind the 

Butter Arch, a proposed Swiss display and even the Chinese Arch and Parade. 
88

 Ilija Sutalo: Croatians in Australia, 2004 Wakefield Press, Adelaide, p. 168. Buzolich’s hats “Look 

well ahead.” It is worth noting that the Australian Year Book for 1901-1907, based on the 1901 Census 

did not list Croatians in its population statistics, but places them under Other European Countries, with a 

total of 434 persons listed on p. 168. 
89

 The Argus: 20 June 1896, p. 3.  Advertisement for D Buzolich’s Strand Hat Shop at 23 Swanston 

Street, next to the entry to Flinders Lane.  Sands & McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 

1901, p. 65. 
90

 The Argus: 12 March 1901.  Meeting of the Citizens’ Committee.  
91

 The Age: 4 May 1901, p. 11. 



168 

 

event was so popular that, “special provision has been made to prevent crushing at the 

Conversazione and Thursday’s State concert, and it is said that no more will be admitted 

to the building than can be comfortably accommodated.”
92

  It would appear that exotic 

Southern European sophistication, both politically and culturally, was as popular at the 

time as the customary French.
93

   

 

Then, as now however, not even a sophisticated Italian was willing to forecast more 

than thirty-six hours in advance just what the weather would do.
94

  “But against this 

gloomy forecast Mr Baracchi budged a bit. ‘At the present time,’ he said, ‘it is quite 

impossible for anyone to say exactly what the weather will be like next week’.”
95

  In the 

event, conditions proved perfect, and as was the case with the earlier Federation march 

through the streets of Sydney, the new nation’s government was inaugurated in fine 

balmy weather. 

 

If there was any question as to the popularity of the proceedings, one only has to again 

look through the newspapers of the morning of the march.
 96

  Earlier, the Prime Minister 

Edmund Barton had been forced to close invitations for the later formal Commonwealth 

functions, despite still receiving between 1,200 and 1,500 applications daily.
97

  The Age 

also published a full list of all those invited to take part in the various ceremonies 

throughout the whole week.  This list took up virtually all of page 10 of the 6 May 1901 

issue, covering not only thousands of people from all six states, but representatives from 

Fiji, Canada, India and Ceylon, and Cape Colony.
98

 

 

The morning after my arrival, most of the bushfire smoke had dissipated and the same 

crisp late summer air greeted my commencement of the parade route on the Princes 

                                                 
92

 The Age: 6 May 1901, p. 8. 
93

 The Argus: 7 May 1901, p. 11.  “His Royal Highness will hold a levee at Government House, 

Melbourne today at 11am.”  Brian M Fagan: The Adventure of Archaeology, 1985, The National 

Geographic Society, Washington, pp. 81, 173.  “The turning point came in 1860 when Ling Victor 

Emanuel II ascended the Italian throne.  Fired by the glorious Roman past, he encouraged excavations at 

Pompeii as a matter of national prestige.” The unification of Italy gave added impetus to the excavation of 

not only Pompeii. In March 1900, Arthur Evans began his excavations of Knossos in Crete. Just as the 

Greek war of independence of 1821-1830 expanded classical studies and the concepts of democracy that 

had arisen in the American and French Revolutions, so the later unification of Italy gave inspiration to a 

later generation of Latin scholars. 
94

 The Age: 6 May 1901, p. 9. 
95

 The Age: 3 May 1901, p. 5. 
96

 The Argus: 6 May 1901, p. 7.  This page provides multiple, and rather confusing, guides for most of the 

various marches and supplementary events, including the viewing of the evening illuminations.  All these 

cover much the same city blocks but in a variety of orders. 
97

 The Age: 1 May 1901, p. 8. 
98

 The Age: 6 May 1901, p. 10. 



169 

 

Bridge where St Kilda Road becomes Swanston Street.
99

  This was the point where the 

march changed from a journey from the Vice-Regal landing at St Kilda to a celebratory 

parade through the city, so this was the point where the first of the city arches was 

located.
100

   The length and timing of the march appeared planned to give maximum 

coverage for all the participants while remaining short enough for both the marchers’ 

physical exertion and no doubt the viewers’ patience.  The Melbourne march travelled a 

total distance of a little under three miles or around five kilometres.  At an average 

walking pace of six kilometres per hour, this would have given a marching time of 

under one hour.  However, as with the parade in Sydney the actual time was a little 

longer than this, needing to accommodate the expected participant length of two 

thousand yards, a little less than two kilometres.  The massive size of the parade can be 

imaged by the number of marchers taking up over one third of the march distance 

through the city at any one time.
101

  

 

The first arch passed under as the Federation Parade entered the Melbourne was the 

Municipal Arch, a structure obviously meant to be an impressive introduction to the 

march and the city.
102

  As was the case with the Commonwealth Arch in Sydney, the 

primary structure in Melbourne was very traditional, classical and sited in the most 

significant location in the city, in this case, the southern end of Princes Bridge. As also 

with the arch in Sydney, the intention was to replicate the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and 

the similarity between the two arches was striking.  Both were of impressive size of 

course, with the Municipal Arch’s width of 27m slightly larger than the Commonwealth 

Arch’s 21m, and with heights of 18m and 15m respectively.
103

  Both also reflected an 

assumed classical ideal in eschewing colour and relying upon a stark whiteness and the 

complexity of the mouldings and the structure itself to provide a suitably ornate 

façade.
104

   The symbolism of the included motifs, although described by The Age as 

                                                 
99

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 14. 
100

 The Argus: 6 May 1901, p. 6. The initial welcoming of the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York 

by Governor General Lord Hopetoun and Lieutenant Governor Sir John Madden occurred at 1:50pm at St 

Kilda Pier with a twenty one gun salute, followed by a 2:00pm start to the parade.  The vice-regal party 

formally arrival at Princes Bridge at 2:30pm and while the royal party then continued into the city for the 

principal public parade, the Governor General retired to Government House in preparation for the 

evening’s events. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 16. 
101

  The Age: 6 May 1901, pp. 8-10.  Numbers can be gauged by the fact that the list of all participants 

took up a full page of small print in The Age.  There were also seven hundred constables and twelve 

thousand soldiers on duty to control the crowds. 
102

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 15. 
103

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, pp. 42, 70. 
104

 The Argus: 6 May 1901, p. 10.  



170 

 

“perfect in conception”, and including “nothing superfluous, nothing without 

meaning”,
105

 appears to have been rather predictable, with the usual flags, crown and 

lion’s head to represent empire, and ship’s prow symbolising both the location over the 

Yarra River and the Duke of Cornwall’s naval connections.  The designer, Harold 

Desbrowe-Annear, was well known in Melbourne as an architect in the Classical 

Beaux-Arts tradition, having been responsible for the well-known Springthorpe 

Memorial in Kew Cemetery a year earlier.
106

 

 

As with most of the arches in both Sydney and Melbourne, the often ornate symbolism 

behind their decoration would have been of considerable importance during their 

planning and construction.  The degree to which this symbolism was then evident, either 

consciously or even subliminally, when viewed by the participants and spectators 

during the actual parades themselves, would have been a moot point.  In the case of this 

particular arch, the degree of planning did not extend to agreement on a formal 

nomenclature.  The entrance arch was referred to at various times as the Federation 

Arch, the Municipal Arch and Corporation Arch,
107

 reflecting both civic and 

commercial obligations to the city.  If some of the obscure imagery was lost on the 

populace, the two tablets over the side arches made the sentiment clear; “The city hails 

her Monarch’s Son” and “The Wattle Greets the Rose of York”.
108

  Certainly the most 

notable feature was the motto emblazoned across the top of the arch:  Vires Acquirit 

Eundo (She gains strength as she goes).   This quotation from Virgil’s Aeneid was taken 

from the coat of arms of Melbourne, although apparently the words would not be 

formally adopted by the city until 1940.
109

 

 

This most classical arch also reflected the most up to date technology in construction, 

with a modern rubberoid solution covering, rather than relying on traditional plaster.
110

  

This material was exploited by Desbrowe-Annear engineer Adrian Charles Mountain 

since, unlike the Sydney Arch commemorating the actual Federation of the nation, this 

structure was intended to survive for a year or more as a reminder of Melbourne’s role 

                                                 
105

 The Age: 7 May 1901, supplement. 
106

 Apperly, Irving, Reynolds: A Pictorial Guide to Identifying Australian Architecture, pp. 100, 101. 
107

 The Argus: 7 May 1901, p. 10. 
108

 The Argus: 7 May 1901, p. 10. 
109

 The Age: 1 September 1936, p. 10. “The Melbourne City Council yesterday authorised an application 

to the College of Arms, London for the registration, at an estimated cost of £150, of the coat of arms of 

the city, in accordance with the following description, conforming with heraldic standards. The motto 

(Vires Acquirit, Eundo) on a scroll of three folds tinted crimson.” 
110

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 71. 



171 

 

in the celebrations.
111

  Hence, the massive width was therefore intended to 

accommodate the daily traffic requirements across Princes Bridge.  The drawing in The 

Argus prior to the parade shows the crowd of everyday horse drawn traffic that could 

easily pass under the structure.
112

  The drawing also includes the long colonnade; the 

“Belvedere” of five pairs of temporary columns placed over the bridge and the two 

Railway Towers
113

 adjacent to Flinders Street.
114

  As with the arch, these columns were 

meant to remain as a semi-permanent fixture for some time.  However, a strong wind 

exactly one month after the celebrations knocked over some of the columns, requiring 

the others to be removed for safety.
115

 

 

In 2001, to commemorate this very temporary original arch, the Melbourne City 

Council decided to erect another temporary monument on the same site for the 

Centenary of Federation celebrations.  The two hundred thousand dollar Peter Sandow 

designed edifice shown in the Photograph Booklet was quickly christened the “pick-up 

sticks”,
116

  perhaps indicative of the fact that the architect’s proposal for “the structure 

to symbolise Melbourne’s chaotic intermingling of cultures”,
117

 failed to communicate 

this ideal to the general population.  Upon eventual dismantling after the Centenary 

celebrations, the coloured metal tubes were purchased by Hume Council, with local 

councillor Jack Ogilvie’s stated preference being, to have the sticks cut up and 

distributed to school children as a souvenir.
 118

   

 

As with earlier discussions over the suitability of a permanent Federation Arch in 

Sydney, the fate of both the original Commonwealth Arch and its 2001 centenary 

replacement seems to embody a particularly Australian attitude to commemoration and 

cultural memory.  The pile of coloured pipes consigned to a council yard in outer 

Melbourne had been pre-empted a year earlier with the large welcoming rings for the 

                                                 
111

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 71. 
112

 The Argus: 6 May 1901, p. 7. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 17. 
113

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 19. 
114

 The Argus: 6 May 1901, p. 7 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 20. 
115

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 73. 
116

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 17. 
117

 Sunbury Leader News: 19 February 2008 online database. An Arch Blunder, Sticky end for Federation 
Arch of triumph.  I suspect that for most Melburnians who actually live within migrant communities, their 

cultures may seem to be intermingling, but probably do not feel nearly as chaotic as they would appear to 

a “creative” outsider. 
118

 Herald Sun: 21 February 2008 online database. This certainly strikes one as a very tangible form of 

commemoration for future generations, and a far better alternative than their current fate languishing and 

fading away in the Council’s Sunbury storage yard. 



172 

 

2000 Sydney Olympics.
119

  Although at least not broken apart, this culturally significant 

icon of “The Best Olympic Games Ever”
120

 now adorns the entry to the St  

Peters Recycling Depot (adjacent to the former Tempe Tip) in the industrial heart of the 

harbour city.
121

 

 

At least recognition of the significance of its architectural heritage has resulted in the 

Princes Bridge itself being recently restored,
122

  although at the time of the Federation 

parade, this would have been quite a new structure, having only been completed in 

1888.
123

  The well-known accompanying Flinders Street Railway station entrance was 

also about to be upgraded at the time of the march.  What has remained the primary 

transport junction of Melbourne, the intersection of Flinders and Swanston Streets, then 

as now, encapsulated much of Melbourne, and even Australian society.  On the south 

eastern corner stands the major entry to the expanding public transport hub of the city, 

with the lighter gauge trams terminating noisily out the front.
124

  On the adjacent corner 

stands Young and Jackson’s, one of the best known hotels in the city, although now 

without the protective awning that would no doubt have caused physical damage to 

modern high delivery trucks and vans.  Opposite, on the north west corner, rests St 

Paul’s cathedral, still the principal establishment church of the city, now facing 

Federation Square, a conscious, and one might say self-conscious, attempt to create an 

aura of the “modern” in the city.   

 

Looking back from Federation Square across to the spires of St Paul’s Cathedral, the 

pre-eminence of the Christian Church and its influence one hundred years ago is again 

apparent.
125

  As with the march in Sydney, there would not have been a conscious 

decision to pass as many churches and places of worship as possible.  It was just that 

churches held such a central position in the society that their location safeguarded so 

many of the significant sites in the cities.
126

  St Paul’s was also indicative of the boom 

and bust nature of Melbourne’s growth during the first half a century of its existence.
127

  

                                                 
119

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 18. 
120

 Australian Broadcasting Commission Coverage of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games online database. 
121

 Marrickville Council: St Peters – Tempe Local Area Traffic Management Scheme online database. 
122

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 16. 
123

 National Trust of Australia (Victoria): Walking Melbourne, p. 13. 
124

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 20. 
125

 UBD Australia: UBD Melbourne Street Map 2008, map 2.  Even on a map, the mass of St Pauls, 

Flinders’ Street Station and Federation Square are evident. Towers such as the ANZ and Sofitel on the top 

of Collins Street may dominate vertically, but the more public sites’ footprints still control the ground.  
126

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, pp. 29, 31. 
127

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 21. 



173 

 

The site of the first official Anglican Church service in Melbourne in 1836, St Paul’s 

was designed in 1878 by architect William Butterfield, in absentia, in England.
128

  The 

impressive Gothic Revival exterior and luxurious tiled and stained glass interior by 

London’s Clayton and Bell were all planned on the other side of the world and 

constructed during the height of the boom of the 1880s.  However, by the time of its 

consecration in 1891 the good times were over, and it would take another forty years 

before the two front spires and the substantial main Moorhouse spire could afford to be 

erected.
129

  As mentioned, these were then faced with the same Sydney Hawkesbury 

sandstone that would later be used to complete Sydney’s St Mary’s Cathedral spires in 

time for the Centenary of Federation.
130

 

 

As previously mentioned, there seemed to have been many adapted overseas 

architectural designs at the time, no doubt intended to keep pace with the rapid rate of 

city expansion.  The current Flinders Street Railway Station that has long been such a 

focal point for the city had been planned in 1899, but was not completed until 1910, 

well after the Federation celebrations.  Although partially constructed by James W 

Fawcett, the designer of the two Railway Towers, one of Melbourne’s urban myths is 

that the original design was actually intended for the Bombay Railway Station, but got 

mixed up in the post.
131

  This is perhaps explained by, to borrow the words of Marc 

Fiddian, “the architectural features designed by Fawcett and Ashworth that had 

convinced the judges were the non-angular concept for the main corner entrance and the 

building’s striking resemblance to the Taj Mahal.”
132

  

 

The fourth corner of the intersection provides the most interesting interpretation of the 

new Melbourne, as distinct from the old.  At the time of Federation, this eastern side of 

Swanston Street between the River Yarra and Flinders Street was largely open to the 

sky.  Photographs of the time show the suburban rail lines to the eastern suburbs passing 

                                                 
128

 W H Newnham: Melbourne – the Biography of a City, p. 80.  “The architect, William Butterfield, who 

was a gothic and Early English enthusiast and had built Keble College Oxford, never visited Australia.”  

The adoption of his design was no doubt aided by the cathedral being built on the flat plain of central 

Melbourne, thus not requiring elevations to accommodate variations in slope. 
129

 W H Newnham: Melbourne – the Biography of a City, p. 80. 
130

 W H Newnham: Melbourne – the Biography of a City, p. 81. 
131

 National Trust of Australia (Victoria): Walking Melbourne, p. 13. 
132

 Marc Fiddian: Flinders St Station – Melbourne’s Taj Mahal, 2003, Galaxy Print, Melbourne, 

Australia.  W H Newnham: Melbourne Sketchbook, p. 36.  “Plans were delayed with the bursting of the 

land boom, but by 1900 the ‘respectable square building of yellow brick’, a fruit market, was pulled down 

to make way for the station in French Renaissance style.” 



174 

 

under the roadway and then out into the open shunting yards.
133

  Alongside this was the 

riverbank of the Yarra with the lawns and pathways that still exist today, while behind 

the Yarra foreshores stood the old Princes Bridge Railway Station.
134

   

 

Swanston Street, effectively the roadway overpass over the railway, did contain some 

structures on the eastern side in 1901.  There were tea shops and a refreshment room to 

cater to the needs of the travelling public in an era less frenetic than today.  These 

suburban railway refreshment rooms and bars still existed until the 1960s, particularly at 

large stations where travellers would need to wait for connecting trains and trams to 

complete their journeys.
135

   In Melbourne, the open rail track and yards between the 

refreshment rooms and the river had been considered a visual blight from the 

beginning.
136

  However, the fact that proposals dating back to the 1860s and 1920s had 

come to nothing would indicate that, at the time, people were happy to have such a wide 

expansive vision of their modern transport network.   That the area had only been 

covered by two supposedly hideous Gas and Fuel Corporation Towers from the 1960s 

and the currently questionable Federation Square precinct indicates a city still not sure 

what to do with the site.
 137

  While a frenetic zone that no doubt appeals to the 

sensibilities of the modern young, the initial website entry for Federation Square centres 

on its “alleged ugliness”, with a randomly selected 64% of Melburnians agreeing that, 

“yes, it is an eyesore”.
138

  This all seems to confirm that the city’s ability to create civic 

spectacle has done anything but improve over the course of the last century. As the 

photographs show, there also appears to be little within the precinct that actually relates 

back to the Federation of the nation itself, in either intentional symbolism or graphic 

text.
139

 

                                                 
133

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 21. 
134

 Robert Lee: The Railways of Victoria 1854-2004, pp. 20, 192.  Although apparently long existing on 

the point of closure, this elegant but isolated anachronism was finally demolished in the 1980s for the 

new underground loop. 
135

 Anne-Maree Whitaker: Pictorial History of Marrickville, 2006, Kingsclear Books, Sydney, p. 60. 

There were, for example, refreshment rooms above the very industrial Sydenham and Newtown Railway 

Stations in Sydney during the 1950s and 1960s, where a working class matron in her best hat and gloves 

could take a glass of wine or a cup of espresso coffee while waiting for a connecting train.  This was the 

era when the inner suburbs of both cities were assimilating large numbers of Southern European migrants 

and such institutions often reflected this growing multiculturalism. 
136

 National Trust of Australia (Victoria): Walking Melbourne, p. 15. 
137

 National Trust of Australia (Victoria): Walking Melbourne, p. 15. 
138

 Bates Smart Architects: Federation Square, Melbourne online database. 
139

 As with the old coastal houses in Sydney, the result of allowing a four hundred metre by one hundred 

metre square of railway yards taking up such a prime and potentially attractive site alongside the Yarra 

River harks back to an era that appears to be at variance with the sensibilities of today.  While there were 

valid reasons in the past as to why certain locations were not fashionable: sewerage outfalls, and the need 

for transport links close to the city centre; geographical sensibility still appears to remain questionable.   



175 

 

5.  SETTLEMENT AND PLANNING 

 

No doubt as a result of being a consciously formally planned environment, the central 

city of Melbourne, even today, is defined by abrupt and noticeable boundaries.
140

   The 

footstepper arriving from the south, north or east through parkland and open space, 

crosses over one road or one bridge and suddenly finds themselves in the middle of the 

bustling metropolis.  Looking back towards Melbourne city from St Kilda Road, it does 

seem easy to appreciate the degree to which there would have been a strong sensation of 

formal entry into the civilising city in 1901.
141

  Although the western side of the road is 

now filled with the Southbank redevelopments, the eastern grassy fields and the tree 

lined road still gives a very distinct sense of country parkland.  Even institutions that 

exist on the periphery: the Trades Hall to the north in Carlton and St Patrick’s Cathedral 

on the eastern hill behind Parliament House, appear to be consciously sited on the edge 

of this very formalised space.  Public transport routes themselves emphasise these 

boundaries, with both the recently constructed underground rail loop and the free city 

tram service marking out the Flinders Street, Spring Street, La Trobe Street and Spencer 

Street margins. 

 

The city of Sydney, by comparison, grew slowly over the course of a century, and as a 

result still dissipates gradually into the surrounding districts.  Walking into the older 

settlement from the inner suburbs along Parramatta Road, Elizabeth Street or Oxford 

Street, the footstepper notices businesses and shops slowly growing denser, but it is 

difficult to determine just where the city begins.
142

  Although partially surrounded by 

the harbour, there is a fluidity in the physical environment that could be said to reflect 

the political and cultural environment as well.  That the huge department stores such as 

Mark Foy’s, Anthony Hordern’s and Grace Brothers have gradually found themselves 

                                                                                                                                               
Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 22. 
140

 The Argus: 10 August 1926, p. 16.  Town-planning, Melbourne’s Urgent Needs. “City planning 

demands good citizenship from every point of view. We cannot say that the citizens of Melbourne possess 

sufficient civic pride…Melbourne, however, had outgrown its original plan.” 
141

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 14. 
142

 Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Melbourne Compact Street Directory 1993, maps 1, 2. 

Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Sydney Street Directory 1988, maps 169, 170.  The two 

directories that I have used for my location maps clearly indicate this contrast.  Melbourne’s CBD is 

patently obvious, while one could ask where Sydney’s actually does begin. Coming in from the west 

locations such as the University of Sydney, the City Road junction and Railway Square all indicate that 

one is entering the CBD of the city, but the process builds over a distance of more than a kilometre.  

Entering from the east, the walker also experiences a gradualness from Kings Cross and Taylor Square to 

Hyde Park. 



176 

 

isolated beyond the new fringes as the perceived boundaries of the city imperceptibly 

change over the course of decades clearly demonstrates this. 

 

Also unlike Sydney with its rocky sandstone hills and valleys, the site of Melbourne 

was a floodplain, or series of floodplains on the side of the Yarra River, contained by 

milder rises.  Apparently the aboriginal term “Yarra Yarra” meant “flowing flowing”; a 

nomenclature that many modern Melburnians would probably consider singularly 

inappropriate.
143

  Eastwood’s 1840 map and Whittock’s 1854 sketch, both looking north 

across the city centre from the southern bank of the Yarra demonstrate the flatness and 

balance either side of Swanston Street that would determine the route of the Federation 

parade.
144

  The shallow gully and watercourse of the Townend Stream from Lake 

Cashmore down the middle of Elizabeth and Queen Streets flowed into the Yarra just 

above the point where the flowing fresh water river became tidal.  This feature would 

continue to affect the geography of the city through to modern times, with the 

construction of storm water drains unable to prevent flooding of the Central Business 

District in even 1891 prior to Federation,
145

 and as recently as 1972.
146

 

 

In 1837 Robert Hoddle began to lay out the town in preparation for the sale of land, 

significantly, by altering Governor Darling’s original measurements for urban blocks 

that were being implemented throughout the towns and cities of the nation.  Instead of 5 

chains, or 330 feet (100.5m) for the grid, he adopted a 4¾ chains or 313 feet (95.5m) 

grid to allow for both wider 99 feet (30m) roads and 33 feet (10m) lanes.
147

  Each block 

was thus divided by a central east west laneway system: the foundation of Melbourne’s 

“little” streets.
148

   It is remarkable the degree of forward planning shown at the time by 

                                                 
143

 W H Newnham: Melbourne – the Biography of a City, p. 114. 
144

 Jill Eastwood: Melbourne – The Growth of a Metropolis, 1983, Thomas Nelson Australia, Melbourne 

pp. 15, 29. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 24. 
145

 The Argus: 14 July 1891, pp. 5-6. The Flood in Melbourne, Further Loss of Life, Immense Destruction 

of Property, Thousands of Persons Homeless. The Argus of the day dedicated two whole pages to the 

disastrous flood that appeared in this case to have been caused by the rising of the Yarra River due to 

“phenomenal rainfall”, rather than by flooding of the old Elizabeth Street water course.  
146

 The Age: 2 September 2003 online database.  Melbourne: city of woes. “Melbourne is not generally 

considered a city with a history of disasters, but James Norman found that Fire and Flood in the Heart of 

Melbourne, a photography exhibition opening on Friday, reveals the city has a formidable history of 

catastrophe. From the great floods of 1891 and flash flooding of the CBD as recently as 1972, to raging 

fires that reduced inner-city blocks to rubble, there are many stories of devastation.”  Michael Cannon: 

Australia – a History in Photographs, p. 99. 
147

 Sheridan Morris: Melbourne Past and Present, 2008, Axiom Publishing, Adelaide, p. 13. 
148

 The Argus: 22 April 1936, p. 9.  Widening ‘Little’ Streets.  “The Lord Mayor Councillor A G Wales 

has revived the suggestion that the City Council should try to institute means of enforcing the gradual 

widening of Melbourne’s “little” streets.”  As with Melbourne’s apparently enduring trams, the survival 



177 

 

administrators such as Governors Darling and Bourke and planners such as Robert 

Hoddle and his predecessor Robert Russell.  Admittedly, they were starting with a clean 

slate, and with the lessons before them of both European cities and the half century of 

non-existent planning that had already resulted in the congestion of Sydney.  While the 

choice of actual site would fate the city to the risk of future flood, in terms of planning, 

this gently undulating landform between rising hills meant that Darling’s civic ideals 

could be implemented by Hoddle without the Sydney restrictions of either cliff or gully, 

or the embedded tradition of disorganised and uncontrolled expansion.
149

  

 

While both Melbourne and Sydney now present themselves as the two principal and 

timeless elder cities of the nation, at the time of Federation this would not have been the 

case.  Sydney was already well over a century old, with the gradualness of change that 

had seen original buildings demolished and replaced with newer modern late Victorian 

structures.
150

  Melbourne, while then as large as Sydney in terms of population with 

520,400 people resident in 1901,
151

 was less than half as old, with the gold boom era 

offices and city residences having been erected directly onto virgin sites.
152

  This open 

flat spaciousness therefore affected the arches that were constructed for the May 1901 

parade.  While size limitations would have been set by financial considerations, the 

physical construction techniques of the time, and the need to accommodate a certain 

width of carriage and parade column, I suspect that the feel and sensation provided by 

the spectacle of the passing parade would have been quite different to that experienced 

in Sydney.  The Municipal Arch on the entrance to Princes Bridge was a case in point.  

The photographs at the time show a large and impressive structure that spans the entire 

                                                                                                                                               
of the Little Streets and Laneways has often been rather touch and go.  The Argus: 27 April 1940, p. 1. 

Little Streets Stay. “In view of a report by Mr H S Wootton, the town clerk, on similar work in Sydney, 

the City Council is unlikely to widen “little” streets from 33 feet to 66 feet, as suggested by Councillor H 

E Morton.” It would appear that the Little Streets are finally safe. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 25. 
149

 Jill Eastwood: Melbourne – The Growth of a Metropolis, pp. 16-30. 
150

 Apperly, Irving, Reynolds: A Pictorial Guide to Identifying Australian Architecture. Note the degree 

to which the first 50 pages are restricted to Sydney and Hobart structures, and then from the mid-

Victorian era there is an explosion of new buildings in the newly established Melbourne. 
151

 Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics: Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of 

Australia 1901-1907, No.1, p. 158.  Figures tend to vary, perhaps expressing the ideals and expectations 

of researchers; but the initial Commonwealth Census lists Sydney with 538,800 residents and Melbourne 

with 520,000. Whether one city or the other was fractionally larger seems rather irrelevant, compared 

with the far more significant distinction of age of the city.  One city was already well over a century old, 

with its initial half century being of slow disorganised expansion, while the other was less than half that 

age, and more importantly had been formally planned from the beginning. 
152

 Henry Gyles Turner: A History of the Colony of Victoria, 1904, Longmans, Green and Co, London 

chapt. 9. Note particularly, pp. 262, 263 where the disastrous results of land speculation in particular is 

mentioned. 



178 

 

roadway with the grandiose form of a Roman Triumphal Arch.
153

  The sensation is one 

of openness to the sky; quite different to that imposed by the more closed narrow 

confines of  Sydney’s streets. 

 

The principal north south street of the settlement of Melbourne, and the one first entered 

by the Federation parade, was Swanston Street, named after Captain Charles Swanston; 

East India Company man, banker and one of the founders of the original Port Phillip 

Association.  The economist S J Butlin described him as “one of the score or so of 

commercial adventurers who had at least the illusion of controlling and directing 

Australian economic expansion in the period during which the emergence of a 

capitalistic economy was completed.”
154

   Through boom and bust banking, Charles 

Swanston accumulated and then lost a fortune.  He had gained a controlling interest in 

the Tasmanian Derwent Bank, and when in 1849 British investors withdrew their 

support, he was forced to “assign his personal estate for the benefit of his creditors.”
155

  

Like a Chinese Emperor on the point of being dethroned, Swanston was advised to take 

a long voyage, and died the next year on his way back from that other mythical land of 

promise, California.
156

   

 

The inevitable speculation that accompanied such rapid development had two 

detrimental effects: an overinflated financial boom in property construction, and this 

level of property construction running ahead of services.
157

  These were not merely 

ethereal issues, but ones that affected the immediate welfare of the citizens.  Graeme 

Davison dedicates an entire chapter to this boom and bust aspect of the decade leading 

up to Federation, comparing the150%-200% increase in the number of architects and 

builders with resulting rushed and shoddy construction.
158

  Poor sanitation was as 

serious an issue as it was in Sydney, without the ‘advantage’ of a large harbour in which 

to directly dump human waste.  Typhoid became a grim reality, although by 1910 it was 

reported in The Argus that “the number of cases in the metropolis at present is below the 

                                                 
153

 Walking Melbourne: Federation Arches online database. Municipal Arch Princes Bridge 1901. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 17. 
154

 Bede Nairn: Captain Charles Swanston, Australian Dictionary of Biography vol.2, pp. 500-501. 
155

 The Argus; 14 November 1849, p. 2. Van Diemen’s Land. “John Walker Esq, late Chief City 

Commissioner of Hobart Town, has been elected Managing Director of the Derwent Bank in that city, in 

the room of (sic) Captain Swanston resigned.” 
156

 Bede Nairn: Captain Charles Swanston, Australian Dictionary of Biography vol.2, pp. 500-501. 
157

 DeborahTout-Smith: Melbourne – a City of Stories, 2008, Museum Victoria, Melbourne, p. 43. 
158

 Graeme Davison: The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne, 1978, pp. 72-78.  Note the cartoon 

commenting on the ‘advantage’ of developers not bothering with decent footings when construction 

investment housing. 



179 

 

average.”
 159

  What this average actually was appeared not to be mentioned.
160

  

Interstaters in particular were only too happy assign to upstart Melbourne the 

nomenclature “Smelbourne”; as much a reflection of the general degradation of the 

Yarra River as poor sanitation itself.
161

  The city continued to industrialise and 

tributaries such as the Maribyrnong River become even more polluted.  As Davison 

declares; “by 1890 the stretch of river from Footscray with its ropewalk, sugar refinery, 

chemical and fertilizer works up stream to the abattoirs, tallow works and tanneries of 

Newmarket had become an open sewer.”
162

 

 

The risk of fire within the rapidly expanding city also proved to be a serious threat to 

urban citizens.  In 1897 fire destroyed the city block between Flinders Street, Flinders 

Lane and Elizabeth and Swanston Streets, the very streetscape that would be passed by 

the parade less than three years later.  The blaze in the early hours of Sunday 21 

November began in Craig, Williamson & Thomas’s warehouse on the corner of 

Elizabeth and Flinders Street, and quickly spread to destroy virtually the whole block.
163

  

Even Young and Jackson’s Hotel was threatened, with the licensee having to roll his 

beer barrels across Swanston Street to find sanctuary in the porch of St Paul’s 

Cathedral.
164

  By 6:00 am that morning, after a four hour battle, the two hundred 

attending firemen had the conflagration under control.   

 

It was noted that this was the first time that the early morning church trains had been 

packed; in this case with sightseers rather than the religious faithful.
165

  The particular 

event was significant enough for it to be commented upon not only three years later in 

February 1900 when; “another serious fire occurred in Flinders Lane today, when [my] 

                                                 
159

 The Argus: 8 March 1882, p. 9.  Gordon Cheers: Australia Through Time, p. 98. Note the quote for 19 

January 1889.  “At least 400 people have died and hundreds more have fallen ill as Melbourne struggles 

to free itself from the grip of a devastating typhoid epidemic.” 
160

 The Argus: 16 April 1910, p. 16. The Argus: 6 May 1910, p. 7. One of the outbreaks of 1910, 

apparently through infected milk from a dairy, resulted in at least 11 deaths. 
161

 Perth Sunday Times: 31 March 1907, p. 3. 
162

 Graeme Davison: The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne, 1978, p. 50. 
163

 The Argus: 22 November 1897, p. 6. “The Fire yesterday was on our side of “The Lane” and our 

warehouse is not damaged in any way.” The most notable mention of the fire in the press the day after 

was an advertisement by Lister Henry and Co, clothing and dry goods merchants, to the effect that they 

were still open for business.  The Argus: 11 December 1897, p. 9.  The eternally optimistic and 

advantageous nature of capitalism is seen with the purchase of salvage stock from a “great fire in the 

Cripplegate, London, on November 19.  One of the purchasers is the firm of Messrs Brooks, McGlashan 

and McHarg, whose premises in Flinders Lane, Melbourne, were destroyed by the fire in that city on 

November 21.”  Gordon Cheers: Australia Through Time, p. 132. 
164

 W H Newnham: Melbourne – the Biography of a City, p. 46.  
165

 Gordon Cheers: Australia Through Time, p. 60. “[It is] wholly for the convenience of those 

who…come into Sydney to church and get back home again to dinner.” Letter to The Sydney Morning 

Herald of all press outlets, commenting on, or gloating over the 1879 Sunday train timetable. 



180 

 

warehouse of Brooks, McGlashan and McHarg, at the west corner of Degraves Street, 

which was destroyed by fire in the great conflagration of November 1897, was again 

attacked”;
166

 but even forty years later. “What happened in Flinders Street just forty 

years ago tomorrow,” with accompanying pictures of the inferno.
167

  This would also 

have been one of the first instances of the newly constituted Metropolitan Fire Brigades 

Board dealing with such an emergency.  Up until the 1887 and 1890 Brigade 

Amalgamation and Fire Brigade Acts, the fighting of fires was the responsibility of the 

various insurance companies that covered city buildings for such disasters.
168

   There 

were apparently many instances of such private brigades arriving at a fire, only to 

discover that they did not have the insurance cover for the particular building in flames, 

and thus turning away and quietly going back home while the “foreign” structure 

burned to the ground. 

 

The newly established transport systems were also instrumental in directly serving 

Melbourne’s Federation celebrations.  As was the case with the Federation parade in 

Sydney, the authorities had to accommodate a huge number of people intending to view 

a march of at least an hour’s duration through a relatively confined space.  With an 

estimated 150,000 spectators within the five kilometres of the Central Business District 

of Melbourne,
169

 transport to and from the event would have been critical.  Certainly, a 

letter to the editor of The Argus from “A Country Cousin” expressed this concern. 

“How can country people arriving in Melbourne, say, at 10 o’clock am, reach the 

positions which they have secured in Collins street east?...Will you kindly let us country 

people know by what route we may reach our destinations?”
170

 

 

While people tend to arrive at such events in their own time and in a relatively ordered 

manner, clearing the city after the event would have been quite a different affair.  This is 

even a major concern even today with similar events such as New Year’s Eve bringing a 

relative equivalent percentage of the population to the cities’ centres.
171

  As is the case 

now, a century ago all available public transport facilities were brought to bear with 

                                                 
166

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 24 February 1900, p. 10. 
167

 The Argus: 20 November 1937, p. 35. 
168

 Victorian Royal Commission 2009 Victorian Bushfires: Part 10 Introduction: Organisational 

Structure online database. “The Fire Brigades Act 1890 established the organisational structure of 

brigades that is still in effect today.” Power: Fire & Flood in the Heart of Melbourne, Victorian 

Government exhibition, September 2003.  
169

 Australian Broadcasting Commission: Australia’s Centenary of Federation website, 2000, ABC 100 

years, Sydney. 
170

 The Argus: 7 May 1901, p. 11. 
171

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 31 December 2011 online database. 



181 

 

varying degrees of success.  Trains were timetabled to run through the night over the 

course of the week, including country trains from as a far afield as Ballarat, Bendigo 

and Geelong.  These included trains the next morning to return revellers back home.
172

 

 

For those living in closer proximity, tram timetables were also adapted to take into 

account not only those wishing to exit the city after the day-time parade, but also those 

who wanted to come back to view the night-time illuminations.
173

  There was even the 

“thoughtful proposal of the mayor of Richmond (Councillor J S Willis) to provide 

vehicles to take the aged poor to see the city illuminations.”  However, it appears that 

few of those targeted took advantage of the offer.
174

  Perhaps older people would not 

have wanted to go to the trouble of coming into the city anyway, knowing they would 

still have to walk to the display once they had alighted from the tram.  On the other 

hand, many elderly appeared happy to do their best to view the day time proceedings.  

“Several veterans were wheeled in bath chairs to take a look at the preparations, and 

others tugged their little ones behind them.”
175

  Whether the march participants 

themselves, not to mention the spectators had to pay full fare on the rail network is not 

mentioned.  However, demonstrating a notable lack of inter-colonial largesse, the 

visiting City of Sydney aldermen were provided with a rail car for the trip to Albury.  

From there, however, they had to pay their own way to Melbourne, with the Mayor of 

Sydney, Dr Graham describing this treatment as “very shabby”.
176

 

 

Rather amusing for us today, although no doubt not at the time, was the religious 

objection to the Sunday trains necessary for the transport of citizens and participants 

into the city the day prior to the main Federation parade on Monday 6 May 1901. “The 

Reverend J Meiklejohn called attention to the announcement by the Government that 

cadets from the country would be brought to Melbourne for the Ducal celebrations by 

trains running on Sunday next.  This, he said, would be a desecration of the Sabbath, 

which they [presbytery members] should protest about.”
177

  The Reverend John 

Meiklejohn MA was an influential minister from the Dorcas Street, South Melbourne 

Presbyterian Church who, as Moderator General, had been responsible for the re-uniting 

                                                 
172

 The Age: 3 May 1901, p. 5. 
173

 The Age: 3 May 1901, p. 5. 
174

 The Age: 6 May 1901, p. 8. 
175

 The Argus: 3 May 1901, p. 5. 
176

 The Age: 3 May 1901, p. 5. 
177

 The Age: 3 May 1901, p. 5. 



182 

 

of the disparate and divided colonial Presbyterian denominations.
178

  While apparently 

not a fundamentalist, the comment by a staunch member of the church establishment 

indicates not only the influence that ministers of religion felt that they had in society, 

but also the literal interpretation of the Sabbath that would hold sway in many parts of 

Australian society until the 1970s.
179

  However, it was recognised that the much vaunted 

separation of church and state in the new Australian Constitution,
180

 would in practice 

need to apply as just much to public transport.  While the notion of the boring 

Melbourne Sunday has become entrenched in folklore, it is worth remembering that 

such restrictions tend to be cyclical rather than a permanent fixture from the past.
181

  It 

was only in July 1883 that Sunday trading was outlawed under pressure from 

Sabbatarians.
182

   Through institutions such as The Bulletin in Sydney there remained 

subtle insurrections against the dictates of the prelates.  The Queenslander of 1895 

mentioned an amusing, if apocryphal incident where a country vicar’s garden was being 

ravaged by sparrows on the Sabbath.  When his wife ordered the gardener to discharge 

his gun at them the annoyed vicar penned her a note stating. “Six days in seven, if you 

please, shoot the birds that eat your peas; but on the seventh aim your arrows at sin and 

Satan – not at sparrows.”
183

 

 

Once in Melbourne itself, the large number of participants needed to be accommodated.  

Distinguished visitors were lodged at the Grand Hotel (now the Windsor on Spring 

Street) while the military and country display contingents were camped at Royal Park 

and Flemington.  “Well known military identities such as Colonel Tom Price, Major 

General George French and Major General Gordon were placed in charge of 

proceedings, and the men were kept occupied with parades and drills between periods of 

leave.”
184

 

 

 

                                                 
178

 Prentis: Fathers and Brethren, moderators of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of 

Australia 1901-1977 online database. 
179

 Ian Tyrrell:  From the culture of wowserism to the culture of healthism, University of NSW online 

database. 
180

 Constitutional Centenary Foundation: The Australian Constitution, p. 113. “The Commonwealth shall 

not make any law for establishing any religion…” 
181

 The Argus: 2 April 1951, p. 6. Boring. “The practice of sending young sailors, soldiers and airmen in 

Melbourne for over the weekends when they can do nothing and go nowhere seems to be a deliberate plan 

to make their leave as boring and fruitless as possible.” 
182

 The Argus: 28 April 1883, p. 8. “Sabbatarians win the day.” 
183

 The Queenslander: 21 September 1895, p. 5. 
184

 The Age: 3 May 1901, p. 5. 



183 

 

6.  MARVELLOUS MELBOURNE   

 

Upon entering the city of Melbourne, the Federation parade would have passed St 

Paul’s Cathedral and the current location of City Square.  It is here that the modern 

footstepper passes three significant works of art that appear to reflect the changing of 

attitudes towards Australian’s relationship with their land and community.  Alongside 

St Paul’s is the Flinders Memorial by the sculptor Web Gilbert.
185

  Although not 

unveiled until 7 November 1925, this effigy is reflective of an era when the nation was 

still being geographically, and certainly psychologically, opened up by Europeans.
186

  

As Gascoigne mentions, the popularity of Matthew Flinders reflected his position as the 

embodiment of those scientific advances that had led to both the settlement and 

advancement of the Australian nation.
187

   Flinders is then followed by City Square and 

the Burke and Wills Memorial by sculptor Charles Summers.
188

 

 

 In Collins Street standeth a statue tall –  

 A statue tall on a pillar of stone, 

 Telling its story, to great and small, 

 Of the dust reclaimed from the sand waste lone. 

 Weary and wasted, and worn and wan, 

 Feeble and faint, and languid and low, 

 He lay on the desert a dying man, 

 Who has gone, my friends, where we all must go. 

 

As Adam Lindsay Gordon’s poem indicates, this statue group was originally placed at 

the top of Collins Street at the Russell Street intersection, then transplanted in 1886 to 

what became Gordon Reserve adjacent to Parliament House to make way for the 

                                                 
185

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 27.  
186

 The Argus: 25 September 1923. Site for Matthew Flinders’ Statue.  Apparently there was some kind of 

weird competition whereby the city that could erect the most pleasing monument to the explorer would 

receive his papers from his grandson. Sydney won…  Public Art Around the World: Matthew Flinders 

online database. 
187

 John Gascoigne: The Enlightenment and the Origins of European Australia, p. 98.  The work is not 

only more formal than the statue of the navigator outside the Sydney Mitchell Library, but is also without 

the most recent addition of Flinders’ noble companion.  Matthew Flinders online database. Trim the Cat.  

Melbourne’s statue may feature Flinders in his boat, but Sydney’s representation includes a separate 

casting of Trim, Flinders’ cat. 
188

 Adam Lindsay Gordon: Selected Poems of Adam Lindsay Gordon, 1979, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 

p. 7. Gone! 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 27. 



184 

 

expansion of Melbourne’s tramway; prior to its being moved yet again.
189

  At the time 

of the parade in 1901, this statue was still at Gordon Reserve although further moves to 

accommodate tramlines and even underground railway stations would imply a work of 

art not held in the highest esteem by the general population, or at least the local council 

authorities.
190

  To be fair, even Sydney’s Queen Victoria has been moved, or at least 

rotated on more than one occasion, while her son’s constant shifting around the entrance 

to Sydney’s Government House to accommodate the Cahill Expressway and Harbour 

Tunnel has hardly raised an eyebrow in that city.
191

 

 

Gordon, writing his poem in 1867, was invoking an heroic interpretation of the 

disastrous 1860-1861Burke and Wills expedition, even though at this early juncture, the 

Royal Commission had already placed a good part of the blame for the death of the 

explorers on the foolish ‘death-or-glory’ Robert O’Hara Burke.
192

   While there still 

appeared to be a sense that the tragedy was the result of bad luck,
193

 by the time of 

Federation attitudes towards the previous forty years of colonial experience had begun 

to change.  There was already a divide between the city and the bush, with Australia 

now one of the most urbanised nations in the world.  However, writers such as Paterson 

and Lawson continued with their preoccupation with the bush although as the new 

century advanced, poets such as Kenneth Slessor, writers like C J Dennis and painters 

such as Sali Herman would discover and even glory in the reality of city life.
194

 

 

                                                 
189

 The Argus: December 1928, p. 3.  W H Newnham: Melbourne – the Biography of a City, p. 206.  

These later moves have taken place recently, since Newnham mentions the statue still being at the Spring 

Street intersection in 1956. 
190

 The Argus: 30 January 1926, p. 7.  Burke and Wills Monument Removal to Original Site.  Certainly 

some people were concerned over the constant moving of the memorial. ”Mr Tom Roberts suggestion 

that the Burke and Wills monument should be restored to its original position on the Collins Street must 

appeal to all who are familiar with the history of the ill-starred expedition, which was closely associated 

with early Melbourne.” 
191

 The Argus: 1 December 1938, p. 3.  As an aside, it is interesting to note that some people’s opinions of 

the quality of Melbourne’s work would have placed them under a similar constant threat to that suffered 

by the statue of Henry Parkes in Sydney’s Centennial Park. “If a few of the people whom, within the last 

few days, I have seen embalmed in stone and bronze could visit corporeally these port-mortem tributes, I 

am afraid that there would be a sharp rise in the incidence of vandalism.”  However, I doubt that the fate 

suffered by that of Parkes was a result of artistic criticism. 
192

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 26 February 1862, p. 2. Wilde et al: The Oxford Companion to 

Australian Literature 1994, p. 133.   
193

 The Argus:  2 August 1913, p. 21. 
194

 The Bulletin poets such as Paterson and Lawson still tended to view the city and its inhabitants as 

either sad, disreputable and stunted by their life experience, or as figures of light hearted amusement.  

“Would you make it a tea-garden and on Sundays have a band, where the ‘blokes’ might take their 

‘donahs’, with a ‘public’ close at hand.” Andrew Barton Paterson: The Collected Verse of A B Paterson, 

p. 79.  Even C J Dennis’ “Bloke” only finds true peace and fulfilment once he moves into the rural idyll 

of outer suburbia. “Then, in a blessed ‘eap, ole Forchin lands a missus an’ a farm fair in me ‘ands.” 

Clarence James Dennis: Selected Verse of C J Dennis, 1975, Angus & Roberson, Sydney, p. 33. 



185 

 

Needless to say, the Victorian Government had voted £5,000 towards the cost of the 

memorial in 1864,
195

 and sculptor Charles Summers completed the work not only 

“modelling the figures but built a furnace and himself cast them in bronze.  The 

standing figure of Burke, 13 feet in height [4 metres], was cast in one operation.”
196

  

Summers himself appeared to embody a rather transient attitude towards Australia.  

Born in Somerset in 1827 and trained at the Royal Academy, the young sculptor moved 

to Australia in 1852 as treatment for his poor health.  After various jobs and 

commissions, he opened a studio in Collins Street, where he was able to produce the 

Burke and Wills Memorial.  By 1867, he had left to return to England. After working in 

Rome, he returned to Victoria to complete a commission comprising statues of Queen 

Victoria, but died in 1878 in Paris on his way back to England.
197

  While contributing to 

the culture of the colony, Charles Summers appeared to have considered himself 

primarily British, and in practice an international artist who went wherever the 

commissions and the money took him.
 198

   

 

Although hard to tell now, the next block along Swanston Street, City Square held 

Melbourne’s own Queen Victoria Building,
199

 an apparently attractive Victorian pile of 

shops and administration offices.
200

   As one of the many 1960s attempts to open and 

beautify the city, this was demolished in 1968 and converted to an open space linked to 

shops and a graffiti wall.
201

  Memory of the previous 1890s building seems to be well 

hidden.  The failings of the new precinct brought about a further demolishing of half the 

space in 1981and its replacement with a non-descript modern structure.  Notably, the 

National Trust guide Walking Melbourne does not include an image of either the 

original Queen Victoria Building, or the interim space that existed for twenty years, nor 

                                                 
195

 W H Newnham: Melbourne – The Biography of a City, pp. 206, 207. 
196

 The Australian News for Home Readers: 25 October 1864, p. 4.  Casting of the bronze statue for the 

Burke and Wills monument. “…this being, we believe, the first attempt made to cast a massive bronze 

statue in Australia. At any rate nothing equal in weight or magnitude had hitherto been attempted in 

statuary by any practical artist in Victoria.” 
197

 Jill Eastwood: Charles Summers (1825-1878), Australian Dictionary of Biography online database.  
198

 As mentioned, it is rather ironic that this same attitude of primary loyalty to another place was one of 

the many criticisms levelled at the Chinese at this time. 
199

 W H Newnham: Melbourne – The Biography of a City, p. 172. 
200

 Sands & McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, p. 63. 
201

 Jeff and Jill Sparrow: Radical Melbourne, vol.2, 2004, The Vulgar Press, Melbourne, p. 124. Some 

attempts to conserve what remained in the block were led by the Victorian Branch of the Builders 

Labourers Federation.
 
 Although generally less successfully than their more radical NSW comrades, 

builder’s labourer Dave Kerin summed up their attitude; “We were out there building these concrete 

boxes and you just felt like a dill.  You looked across the road and saw a building with some character 

with design features that we didn’t have the skills to make.” 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 29. 



186 

 

even the current City Square space itself.
202

  This area that is, by its nomenclature and 

its location, no doubt intended to be the public centre of the city, appears to be generally 

passed over by local Melburnians.
203

 

 

The next site passed, or more correctly, bypassed by the footstepper is the Melbourne 

Town Hall. While Melbourne’s streets are far wider than Sydney’s, her Town Hall is 

sited close to the edge of Swanston Street; seeming to almost bend over the street from 

the high side of the road.
204

  Although the parade turned into Collins Street, spectators 

on the balcony of the Town Hall would still have been afforded an intimate view of the 

procession as it passed under the King’s Arch.
205

  Being so representative of the tenor of 

the new monarchy freed from the restrictive late Victorian era, this arch, like King 

Edward VII himself,
206

 gloried in its excess; “ostentatiously colourful, covered in 

‘cardinal’ and old gold velveteen, which was ‘thickly broken into panels with gilt 

mouldings’, with ‘diagonal silk cord forming diaper work’.”
207

  Although appearing in 

photographs, to be extremely attractive and intricate, with its main 18 metre arch and 

smaller side arches filling the width of Swanston Street, the cost was only £560.
208

  This 

was considerably less than many of the other more formal and perhaps less inspiring 

efforts and only a small part of the £100,000 that was allocated by a special committee 

of the Victorian State Government to “ensure festivities befitting this historic event.”
209

  

The arch was also theoretically in a similar position to that of the Melbourne Arch in 

Sydney, in that consciously or accidentally it guided the parade into by-passing the 

Town Hall by turning it away, this time up the slope of Collins Street.  However, I 

doubt there would have been the same sense of isolation caused by the larger space in 

front of Sydney’s Town Hall. 

 

While there was little discussion on the route of this presentation parade, the later route 

for the march to the opening of Parliament had been under intense scrutiny from the 

                                                 
202

 National Trust of Australia (Victoria): Walking Melbourne, p. 31. 
203

 National Trust of Australia (Victoria): Walking Melbourne, p. 30. 
204

 W H Newnham: Melbourne – The Biography of a City, 1956, pp. 171, 172.  Certainly for someone 

from interstate, the immediate butting of such a significant building directly onto the footpath does seem 

incongruous. 
205

 Photograph Booklet vol. 2, p. 29.  
206

 Photograph Booklet vol. 2, p. 28. 
207

 The Age: 7 May 1901 supplement. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 28. 
208

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 75. 
209

 Westralian Worker: 15 June 1951, p. 6.  With Committee Chairman M’Culloch as Minister for Works 

and Mayor of Melbourne, were added Mt T G Watson, Clerk and Secretary and Mt T Wollard as assistant 

and Col Hoad in charge of military arrangements. 



187 

 

beginning of the year.  As The Argus reported as early as February, “So far Mr 

M’Culloch, the chairman of the committee, has received no reply from the Governor-

General in regard to the suggested alteration in the route to be taken by the procession 

on the day of the opening of Parliament.”  The issue appeared to have been conflict 

between the distance to be traversed by the official party and the number of significant 

arches that were going to be missed by following an abbreviated route. “Until the route 

has been finally determined, Mr M’Culloch states that it will be impossible to select the 

sites for the various arches to be erected by the Government.”
210

   

 

It was at this point that the parade would have seemed to face its greatest geographical 

obstacle.   Although Melbourne is generally flatter than Sydney, the rise up Collins 

Street from the bedrock of the old Townend stream alignment would have been the 

most arduous part of the parade for both marchers and horses.  However, as the 

principal business and “quality” street in Melbourne then, and now, it would have been 

obvious that the public parade would have followed this route.  At the top of the climb 

at the Russell Street intersection, the march would have passed under the Queen’s Arch, 

named for the recently deceased Queen Victoria.
211

  Images of this arch demonstrated 

again the considerable affection the community had for the old queen.
212

  No doubt 

planned by designer G B H Austin prior to Victoria’s death, the location on the highest 

point of the route would have been regarded as significant, as would the immediate 

surrounds in the most traditional quarter of the city.
213

  The arch itself embodied that 

very Victorian mix of the traditional and the modern scientific.  The cupola on the top 

of the very non-classical curved arcs contained a statue of Her Majesty; while on the 

other hand, much was made of the fact that this structure was “highlighted by electric 

lights by night”.
214

  Although none of the arches in either parade were dedicated 

specifically to scientific advancement, they all embodied in their design and 

presentation the most up to date construction and lighting, providing a contrast to their 

eclectic mix of classical and even the, then modern, art nouveau style. 

 

The march up Collins Street reflected the celebration of the moment, but the route taken 

also reflected very much the social structure of the times, and no doubt the aspirations 

                                                 
210

 The Argus:  27 February 1901, p. 6. 
211

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 32. 
212

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 82. 
213

 The Argus: 27 August 1934.  How Collins Street guards its wealth. Ostensibly commenting on the new 

Bank of NSW premises.  
214

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 83. 



188 

 

of the organisers.  The northern side of the street was then, as now, marked by a wide 

variety of Protestant Churches: Baptist, Presbyterian and the Independent, now Uniting 

Church.
215

  As with Sydney, the march did not pick out religious centres with conscious 

intention, but rather, as the routes took the most significant pathways through the two 

cities, churches and cathedrals were automatically included.  Their physical centrality 

no doubt mirrored an emotional and cultural significance in the lives of the 

communities.  This streetscape had also begun to adapt to the Australian environment in 

ways that would be again lost half a century later.  Photographs of Bourke Street and 

Collins Street at the time of Federation show awnings, recently planted trees and the 

heavy stone buildings with tall narrow windows that, even today, are the most effective 

for allowing in light while restricting heat absorption.
216

  The adoption of Modernism 

during the 1950s and 1960s, notably at this eastern end of the city, has replaced much of 

this earlier acclimatisation with flat glass-plated sky-scrapers that offer limited 

protection to any non-air-conditioned occupants and no protection to pedestrians from 

either the hot sun or sudden rainstorms.
217

 

 

My footstepping crested the rise travelling east along Collins Street and I reached what 

was then known, and is still called, Collins Street’s Paris End. At this juncture, the 

intersection with Exhibition Street, was located the Chamber of Manufactures’ Column, 

erected by the Victorian Chamber of Manufacturers from the design of Messrs Usher 

and Kemp, Architects.
218

  Although not an arch, but an imposing structure some 70’ tall, 

this was one of the few direct references to the business community in either of the two 

parades.  With a high grouping of white plaster Corinthian columns on a pedestal of 

four lions, surmounted by an Atlas and globe, the accompanying drawing in The Argus 

presents the structure as physically imposing and quite attractive, with the newspaper 

claiming that, “though this trophy is not so pretentious as the great arches which have 

been erected, it is one of the most effective pieces of architecture commemorating the 

great event.”
219

  The allusion to Nelson’s Column was mentioned earlier by The Argus, 

although the never to be denied capitalist imperative also showed through.  “A jarring 

note was an advertisement of capital value of land and plant and other matter painted at 

                                                 
215

 W H Newnham: Melbourne – the Biography of a City, 1956, p. 183. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, pp. 30, 32. 
216

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, pp. 32, 33. 
217

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, pp. 43, 45 et passim. 
218

 The Argus: 11 May 1901, p. 11.  
219

 The Argus: 11 May 1901, pp. 10-11. 



189 

 

the foot of the base.”
220

 As with the Commonwealth Arch in Sydney and even the 

Corporation Arch on Swanston Street Bridge, it does seem a shame that this column 

was not produced in a permanent form for posterity.  Certainly such a column could 

have been accommodated by road traffic, then and even now, easier than an expansive 

arch.  

 

At the time of Federation, the Paris allusion would surely have been apt, judging by 

both the style of the original buildings and the wealth represented by the medical 

offices, surgeons and physicians in Sands & McDougall’s Directory.
221

  The northern 

side of the street was taken up with medical practitioners and the occasional club and 

private hotel, while the southern side had similarly serious professionals interspersed 

with artists, sculptors and masseuse.
222

   The Melbourne Club, at number 36 had been 

founded in 1838 by a group of young blades: as W H Newham puts it, “harum-scarum 

members..., whose early escapades included removing signboards, closing stable doors 

after allowing the horses to bolt and occasionally breaking a window.”
223

  After the 

club’s move to the current Collins Street premises in 1839, duels were still being 

arranged, even if they now consisted of blank cartridges and an unsuspecting challenger 

being hit with “jam on the forehead that slowly dribbled down his face”.
224

  ANU 

House next door at number 52 was, at the time, occupied by the dentists Merrill and 

Aitken, who no doubt had far more to put up with than the current quieter academic and 

university chancellor’s offices.
225

 

 

On a more sedate level, office 10 Latrobe Parade, now changed to George Parade, 

between numbers 111 and 115 Collins Street, was occupied in 1901 by the artist Charles 

Web Gilbert.
226

  Born in 1867 in Cockatoo, north of Melbourne, into a relatively poor 

family, Charles March Webster Gilbert lost his father soon after his birth but was an 

early and successful product of the newly established state school system.  He was 

forced to leave even this education at the age of ten to earn his living and moved to 

Melbourne to eventually find work as a chef.  It has been claimed that it was his 

modelling of ornaments for cakes that hinted at his ability at sculpture, and in 1888 he 

                                                 
220

 The Argus: 7 May 1901, p. 10 
221

 Sands & McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, p. 12. 
222

 Sands & McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, pp. 17, 18. 
223

 W H Newnham: Melbourne – the Biography of a City, p. 183. In other words, being as childishly 
obnoxious as most other young males out for a good time on the town.   
224

 W H Newnham: Melbourne – the Biography of a City, p. 184. 
225

 Sands & McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, p. 12. 
226

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 31. 



190 

 

enrolled in the National Gallery drawing school.
227

  Gilbert would go on to become one 

of the nation’s most famous war artists and sculptors of principal public figures, 

including Alfred Deakin, the writer Hugh McCrae and the well-known socialist Bernard 

O’Dowd.  Gilbert’s work is still held at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra,
228

 

with his great work The Desert Mounted Corps taking pride of place on Anzac 

Parade.
229

 

 

Another feature of the medical district to be noted could be found along from the 

Melbourne Club: the large number of female medical practitioners.  Miss Sarah 

McChesney and Mrs Florence Balderson were practising as dentists at number 28 

Collins Street, and Miss E Bellotti was listed as a midwife at number 32.  Miss Ethel 

Godfrey and Miss Alys Berry were also registered as dentists, one building along at 

number 34.
230

  While there may well have been a natural inclination for women to 

prefer visiting a professional of the same gender, their advertised presence does, once 

again, contrast with the current view of Victorian and Edwardian society as overly 

restrictive towards women. 

 

One significant location that is still recognisable today is Alfred Place, between 98 and 

102 Collins Street; the site of Robert Berry’s livery stables.
231

  Although abutted by the 

modern glass Gilbert Court, the laneway and vacant communal space remains testament 

to a largely unrecognised, but vital facet of the era; the role of horses.
232

  It is interesting 

how little literature of all eras has mentioned the role of horses in basic transportation.  

Just as with the previously mentioned significance of coal, no part of society a century 

ago could have functioned without the horse, and the massive infrastructure of stables, 

fodder, carts and wagons, not to mention the need to collect the waste they produced.  

Yet there is little indication of the degree to which people at the time of Federation were 

reliant upon the horse for transportation, food supply and the goods that needed to be 

taken from the trains and factories to the nearby shops for sale.  J A Lyne at least 

recognised this with an photographic image of Kirk’s Horse Bazaar that existed at 

                                                 
227

 G Sturgeon: Charles Marsh Web (Nash) Gilbert (1867-1925), Australian Dictionary of Biography 

online database. 
228

 Australian War Memorial: Artist Profiles, Web Gilbert online database. 
229

 G Sturgeon: Charles Marsh Web (Nash) Gilbert (1867-1925), Australian Dictionary of Biography 

online database. It is a copy of this large bronze that can be seen on Canberra’s Anzac Parade today. 
230

 Sands & McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, p. 12. 
231

 Sands & McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, p. 12. 
232

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 33. 



191 

 

number 412 Bourke Street, between Elizabeth and Queen Streets.
233

  This, along with 

the Victoria Horse Bazaar at number 396 Bourke Street and Campbell and Sons horse 

and cattle agents at number 414,
234

 signified that there was also a whole district around 

Hardware Lane dedicated to supplying the needs of horses and horse transport.
235

  All 

that now remains of the saddlers, carriage builders, veterinarians and even racing clubs 

that dotted the city is the heritage named Kirk’s Lane running through to Little Bourke 

Street.
236

  Such cultural amnesia often goes back only half a century in those areas that 

supplied this essential transport need.  Horse stalls, hay lofts and wagon storage sheds 

also still existed in inner Sydney suburban districts such as Camdenville into the 1960s, 

reflecting the physical organisation that had been in place to provide horse power for the 

city.
237

   

 

 

7.  SEATS OF POWER 

 

Turning into Spring Street, the march then entered the governmental precinct of the city.  

The eastern side of the road was, and still is, taken up by the massive edifice of 

Parliament House and the supplementary office buildings reaching back to Lansdowne 

Street and Fitzroy Gardens in East Melbourne.
238

  While these offices have, as with 

those in Macquarie Street Sydney, changed their roles and been supplemented by 

modern workplaces, their ornate presence remains.
239

  The original State Office building 

on Spring Street, next to the aptly named Treasury Gardens, was originally the Old 

Treasury Building.
240

  This is now the Museum of Melbourne, having presided over this 

significant intersection at the top of Collins Street since 1862.
241

 

 

                                                 
233

 J A Lyne: Greater Melbourne, 1974, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, p. 55. 
234

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 67. 
235

 Sands & McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, p. 5. 
236

 UBD Australia: Melbourne Street Directory 2008,  map 1. 
237

 UBD Australia: Melbourne Street Directory 2008, map 379. Note Woodworth Close in the, then, bush 

land setting of Endeavour Hills, named for the early settler family that bred horses for the commercial 

trade in Melbourne. 
238

 UBD Australia: Melbourne Street Directory 2008, map 18. 
239

 National Trust of Australia: Walking Melbourne, p. 81. 
240

 Sands & McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, p. 62. 
241

 Museum Victoria: Melbourne City Museum online database. “Housed in the Old Treasury Building 

(Renaissance Revival style) and built between 1858 and 1862, the surrounding spaces were often used to 

celebrate events in the growing city. The classic design was proportioned 200 feet across and 70 feet in 

height. There are 3 main entrances and a portico in the centre… traces the history of Melbourne, from the 

early explorations of John Batman, through the Gold Rushes of Victoria and the city’s growth into a 

major city in only 30 years, to today.” 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 36. 



192 

 

The attractive heritage building complements the former Lands Building, now 

Department of Education in Treasury Place.
242

  However, the intervening years, and 

growth in the size and requirements of the state government have resulted in additional 

buildings being constructed to the rear.  The National Trust’s Walking Melbourne 

booklet appears to be almost obliged to advocate for the two ‘Lego-land’ piles that 

squat behind the palms of Gordon Reserve, appearing to offer a glimpse of Dubai on 

Spring Street.  “Built in stages between 1966 and 1969, the austere, crisply detailed 

elevation and simple massing are a landmark of Modernism in Australia.”
 243

   

 

In 1901, the eastern side of the street continued with medical offices and other similar 

high class establishments spilling over from Collins Street, although within the matrix 

of dentists, chemists and luncheon rooms, at 203 Spring Street stood Cong Hi, 

laundry,
244

 no doubt providing an essential service to the parliamentarians and hotel 

visitors.
245

  The elegant townhouse still preserved on the corner of Spring and Collins 

Streets has a particularly relevant history.
246

  Although listed in Sands & McDougall’s 

Directory as number 16 Spring Street, this corner building forms part of a complex with 

number 9 Collins Street, and was constructed in 1877 for pastoralist and politician 

William Campbell.
247

  At Federation, with the new Federal Government taking over the 

State Parliament House on a temporary basis, this building was purchased by the 

Commonwealth for Prime Ministerial offices, with Alfred Deakin a noteworthy resident 

during these years. 

 

As I observed when first arriving in Melbourne, it was the presence of trams running 

down the centre of wide thoroughfares that indicated more than anything that one was 

in the southern capital.
248

  While other cities up-rooted their transport networks in the 

name of 1950s modernism, Melbourne retained this important transport system and 

                                                 
242

 Sands & McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, p. 62.  National Trust of 

Australia (Victoria): Walking Melbourne, p. 82. 
243

 Apperly, Irving, Reynolds: A Pictorial Guide to Identifying Australian Architecture, p. 264.  Although 

this guide features the Denton Corkhill Marshall designed structure on the other side of the road, behind 

the corner of Spring Street and Collins Street, the style mirrors the Barry Patten Yunken Freeman block 

facing it across the top of the Old Treasury Building. At least there is no attempt to imply that the 

structures “blend sympathetically into the environment.”  
244

 Sands & McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, p. 62. 
245

 Note again the lack of dry cleaning facilities even here, no doubt due to fire risk restrictions. 
246

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 37. 
247

 National Trust of Australia (Victoria): Walking Melbourne, p19. 
248

 Photograph Booklet vol. 2, p. 37. 



193 

 

cultural icon.
249

  The 1901 images of the commencement of Bourke and Collins Streets 

from the government offices in Spring Street show clearly the tramlines that still remain 

as the structure for this inner city transportation.  Not only have the wide streets and 

relatively flat terrain benefited the retention of Melbourne’s tram network but also the 

enthusiastic support of the population and even hard-headed government authorities.  

The map of the tramway system as it was in 1974 demonstrates the advantage of long 

straight roads laid out under the Darling and Hoddle plans;
250

 a logical and practical 

consideration when catering to the expectations of the travelling public.
251

 

 

Travelling north, the Federation parade would have passed Gordon Reserve, originally 

named Carpentaria Place.
252

  This little triangular park is essentially a continuation of 

the Treasury Gardens to the south, and further isolates the classical Parliament House 

building from the modern offices.  Planned as part of the Parliament House grounds, the 

reserve seems to have grown like topsy, gradually becoming bisected by roads and then 

tramlines.
253

  Carpentaria Place was originally the chosen site of the Stanford 

Fountain,
254

 constructed in 1870 by William Stanford, a prisoner from nearby Pentridge 

Goal.
255

   

 

                                                 
249

 Queensland Times: 6 April 1950, p. 1. Melbourne Trams May Be Replaced by Buses. Apparently it 

has been a close run thing at times, particularly in the early 1950s. Interestingly, there appears to be less 

press coverage of this issue in Melbourne papers, although The Argus: 28 April 1951, p. 7, makes much 

of the then Lord Mayor Sir James Disney wanting trams replaced by buses in Bourke Street, Swanston 

Street and “the costly Latrobe St line looks like being a failure too.”  Mr L  C Freeman, Road Passenger 

Service Operators’ Association secretary [in other words, a bus company organisation] yesterday 

defended buses in Smith and Nicholson Streets. “The Tramways Board has the best buses in Melbourne; 

its new ones are ‘beauties’.”  Trams in Melbourne, online database. Former MMTB Chairman Sir Robert 

Risson argued that the cost of ripping up the concrete embedded tracks would have been prohibitive. 
250

 J A Lyne: Greater Melbourne, p. 28. 
251

 J A Lyne: Greater Melbourne, p. 29.  Apparently, “it is usually reckoned that people are prepared to 

walk a quarter of a mile (400 metres) to a tram.”  The map on p. 28 shows that while many inner city 

districts adhere to this expectation, many more outer suburban lines are now up to a kilometre from most 

residences. 
252

 W H Newnham: Melbourne – the Biography of a City, p. 48.  According to the Australian Places with 

Dutch names online database, this reserve, along with the Gulf of Carpentaria, was named after Pieter de 

Carpentier, the earlier Governor General of the East Indies, and references the intended aim of the ill-

fated Burke and Wills expedition, whose statue group still occupied the reserve. 

The Australian News for Home Readers: 25 October 1864, p. 4.  One link to the temporary location of the 

Burke and Wills statue at this site was thus provided at the time.  “Wills is presented sitting with his note-

paper on his knee, engaged taking down the observations of Burke, who is standing erect earnestly 

looking towards the horizon – as if discerning the ocean  beyond the coast line of the Gulf of Carpentaria 

– to the vicinity of which the two heroic comrades are supposed to have penetrated.”  
253

 UBD Australia: Melbourne Street Directory 2008, map 18. 
254

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 38. 
255

 Victorian State Government: Gordon Reserve Statement of Significance, Victorian Heritage online 

database. 



194 

 

Trained as a stone mason, Stanford emigrated to Australia at fifteen years of age, and 

for whatever reason, simply could not keep himself out of trouble.  After multiple 

charges of horse stealing and highway robbery, he was sentenced to twenty two years in 

Pentridge.
256

  It was while in prison, that the still very young man’s artistic talent came 

to the notice of the prison governor.  Stanford was trained under none other than 

Charles Summers, eventually submitting his own plans for a decorative fountain.  The 

structure that now stands in Gordon Reserve was laboriously carved in bluestone from 

the prison’s quarry and completed in 1870.  After many subsequent appeals, Stanford 

was eventually released the same year, although according to The Argus, still had the 

occasional relapse.
 257

  William Stanford eventually married and settled down in 

Windsor south of the Yarra River.  Unfortunately, the four years of hand carving the 

unforgiving bluestone resulted in his early death from silicosis, at just forty three years 

of age in 1880. 

 

Viewed in 1889 as an addition to this beautification project, the statue of General 

Charles Gordon of Khartoum commemorates the life of the great Victorian hero who 

had been killed during the Siege of Khartoum in 1885.
258

  At the time there was perhaps 

less uncertainty about the public adoration of a colonialist who sought to impose the 

will of the British Empire upon a nation that had been bankrupted through the stupidity 

of its own ruler and the connivance of the British and the French governments;
259

 not to 

mention a single unmarried administrator and military officer whose primary 

recreational activity seems to have been rounding up and succouring young destitute 

boys.
260

  What was apparently more a source of disquiet behind the imperial adoration 

of Gordon in places as far flung as Melbourne, Australia were concerns over the 

circumstances of Gordon’s death.  At the time there was considerable more anguish 

throughout the Empire on the perceived abandonment of Gordon by the Gladstone 

Liberal Government in Britain than by the actions of the Sudanese rebel, the Mahdi, 

                                                 
256

 Bede Nairn. Moore, Prout, Feely: William Walter Tyrell Stanford (1839-1880), Australian Dictionary 

of Biography, vol. 6. 
257

 The Argus: 14 April 1871, p. 5. Geelong Circuit Court, mentioned to be tried before the same Mr 

Justice [later Sir Redmond] Barry who would later try Ned Kelly; William Stanford, horse-stealing. 
258

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 39. 
259

 Sir Valentine Chirol: The Egyptian Problem, 1920, Macmillan and Co, London, p. 26. “Recourse had 

to be quickly made [by the Khedive] to another loan for a record amount of £32,000,000 nominal at 8 

instead of 7 per cent, which after various deductions yielded a little more than £12,000,000 in cash. In 

1874, a last and much smaller loan, for a trumpery £3,000,000 was placed with great difficulty abroad.” 
260

 Sir Valentine Chirol: The Egyptian Problem, p. 24.  “…for Chinese Gordon, for whose curiously 

erratic and quixotic genius he [Sir Samuel Baker, Governor-General of the Sudan] had an almost 

superstitious admiration…He [Gordon] had a kindly as well as a cruel side to his nature.” The Victorian 
Web: Charles George Gordon online database. 



195 

 

himself.
261

  Was the fledgling nation of Australia going to suffer a similar fate when 

political and financial interests back in Britain became of greater immediate concern 

than the welfare of loyal British subjects even further removed than the Sudan?  The 

commission for an original statue of Gordon in Trafalgar Square, London was awarded 

to sculptor Sir William “Hamo” Thornycroft, with a copy of this to be produced for 

Melbourne.  A public subscription was raised from one hundred thousand of 

Melbourne’s citizens, and was so successful that a surplus of one thousand pounds was 

subsequently handed over to the Gordon Institute for Friendless Boys.
 262

 

 

The good citizens of Melbourne, or at least those represented through The Age 

newspaper, were respectful enough of Gordon to express their dismay when the public 

grandstands erected for the Federation parade inadvertently blocked his statue from the 

view of the march participants.  “It seems almost incomprehensible that while efforts 

are being made to beautify the city in anticipation of the arrival of the Duke and 

Duchess of York, the celebrations committee should allow a grandstand to be erected so 

as to obscure one of the most perfect pieces of statuary in the colonies.”
263

  Since tickets 

for the stand had already been allocated to country visitors, little could be done at this 

late stage, although in an amusing instance of Federation era ‘spin’, Mr M’Culloch 

again, claimed that “the stand was originally intended for the cadets, who were to group 

themselves around the statue as a tribute to the memory of the great soldier.”
264

 

 

By the time of the Federation march, the bastion of imperialist sacrifice had been joined 

by the monument to the Eight Hour Day.  Actually, Gordon of Khartoum had been 

joined by only the plinth for the monument to the Eight Hour Day.  Due to a shortfall of 

£3,000, the monument itself was not completed until 1903.
265

   The important 

advancement of the Eight Hour Day for working people had originally been due to 

agitation from Melbourne stone masons and cutters who found themselves being forced 

to deal with the same extremely hard local basalt bluestone that eventually undermined 

William Stanford.  This material was so difficult to cut and shape prior to the 

                                                 
261

 Peter James Marshall: Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire, 1996, Cambridge 

University Press, Cambridge, pp. 76, 300.   George Smith, Oxford University Press: Charles George 

Gordon, The Dictionary of National Biography, part 1 to 1900, Oxford University Press, London. 

“…killed after having sustained a siege of 317 days, succour being sent from England too late.” 
262

 The Argus: 29 February 1928, p. 21. Note the entries in The Argus right through 1885, listing 

individual subscriptions offered by the citizens of Melbourne, including the considerable sum of £5.5.0 by 

a J F from Towong. 
263

 The Age: 1 May 1901, p. 7. 
264

 The Age: 1 May 1901, p. 7. 
265

 W H Newnham: Melbourne – the Biography of a City, p. 211. 



196 

 

availability of machinery that men were being physically worn out.
266

  An Eight Hour 

League was finally formed and advantage was taken of a buoyant economy in 1856 for 

the ground-breaking condition to be won.
267

  The continued shortage of labour through 

the 1880s enabled other trades to also push for improved wages and conditions, with 

Davison again pointing out again the degree to which working people attempted to use, 

rather than rebel against, the social and economic system to better their lot.
268

 

 

The workers at the time were themselves adopting the ideals of the new scientific 

society: both physical relief and cultural advancement.  While secretary of the 

Stonemason’s Union, James Galloway, claimed that, “We have come 16,000 miles to 

better our condition, and not to act the mere part of machinery”, an 1856 resolution 

from the Eight Hour League also stated that “the progress of the arts and sciences, and 

the demand for intellectual gratification and improvement, call for an abridgement of 

the hours of labour.”
269

  The monument plinth would therefore have been a noteworthy 

part of the later Saturday morning Trades and Friendly Societies parade,
270

 which had 

also been listed as a Trades and Friendly Societies: The Eight Hours Demonstration.
271

  

In 1932 the finished statue was moved to its current position outside Melbourne Trades 

Hall in Victoria Street Carlton, and its place taken by the present Paul Montford statue 

commemorating the centenary of the birth of the poet Adam Lindsay Gordon.
272

  Again, 

incongruity would seem to dictate the transfer of such a symbol of radical worker 

advancement from a position adjacent to the seat of Government during the depths of 

the Great Depression, and its replacement by the statue of a poet of varying stature and 

questionable stolidity with anything but a working class heritage.   

 

Adam Lindsay Gordon was the scion of a wealthy plantation family, banished to the 

colonies for his rather dissolute lifestyle.
273

  Interests in poorly managed properties, 

                                                 
266

 The Argus: 26 March 1956, p. 5.  The 8 Hours Day is 100. 
267

  Jill Eastwood: Melbourne – the Growth of a Metropolis, p. 43. 
268

 Graeme Davison: The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne, 1978. “In November 1888…the 

Amalgamated Society accordingly moderated its demand to 45 hours (from 44) and on Christmas Eve the 

carpenters agreed to stand firm.”  However, within three years, “the building industry sensed the first 

tremors of recession.”  
269

 Quoted in Jill Eastwood: Melbourne – the Growth of a Metropolis, pp. 41-42. 
270

 The Argus: 6 May 1901, p. 6. 
271

 The Age: 13 May 1901, p. 8. Trades and Friendly Societies. “A Double Procession: The Eight Hours 

Demonstration.  A Great Spectacle.” 
272

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 39. 
273

 Leonie Kramer: Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-1870), Australian Dictionary of Biography online 

database. Reading between the lines of various biographical sources, it would appear that a rather 

unstable personality was adversely affected by the results of accidents and falls from horses. 



197 

 

horse racing, and business failures resulted in the dispersal of his considerable financial 

legacy, and his poetical output was brought to a premature end with his suicide on 

Brighton Beach, Melbourne on 24 June 1870.
274

  Gordon’s tragic death caused a flurry 

of interest in his poetry, and in 1934, Adam Lindsay Gordon became the only 

Australian poet to be honoured with a bust in Poet’s Corner, Westminster Abbey. “His 

popularity sprang from the romantic aura of his life, his aristocratic background, his 

exile in the colony, his reckless riding exploits, and the pathos of his death.”
275

  That it 

should have been Adam Lindsay Gordon so commemorated and the poetry that honed 

in on the fatalistic and quixotic nature of the demise of Burke and Wills, rather than the 

over-extended and ill-thought out incompetence that resulted in both their deaths and 

the later slaughter of Gordon of Khartoum, is itself most telling. 

 

The western side of the road has retained much of the original Federation feel, with the 

Windsor, later named Grand, Hotel filling the entire block from Little Collins Street to 

Bourke Street.
276

  Although no doubt a place of welcome respite, at the time of the 

Federation parade, the institution had only been re-licensed for four years.  Built in 

1883 to the plans of Charles Webb, the architect also responsible for South Melbourne’s 

impressive Town Hall,
277

 the hotel was converted in 1886 to a Temperance Coffee 

House by Presbyterian temperance advocate and Victorian Premier James Munro.
278

  Of 

course, Munro’s puritan beliefs did not prevent him from accumulating considerable 

wealth during the banking boom of the 1880s, although when the inevitable crash 

occurred he found himself ruined, and retired from public life.
279

  The hotel was 

subsequently sold, its licence returned in 1897, and in 1920 was renamed the Windsor, 

commemorating the British Royal Family’s adoption of this very English sounding 

name toward the end of the First World War.
280

 

 

                                                 
274

 Wilde, Hooton, Andrews: The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, pp. 322-323. 
275

 Wilde, Hooton, Andrews: The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, p. 322. 
276

 Sands & McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, p. 62. 

Photograph Booklet vol. 2, p. 40. 
277

 Apperly, Irving, Reynolds: A Pictorial Guide to Identifying Australian Architecture, p. 54. 
278

 Deborah Tout-Smith: Melbourne – a City of Stories, p. 48. 
279

 Ann M Mitchell: James Munro (1832-1908), Australian Dictionary of Biography online database. 

“Munro was described as a 'rough tyke' in his early years. He was quick tempered and authoritarian but 

always 'easy to get on with if you let him have his own way'.”  
280

 W H Newnham: Melbourne – the Biography of a City, p. 64.  National Trust of Australia (Victoria): 

Walking Melbourne, p. 79. 



198 

 

The primary focal point passed in Spring Street would of course have been the 

Victorian State Parliament House, addressed at 110-160 Spring Street.
281

  While this 

appears to hold to the most logical position in the city, this was apparently originally not 

the case.  When planned between 1853 and 1855, the architect Peter Kerr described the 

high grounds between Bourke Street and the old St Peter’s School as, “Unformed, full 

of holes and dirt, stagnant waters, refuse etc, and it was in addition a harbour for 

undesirable characters.”
282

   Jeff and Jill Sparrow claim that the site was chosen by 

Surveyor General Robert Hoddle “for the purely sectarian purpose of obscuring St 

Patrick’s Catholic Cathedral.”
283

  Actually, William Wardell was not engaged to 

develop plans for St Patrick’s until 1858 and the cathedral had not risen to the point of 

being obscured by anything until 1871.
284

   

 

The massive high Victorian edifice does present an imposing sense of grandeur and the 

wealth that the city and the colony had wrought from the gold rushes.  This is even 

more obviously the case when compared with the more Georgian pre-industrial 

Parliament House in Sydney, although I suspect that pure affluence and exuberance, 

rather than a conscious need to compete with the older city, determined its design.
285

  

Certainly there would have been no packing cases used to line the walls in this 

building.
286

  Interestingly, the building was planned to have been even more ornate, 

with further north and south wings and a massive dome similar to that on the State 

Library, part of the original design.
287

  While structurally built from the same local 

bluestone that has formed the foundation of so many of Melbourne’s other important 

buildings, this material appeared to have been deemed not elegant enough for the 

building’s ultimate presentation.  Bacchus Marsh and Stawell sandstone was therefore 

used as a veneer.
288

  The easier to cut and shape stone was no doubt considered more 

suitable for the classical façade, with the ministry of public works commenting on the 

                                                 
281

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, pp. 40, 41. 
282

 Jeff and Jill Sparrow: Radical Melbourne, vol.1, 2001, The Vulgar Press, Melbourne, p. 92.  In this, at 

least, the attitude towards the site mirrors that towards the site of St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney, 
283

 Jeff and Jill Sparrow: Radical Melbourne, vol.1, p. 91. 
284

 Ursula M De Jong: St Patrick’s Cathedral Melbourne – a guide, 2005, Catholic Archdiocese of 

Melbourne, Melbourne, pp. 32-33. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 42. 
285

 Looking back on the NSW State Parliament House in the Sydney March section of this thesis, it is 

obvious that it would not have required much effort to have outdone the older building in scale or 

grandeur.  To modern sensibilities, it is the subdued understated nature of the building that is its whole 

point. 
286

 NSW Government: Parliament of NSW online database, 2011, chapt. 22, Physical Setting, p. 613. 
287

 Heritage Council Victoria: Parliament House database. 
288

 The Argus: 28 June 1883, p. 6. The Stawell Stone for the Parliament House. 



199 

 

attractiveness of the stone.
289

  Whether one gets the sense of (to borrow the Sparrows’ 

commentary) a “terrified ruling class [that] gave ground before a radicalised 

citizenry”,
290

 perhaps depends upon the cultural viewpoint and wishful thinking that one 

brings to the site. Certainly, the building dominates in a grand rather than overpowering 

way, and would have been the logical location for the temporary, if eventually twenty 

six year, residence of Australia’s Federal Parliament.  

 

If the principal Roman Catholic cathedral in Melbourne was not intended to be obscured 

by the State Parliament House, the initial parade through the city of Melbourne did 

bypass St Patrick’s Cathedral in a way that contrasted with the Sydney march’s 

inclusion of St Mary’s.  Whether this was a religious or cultural snub is interesting to 

contemplate.  Certainly I have found no mention of St Patrick’s being formally ignored 

in any discussion of the route.   However, while the planning of the initial Monday 

presentation parade was concerned with added distance and geometric balance, the 

Thursday march from Government House to the Exhibition Building for the opening of 

Federal Parliament followed a more convoluted path back and forth through the city, 

and even went along Nicholson Street, past Evelyn Place before turning left into Carlton 

Gardens.
291

   This meant that the parade passed only one street away from the Gisborne 

and Albert Streets’ site of the Cathedral, and certainly could have been included if it 

was deemed to have been significant enough. 

 

Turning up Macarthur street and then Gisborne Street would have by-passed State 

Parliament House, although a detour along Albert Street and then back to Victoria 

Parade would have added five hundred metres to the overall march distance.
292

 

Again, this may have over complicated the route to the Carlton Gardens, although the 

conscious or unconscious rebuff would no doubt have rankled with some members of 

the Catholic Church in Melbourne.  Whether the Tuesday Fire Brigades’ Procession 

which did travel down Gisborne Street was meant to offer a level of compensation, I 

doubt that it would have offset any dismay, and the later off and on again banning of St 

                                                 
289

 The Argus: 28 June 1883, p. 6. “We have no hesitation in saying it [the Stawell sandstone] is one of 

the handsomest stones we have ever seen,” 
290

 Jeff and Jill Sparrow: Radical Melbourne, vol.1, p. 91.           
291

 The Argus: 8 May 1901, p. 8.   
292

 UBD: Melbourne and Suburbs Street Directory 2008, map 18. 



200 

 

Patrick’s Day parades through Melbourne would indicate a level of acceptance of 

Catholic culture amongst the city’s hierarchy much lower than that of Sydney.
293

 

 

Tradition has it that the Roman Catholic Church in Victoria failed to gain political 

influence to the same degree as in Sydney, and so retained more the position of the 

outsider.
294

   So with both cities’ primary cathedrals occupying such notable sites, what 

can we learn from a thick description of the two structures?  Having visited both 

buildings during my footstepping, the most notable interior difference centres on the 

number of stained glass windows.  With virtually every major window in St Mary’s 

filled by expensive donated lead light, there is considerable proof of the wealth that the 

Catholic parishioners in Sydney could bestow upon their place of worship.
295

  While the 

exterior structure of St Patrick’s is every bit as imposing, the interior tells a different 

story.  Most windows are glazed in clear golden glass.
296

  This gives a wonderful aura to 

the building, but also indicates that less money was forthcoming for the stained glass 

that Wardell would no doubt have liked to see eventually filling the openings.   

 

It was not surprising that the great Labor split of the 1950s should have commenced in 

Victoria.
297

  A long tradition of political power often results in a mellowing of idealistic 

but unrealistic expectations, and Labor in NSW embodied this from the social upheaval 

of the 1890s Depression onwards.
298

  Communist agitation and union power still existed 

in NSW, notably after the equally traumatic events of the 1930s Depression and Second 

                                                 
293

 The Argus: 23 February 1922, p. 9. St Patrick’s Procession, Catholic Federation’s Protest.  “That this 

conference emphatically protests against the narrow-minded and unjust action of the Melbourne City 

Council in refusing permission to the St Patrick’s Day celebration committee to march through the streets 

of Melbourne.” The Sydney Morning Herald: 16 March 1901, p. 9.  For the first couple of years of the 

Federated nation; 1900 to 1902, St Patrick’s Day was a public holiday in NSW. 
294

 Jeff and Jill Sparrow: Radical Melbourne, vol.1, p. 11. “But Labor in this state [Victoria] has usually 

been an oppositional force. During the period covered here [1890s-1960s], there were Labor ministers in 

Treasury Place for less than five years – in every other Australian state, Labor held office for more than 

twice as long.” 
295

 St Mary’s Cathedral: St Mary’s Cathedral Sydney - A Living Cathedral, pp. 34, 35. 
296

 Ursula M De Jong: St Patrick’s Cathedral Melbourne – a guide, 2005, p. 6. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 42. 
297

 The Argus: 20 February 1939, p. 2.  Catholic Action. “The first national conference of Catholic Action 

will be held in Melbourne this week, and delegates from the various States will be present. A national 

secretariat has been established with a diocesan secretariat in each capital city.”  Jeff and Jill Sparrow: 

Radical Melbourne, volume 2, chapt. 15. Christ’s cadre, describing the influence of B A Santamaria and 

The Movement whose “cells met in tight secrecy. Windows were often blacked out.” 
298

 John Rickard: Australia – a cultural history, p. 143.  “In Victoria, the severity of the 1890s depression 

and the political emphasis on recovery had discouraged polarisation, and the Labor Party lacked 

organisation.” 



201 

 

World War, but was invariably controlled by the more pragmatic Labor side itself.
299

  In 

Victoria, extremism and impotence resulted in greater Communist influence in union 

and Labor affairs and the inevitable reaction from the Catholic ‘groupers’.
300

  This 

division then spilled over into the Federal sphere, causing the Labor party to split along 

both religious and ideological lines.
301

  While the party remained sidelined, both 

Federally and in Victoria through the 1950s and 1960s,
302

 Labor administrations led by 

moderate conservatives such as McKell and moderately right Catholics such as McGirr 

and Cahill continued to control government in NSW.
303

 

 

 

8.  BOURKE STREET AND CITY LIFE 

 

My footstepping retracing the Melbourne Federation march now turned west and began 

back down the slope of Bourke Street, and at the junction of Bourke and Russell Streets 

reached the spot where the structure known as the Citizen’s Arch had been erected.
304

  

The actual location for this particular arch seemed most apt, being at the entrance to the 

heart of Melbourne’s retail district; a place where those from all classes, religions and 

races would have come together for the communal activity of shopping.
305

  Whether the 

actual arch itself would have represented any aspect of this citizenship is another matter.  

The description given by Milne indicates a classically designed pink and gold arch with 

messages of welcome to the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York, including images 

                                                 
299

 Robert Murray: The Ironworkers – a history of the Federated Ironworkers Assn of Aust, 1982, Hale & 

Iremonger, Sydney.  The overly controlling pragmatism of the “NSW Right” of course can over-reach 

itself, resulting in the current state of political affairs in Macquarie Street. 
300

 The Argus: 27 June 1949, p. 2. Catholic Action Fighting Reds. The spread of Communism needed to 

be checked…We could learn much from Communists, who gradually made contacts among workers and 

others, and their influence was spreading.  Their success was helped by the apathy of those who refused 

to recognise the danger.” 
301

 D.J. Murphy: Labor in Politics, the state Labor parties in Australia 1880-1920, 1975, University of 

Queensland Press, Brisbane, chapt. 1.  “A ‘Labor party’ in Victoria contested its first general election in 

1892. Sixty years were to elapse before any of its successors could claim an absolute majority in the 

Legislative Assembly…. By the time Victorian Labor won its first majority in 1952, Labor in the other 

states had already been in office for periods ranging from ten to thirty-four years.” 
302

 Tom Prior: Bolte by Bolte, 1990, Craftsman Publishing, Melbourne, p. 42. Note the chapter “Winning 

Tatts, and Government”, where both Liberal State Premier Henry Bolte and Liberal Federal Prime 

Minister Robert Menzies “always said, ‘Well, they lost again.’  We never claimed the win for ourselves, 

at least, in private we didn’t.”   
303

 G N Hawker: The Parliament of New South Wales 1856-1965, 1971, Victor Blight NSW Government 

Printer, Sydney, pp. 206, 207.  “The Labor Party returned to office in 1941 and remained there until 1965, 

a record term, under W J McKell (1941-47), J McGirr (1947-52), J J Cahill (1952-59), R J Heffron (1959-

64) and J B Renshaw (1964-65).” 
304

 The Argus: 7 May 1901, p. 10. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 46. 
305

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 48. 



202 

 

of the royal visitors and a central portrait of the King.
306

  Did this actually reflect the 

hopes and aspirations of the citizens of the city, or for that matter, the nation?  Even 

allowing for the greater exuberance shown towards representations of royalty at the 

time, there appears to have been little more than was being asserted in most of the other 

arches.  It appears that this actual location was considered by The Age at least to be 

significant enough for the general populace.
307

 

 

Even today there is an excitement and social hum to the precinct; the block bounded by 

Bourke and Collins Streets Street is crowded and the shops are obviously still doing a 

roaring trade.
308

   There is still the sense of the intermingling of services and institutions 

that go to make up the modern city.  The northern side of Bourke Street from Spring 

Street then contained a myriad of small businesses, including watchmakers, cycle works 

and even at number 42, an Oyster Saloon.
309

  On the southern side, the Salvation Army 

still remains between numbers 65 and 71 Bourke Street next to Westwood Place, as it 

was in 1901.
310

  This institution no doubt provided both a source of humour for writers 

such as Dennis, but also valuable social support to the working people in the district. 

 

Crossing over Exhibition Street in 1901, the parade would then have passed the 

principal produce supply for Melbourne, the Great Eastern Markets.
311

  These took up 

the half block from numbers 95 to 115 Bourke Street, and would have been the main 

food store for the city.
312

  This site is now the Southern Cross Tower, the result of one 

of the massive clearances that has taken place to modernise this end of town.  The 

National Trust’s Walking Melbourne booklet makes no mention of either the original 

markets or the tower that has replaced them, although there is an entry for the Eastern 

Arcade that stood next door, and still exists today.
313

  Within the markets, shopping 

must have been an event in itself.  Where else could one find a row of poultry and bird 

dealers next door to a group of phrenologists, followed by porcelain and china 

                                                 
306

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The Story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, pp. 84-85. 
307

 The Age: 7 May 1901, p. 3. 
308

 Clarence James Dennis: Selected Verse of C J Dennis, p. 13. The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke, 

Introduction. Even a century ago, this retail square was the logical place for Dennis’ Sentimental Bloke to 

meet his beloved. “Twas on a Saturdee in Colluns Street, An’ – quite be accident, o’ course – we meet.” 
309

 Sands & McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, 1901, p. 5. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 47. 
296

 National Trust of Australia (Victoria): Walking Melbourne, pp. 74-75. 
311

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 49. 
312

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 48. And consequently was the location where C J Dennis’ larrikin Ginger 

Mick has his vegetable barrow. 
313

 Sands & McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, p. 5. 



203 

 

merchants and a shaving strop manufacturer?
314

   Grocers, fruiters and the poulterers 

such as Richard Harding at number 21 indicate that many people obviously bought live 

birds and killed their own.  

 

The lower level of the markets also contained half a dozen shooting galleries between 

store numbers16 and 31.  This would perhaps imply a greater degree of social 

responsibility at the time compared with today, even if the competitors were using air 

rifles; and it would appear that the worldwide interest in air rifle shooting that was 

evident in Britain at the time had spread to Australia.
315

  Again, reflecting the 

cosmopolitan and jumbled nature of the markets, these galleries shared their level with 

wine cellars and ice cream parlours, a photographic parlour and even W H Baker’s 

pigeon exchange.
316

  What is also noticeable in the directory of the time are not only the 

presence of typical Anglo Saxon and Anglo Celtic names in both the Eastern Markets 

and the Eastern Arcade, but further examples of the ‘exotic’ that, as also in Sydney, can 

appear to the modern footstepper as almost caricatures.  Antonio Ghidossi the Italian 

fruiterer was at number 45 in the market area while Mrs Charlotte Le Blanc’s feather 

shop resided at number 15 in the arcade.
317

  Further down Bourke Street, at number 24 

Russell Place, stood Quong Hing’s Chinese laundry,
318

 sharing this building with H R 

Harper’s The New Australian Electric Co Ltd, surely the high tech store of the day. 

 

This Bourke Street, Collins Street block was also the area for high-end quality clothing, 

at a time when fashions within Australia were making a notable change.  As 

photographs from even the 1880s show, most people at this time would have been 

wearing the heavy woollen clothes, uniforms, long skirts and coats inherited from the 

old country.
319

  The nation was still linked to Britain with social and cultural ties that 

were strong and often impractical.  Even by 1901, the majority of the population were 

either immigrants from the British Isles, or the children of immigrants, and the 

continued wearing of clothing styles from the cold northern hemisphere still seemed 

perfectly natural.  Hence the large number of not only laundries, but the significant 

                                                 
314

 Sands & McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, p. 5. 
315

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 3 May 1898, p. 3.  The Sydney Morning Herald: 4 March 1901, p. 4.  

Rifle shooting club results were published throughout the decade, indicating the obvious social 

acceptability of shooting competitions. “A match took place at the Randwick Rifle Range between teams 

from Liverpool Rifle Club and the Infantry Regiment Rifle Club…Sydney Civilian Rifle Club…was 

engaged in a club shoot on Saturday.” 
316

 Sands & McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, 1901, p. 6. 
317

 Sands & McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, p. 6. 
318

 Note comments on location of laundries and dry cleaners. 
319

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 48. 



204 

 

development of dry-cleaning for the preservation of these garments.
320

  The wealth of 

the new country enabled ordinary citizens who considered themselves to be now living 

in the working man’s paradise to purchase and proudly wear the thick rich woollen and 

heavy cotton garb that would certainly have been beyond many of their expectations 

back in the British Isles.  The light cotton and lighter woollen clothes that have, over the 

last century, become the accepted dress code throughout the mild winters and hot 

steamy summers in Australia, may well have been looked upon as peasant garb 

symbolising the very poverty that immigrants had been escaping in coming to Australia.
 

321
 Davison mentions this eternal human characteristic, that “among the more common 

items of expenditure, dress was the acknowledged badge of status.  It signalled the 

occupation, standing and taste of the wearer and instantly cued the conduct of those she 

met.”
322

  And of course, still does today. 

 

Photographs of Melbourne, both during the march itself, and those of the city in general 

at the turn of the century neatly reflect the clothing of the time.  Both men’s and 

women’s clothing had changed during the 1890s, with the bustle going out amongst the 

well off, and the suits of the men becoming looser and either two piece, or three piece 

with a waistcoat,
323

 however, the visible clothing still reflected standards from Britain.  

Greater formality certainly ruled significant events such as the Federation parade.  The 

Argus of 4 May was quite specific as to the clothing women should wear for the march, 

the receptions and evening concerts.
324

  While a day or walking dress with hat or toque 

(a small brimmed or brimless walking hat) would suffice for most women for most 

purposes, others obviously would “delightedly seize the opportunity to wear during the 

festive six days not fewer than twelve different gowns, exclusive of those they may put 

on in the morning or wear to a fireworks’ display, or such like.”
325

  

 

Any gradual generational change abruptly halted with the death of Queen Victoria. The 

entire empire went into mourning, both literally and culturally with mourning dress, 

                                                 
320

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 1 January 1938, p. 19.  Mention of the serious risk of fire caused by the 

older petrol based dry cleaning solvents explains why there are no dry cleaners listed in the Sands 

Directory for the centre of Melbourne. Apparently they were isolated by legislation. 
321

 The Australasian: 12 January 1918, p. 18.  Standardising Clothing. “This is a subject that every 

woman should take to heart and give much thought to.  Restrictions and regulations in the matter of 

costume run all through the social side of English history.” 
322

 Graeme Davison: The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne, 1978, p. 201. 
323

 Deborah Tout-Smith: Melbourne – a City of Stories, p. 6. 
324

 The Argus: 4 May 1901, p. 15. 
325

 The Argus: 4 May 1901, p. 15. 



205 

 

particularly for men becoming virtually mandatory.
326

  This became a tradition and 

fashion that has continued ever since, with modern dark business suits being essentially 

Victorian mourning dress.  Official’s wives were expected to conform to half-mourning 

gowns in black, white or grey, and while the general public “may please themselves, it 

was assumed that they too would conform to the same sombre and respectful” half-

mourning colours.
327

 

 

One aspect evident from footstepping the Sydney Federation parade, noted through the 

business directories of the time and which has now faded to a ghostly shadow, was the 

number of small and family businesses that provided services for the population.  In the 

days before the expansion of the big department stores, with their reliance upon mass 

transportation for the stocking of their shelves and mass transportation of customers, it 

was the small single shopfront business that made the city function.  This was the same 

situation in Melbourne, and was never more noticeable than in the number of firms 

servicing personal and home entertainment.  In the days before radio and the 

gramophone, it was the ability of people to make their own music at home that provided 

relaxation after a day’s work.  Both musical instrument suppliers and the teachers of 

music were numerous throughout the city, and unlike other trades and callings, did not 

appear to be restricted to a specific district.  Number 201 Swanston Street between 

Bourke and Lonsdale Streets held Walter James Brown and Son, violin and bow 

makers, while next door at 203 Swanston Street was W Paxton & Co, music 

publishers.
328

  Walter Brown was an award winning violinmaker originally from 

London, who exhibited in the Melbourne Exhibition of 1888-1889.
329

  By the time of 

the Federation march, Brown the elder had died but the company continued trading until 

1913.  On the other side of the city at 240-242 Collins Street was virtually a music 

emporium with Alfred Beckett’s music warehouse, and four music teachers: Misses 

Edith Raynor, Bessie Delves, Miss Carabel and an H J King.
330

  And behind this site, 

one block away on Bourke Street, Sutton’s Proprietary Ltd imported both musical 

                                                 
326

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 24 January 1901, p. 8. Mourning in Sydney.  Singleton Argus: 2 

February 1901. “Very many of the local residents have donned mourning clothes out of respect to the 

death of Her Majesty Queen Victoria.”  The Sydney Morning Herald: 1 February 1901, p. 5.  “It is 

announced that the Queen’s statue will today be redecorated with floral offerings…the railway mechanics 

of Eveleigh Workshops inscribed ‘with deepest regret and sorrow’.” 
327

 The Argus: 4 May 1901, p15. 
328

 Sands & McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, p. 65. 
329

 Walter Brown: Violin and Bow Makers of Australia online database. 
330

 Sands & McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, p. 13. 



206 

 

instruments and sheet music.
331

  This Eastern Arcade was also notable in the number of 

music teachers: F Leslie taught dancing at number 30 while an exotic flavour was added 

with Signor G Vadala’s Italian School of Music at number 46.
332

 

 

It was therefore natural that music should have been an important part of the Federation 

parades, with military and community bands taking part in all the celebratory 

proceedings.   As well as bands actually marching in the processions, there were bands 

sited at suitable locations along the routes to provide entertainment for the spectators as 

they waited for the parade to arrive and the participants as they marched past.  Much of 

the music used during the Federation celebrations in both Sydney and Melbourne has 

been collated by Therese Raic in her article Federation: Music in Service to National 

Ambition, published in Australasian Music Research.
333

  The article not only lists the 

bands and program for the Sydney Federation march, but also the musical 

accompaniment to the other events throughout the week.  These included Gourod’s 

Messe Solennelle at St Patrick’s Cathedral on the Sunday prior to the procession to, 

Wagner’s Overture to the Meistersingers and Frederick Cowan’s Song of Thanksgiving, 

both performed at the Conversazione on the evening of the 7 May by Melbourne’s choir 

and orchestra conducted by August Siede.  Further works by Mendelssohn, Hamish 

McCunn and Handel were also included in this performance.
 334

 

 

The Age also noted the bands along the route along with the lists for military guards and 

formal Guards of Honour.
335

  As examples, the Band of the Royal Artillery greeted the 

Vice-Regal party as they arrived at St Kilda Pier while the Second Queensland band 

supported the guard of honour at the Princes Bridge entry into the city. Merely a short 

block to the intersection of Flinders and Swanston Streets stood the Tasmanian State 

Band, although according to Radic, “Only two of the items played found their way into 

the press reporting of the event: the march With Sword and Lance, and the music-hall 

tune (and seemingly very un-Regal) There’ll be a Hot Time in the Old Town 

Tonight”.
336

 

 

                                                 
331

 Sands & McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, p. 3. 
332

 Sands & McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, p. 6. 
333

 Therese Radic: Federation: Music in service to National Ambition. pp. 1-26. 
334

 Therese Radic: Federation: Music in service to National Ambition. pp.19, 20. 
335

 The Age: 6 May 1901, p. 9. 
336

 Therese Radic: Federation: Music in service to National Ambition. pp.16, 18. 



207 

 

The Sydney Inauguration Ceremony at Centennial Park had been accompanied by over 

10,000 voices singing: O God our help in ages past’, ‘Te Deum and both the National 

Anthem God Save the King and Advance Australia Fair.
337

  These would have been the 

standard repertoire to accompany a Vice-Regal event of much solemnity.  However, the 

opening of the First Commonwealth Parliament was complemented with an eclectic and 

one could say multicultural mix of: Slavonic Dances by Dvorak, Windsor Klange by 

Gungl and Le Dernier Sommell de la Vierge by Massenet, finishing with the William 

Tell Overture by Rossini.
338

   

 

As with the earlier Sydney parade, one of the serious concerns of the organising 

authorities was crowd control and crowd safety.  Newspapers published lists of “Hints 

for today:  Be Seated by 1 o’clock,  Keep to the right,  Be patient at crossings,  Help the 

police; they have difficult work,  Avoid crushes as far as possible,  If in a dense crowd 

keep your hands up,  Beware of pickpockets; leave valuables at home.  To guard against 

hunger, provide yourself with a few raisins or dried figs; they sustain one 

wonderfully.”
339

  Importantly, first aid provisions had also been well thought out, and 

still sound remarkably up to date today.  “If anyone faints, raise him or her aloft in a 

prone position, and remove to nearest right-of-way for treatment.  Ambulance men will 

be quickly found by the police in case of necessity.”
340

  “The arrangements which are 

being made by the City Council for the maintenance of a number of ambulance stations 

in various parts of the city are nearly completed.”
341

  These were thoughtfully placed at 

almost all the arches and the Town Hall, although notably not at the Chinese Arch.  

Whether it was due to this arch not being directly on the route, or a reflection of racial 

attitudes, The Argus did make the point.  As well as the Ambulance Corps, “A number 

of ladies and gentlemen have volunteered their services for duty.”  As The Age reported, 

“Arrangements are being made for the whole of the stations to be connected by 

telephone as to secure prompt attention in case of accident.  Any call will be sent to the 

five stations simultaneously, and the nearest squad will immediately attend.  On the 

arrival of the ambulance, the public are requested to ‘help’ by making room for them to 

get to work and away again as quickly as possible”.
 342

 Again, the perceived restrictions 

                                                 
337

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 2 January 1901. 
338

 Therese Radic: Federation: music in service to National Ambition. p. 23. 
339

 The Argus: 6 May 1901, p. 7.  Healthy eating is apparently not just a modern concern.  
340

 The Argus: 6 May 1901, p. 7. 
341

 The Age: 2 May 1901, p. 6. 
342

 The Age: 2 May 1901, p. 6.  . 



208 

 

on the role of women in society a century ago do not always correspond to the realities 

reported in the press. 

 

Our expectations in ensuring public safety during such mass gatherings would appear to 

have changed little over a century, with The Age advising, “Don’t ‘lose your head’ in 

the event of an accident or panic. Help if able.  If you can’t help, don’t interfere, but get 

out of the way, and so make room for those who can.”
343

 Lord Hopetoun himself 

appealed to the public to refrain from throwing items such as papers, flowers and 

fireworks into the streets and thus frighten the horses, although again one would have 

expected the general population of the time to have had an appreciation of the potential 

dangers of even normally well-trained horses.  Overall, these planning arrangements 

utilising responsible members of the public and integrating their support with the latest 

technology would be mirrored a century later with similar provisions being adopted for 

the Sydney Olympics.
344

 

 

 

9. LITTLE LON’ 

 

While most of my research time in Sydney and Melbourne was spent following the 

exact routes of the Federation Parades, I made some significant detours in the cities: 

investigating districts important in terms of the Australian culture of a century ago but 

also significant in that they were by-passed by the marches.  In Melbourne, one was the 

quarter of Little Lonsdale Street, known as ‘Little Lon’; the area to the far north east of 

the city centre bordering then, as now, on the former working class inner suburbs of 

Carlton and Fitzroy.   

 

The block bounded by La Trobe and Spring Streets, Russell and Lonsdale Streets
345

 

appeared decrepit as early as 1870,
346

 and was described by Bessie Harrison Lee, a 

stalwart of Women’s Christian Temperance, as a district of “tiny cottages abutting 

brothels, hotels and opium dens”.
347

  However, along with Sydney’s Rocks and 

Darlinghurst, seems to have existed as much in the imagination as geographical 

                                                 
343

 The Age: 6 May 1901, p. 8. 
344

 NSW Health:  Services for the 2000 Olympic and Paralympic Games, December 2000 online database. 
345

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 52. 
346

 Deborah Tout-Smith: Melbourne – a City of Stories, p. (ix). 
347

 Deborah Tout-Smith: Melbourne – a City of Stories, p. 45. 



209 

 

reality.
348

  While regarded as a hot bed of poverty, deprivation and crime, the location of 

Little Lonsdale Street, adjacent to what were then the main city markets and the 

industrial centres to the immediate north, would indicate that honest employment was 

probably the norm.  However, dishonest employment was also a feature of the district, 

with it containing the city’s brothel and gambling area.
349

  Certainly Tout-Smith also 

points out that “by 1900 Little Lon was one of Australia’s most multicultural 

neighbourhoods” with Germans, Jews, Chinese, Southern Europeans Syrians, Lebanese 

and Italians inhabiting the quarter, and contributing to the city.
350

 

 

It was no doubt with this in mind that the Little Lonsdale Street area was chosen by C J 

Dennis a decade after Federation for the fictional Spadger’s Lane setting of his verse 

novella beginning with The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke.
351

  The district and its 

colourful collection of Larrikins, Coves, Donnas and Skirts
352

 created such an appeal for 

Dennis that he ended up dedicating to ‘Little Lon’ a large part of his literary output: The 

Moods of Ginger Mick, Doreen and Rose of Spadgers.
353

  Even the domesticated post 

First World War augmentations of Digger Smith and Jim of the Hills stand primarily as 

rural contrasts to the close and excitingly dangerous world of the inner city toughs.
354

  

 

With so much of the district subsequently demolished and redeveloped, it is difficult to 

determine just which remaining indent would have been used by Dennis as the 

                                                 
348

 Alan Mayne and Tim Murray: The Archaeology of Urban Landscapes, 2001, Cambridge University 

Press, Cambridge, chapt. 7. Imaginary landscapes; reading Melbourne’s ‘Little Lon’.  As much as an 

imaginary landscape, surely Little Lon exemplified the concept of an imagined community. If such 

communities did not exist, perhaps they would have had to be imagined to act as a cultural response to the 

expectations and aspirations of the wider society.
 
 

349
 Graeme Davison: The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne, 1978, p. 236.  Davison quotes itinerant 

evangelist Henry Varley to the effect that “no other city the size of Melbourne that has so many 

prostitutes in it…no city the size of this on God’s earth with five or six such debasing places of 

amusement in it as Melbourne has.” It seems unlikely that there would have been no other city in the 

world of Melbourne’s size with the same number of sex workers, and there is no mention of which parts  

of the city were so affected 
350

 Deborah Tout-Smith: Melbourne – a City of Stories, p. 45. 
351

 Clarence James Dennis: Selected Verse of C J Dennis, pp. 9-37. 
352

 Melbourne Truth: 25 September 1915, p. 2. “A neatly-dressed, pleasant faced girl named Alice Collins 

was charged in the City Court on Wednesday with having used indecent language in Little Lonsdale 

Street on the previous evening…It is disgraceful that such language should come out of any woman’s 

mouth, and you stand there and smile…Alice ceased to smile as she departed for the cells.” 
353

 Clarence James Dennis: Selected Verse of C J Dennis, table of contents p. (xxi). 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 53. 
354

 Alec A Chisholm: The Making of a Sentimental Bloke, 1946, Georgian House, Melbourne, p. 75.  Note 

Melbourne man-of-letter Robert Henderson Croll’s mention of the derivation of Bill “The Bloke”.  The 

character was apparently based on a real life plumber who “was frequently called in by Chinese when 

repairs were needed in the opium-dens or gambling-shops” and who then made the acquaintance of 

Dennis when he moved to the country outside Melbourne. 



210 

 

archetype for Spadger’s.
355

   Most of the block is now taken up with bastions of the 

corporate world: the Telstra Centre, Commonwealth Offices and new blocks of 

apartments,
356

 although the architectural history of the area and its subsequent 

“improvement” is covered by a page and a half in the National Trust’s Walking 

Melbourne booklet.
357

  Most notable are the few workers’ cottages that do remain, and 

the number of churches and chapels that would have served the ostensibly non-religious 

inhabitants.
358

  A singular enduring structure is the former Jewish Synagogue on the 

corner of Exhibition and Little Lonsdale Streets.  Although the Jewish congregation left 

in 1877 for larger premises, the building continued to be used as a mission to the poor 

and a kindergarten until 1989.
359

  Along with the prevalent attitudes towards the 

Chinese, the attitudes of the local residents towards the Jewish population appears not 

have been as negative as later commentators would imply.
360

 

 

One of the heritage sites currently celebrated in the district is the well-known brothel 

known as Madam Brussels’, then operating at 32-34 Lonsdale Street.  Madam Brussels’ 

Lane is now an arcade that passes back to Casselden Place and the preserved cottages 

that sit rather self-consciously among the modern corporate offices and coffee shops.
361

  

No doubt the notoriety and salaciousness of its reputation guaranteed that, if only in 

name, Madam Brussels’ would remain.
362

   The most famous tale told of this august 

institution centres on the loss of the Victorian Legislative Assembly’s gold plated mace 

on Friday 9 October 1891.
363

  According to The Argus: 

 

                                                 
355

 History of Melbourne City, Victoria: Local Hero online database, p. 4.   

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 53. Judging by the Hal Gye drawing, there is the possibility that 

Cumberland Place served as the model for Spadger’s Lane. 
356

 UBD Australia: Melbourne Street Directory, map 2.  Alan Mayne and Tim Murray: The Archaeology 

of Urban Landscapes, pp. 90-91. “In 1948 the Commonwealth Government compulsorily acquired the 

blocks on either side of Little Lonsdale Street…The rest of the block was cleared in the 1970s for a 

telephone exchange.” 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 55.  
357

 National Trust of Australia (Victoria): Walking Melbourne, pp. 89-91. 
358

 Note the Anglican Mission in Spring Street, Wesley Church in Lonsdale Street, not to mention the 

many other churches in the Little Bourke Street area; and of course St Patrick’s Cathedral across on 

Nicholson Street. 
359

 National Trust of Australia (Victoria): Walking Melbourne, p. 91. 
360

 Ann Curthoys and Andrew Markus: Who are our Enemies? p. 29. 
361

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, pp. 54, 55. 
362

 Alan Mayne and Tim Murray: The Archaeology of Urban Landscapes, p. 90. 
363

 The Argus: 10 October 1891, p. 9. Although a serious theft in itself, and a blot on the Office of the 

Parliament, the reaction of the august Argus was rather strange.  Mention of the event was hidden away 

on page 9, despite the over blown reaction to “the most extraordinary robbery ever heard of in the 

colonies, probably indeed without parallel in the conventional history of the world”, and was 

compounded by confusion over whether the object was gold plated silver, or “made entirely of Victorian 

gold” and therefore impossibly valuable and heavy. 



211 

 

 At the time, Sir Matthew Davies was Speaker.  One night there was a late sitting.  

Parliament did not adjourn until 2 o’clock next morning and when the officers of the 

House resumed their duties seven hours later the mace could not be found.  Among the 

rumours as to what had become of it was the story that a party of roystering (sic) 

legislators had removed  the mace to a residence near Parliament house where it was 

used in a burlesque on the proceedings of Parliament, and was eventually taken away to 

destroy all evidence of this undignified proceeding.
364

   

 

While suspicion also apparently fell on the Parliamentary electrician, Thomas Jeffrey, 

the fact that charges were never proven, and the mace never recovered would indicate 

more than mere larceny was involved.
365

  The previous wooden mace was pressed back 

into temporary service, to be replaced with a new silver and gold plated item just after 

the Federation parade and opening of Federal Parliament, and in time for the following 

Monday’s sitting of the State Legislative Assembly.
366

 

 

Just how disreputable Little Lonsdale Street really was is, of course open to question.  

One of the issues raised by my thesis is the degree to which sources and evidence are 

dependent upon the limitations of those writing at the time.  Whether it was the literary 

interloper Dennis, the religious evangelicals of the Wesley Mission and Salvation Army 

that are still present in the district,
367

 or the toffs and shocked journalists of The Argus 

who came to gawk, and occasionally even partake of the sly pleasures, most of the 

opinions of the district offered to us are those of outsiders.
368

  As Davison himself 

comments: “Everyone assumed that the slum dwellers inhabited a separate moral 

universe.”
369

  Historian Andrew La Nauze indicates that this has long been a common 

attitude.  

                                                 
364

 The Argus: 19 April 1905, p. 7. 
365

 The Argus: 13 October 1891, p. 5.  The Stolen Mace, not yet recovered. “Whether the mace which 

adorned the table of the Legislative Assembly on last Thursday night and was soon afterwards stolen by 

an irreverent thief, has yet passed through the melting pot, and taken on the form of common bar silver, is 

not yet known.” 
366

 The Argus: 17 February 1893, p. 6. The Missing Mace, Meeting of the Board of Enquiry.  Even this 

board of enquiry held more than a year later was unable to come up with an answer as to the fate of the 

mace, with some lingering suspicion left hanging over a local house of ill repute and Thomas Jeffrey.  No 

doubt the opening of Federal Parliament in Melbourne six weeks earlier was incentive enough to have the 

mace finally replaced, although one would have thought that this would have been done prior to the 

national event, rather than after. 
Also mentioned in the Parliament of Victoria: On this Day online database.   
367

 Deborah Tout-Smith: Melbourne – a City of Stories, p. 45. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 47. 
368

 Chris Jenks: Visual Culture, p. 150. “Bourgeois men derived vicarious pleasure from visiting the ‘bad’ 

and ‘ugly’ parts of the town and rationalised their conduct by claiming to speak on behalf of the poor.” 
369

 Davison: The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne, 1978, p. 237.  



212 

 

 

Stanley Jevons spent a rather uneventful evening perambulating around the Rocks 

(Sydney’s equivalent district) in search of vice in the 1850s, and noted instead people 

gossiping quietly on street corners or seated comfortably in their front rooms, reading, 

talking and sewing.  Yet it did not occur to him that his portrayal of the area as a 

stinking sink of the purest evil, and the people as possessing ‘dirty clothes, slovenly 

manner and repulsive countenance’ might be just a little exaggerated.
370

 

 

No doubt the quarter did represent a great communal need in the days before social 

security and welfare.
371

  As Davison goes on to claim, “The evils of urban life – poverty 

was only one – no longer seemed isolated and remediable, but endemic and well-nigh 

insoluble.” 
372

  However, as indicated by the popularity of Dennis’ works, “the ‘Little 

Lon’ of the mind” was also a place of humour.  This sense of humour was noticeably 

absent in the longer-running discourse of moral reformers.
 373

   “‘Little Lon’ was 

appropriated by them as a symbol of the urban wastelands that needed to be reclaimed 

for decency.”
374

  Even as late as the 1960s, the block bounded by Russell, Bourke, 

Spring and Latrobe Streets remained a rabbit warren of lanes and small cross streets 

retaining an air of excitement, mingled with social embarrassment, and a reality to avoid 

at times of national significance.
 375

 

 

What this location also represented at the time, certainly for someone with modern 

sensibilities, was the inter-connectedness between races and classes in the pre-

automobile and pre-suburban era.  With the removal of the so-called underclass living 

behind Bourke and Lonsdale Streets, and the re-development of the former club land 

and Paris end of Collins Street, social distinctions have become less compressed.  A 

century ago, when the population of the inner city was largely residential, it would have 

                                                 
370

 A J La Nauze: William Stanley Jevons (1835-1882), Australian Dictionary of Biography online 

database. “Known in Sydney as an able, if diffident, scientific observer and writer.”  Alan Mayne and 

Tim Murray: The Archaeology of Urban Landscapes, p. 80. 
371

 Mark Hearn and Greg Patmore: Working the Nation – Working Life and Federation 1890-1914, chapt. 

8.  Knitting the Social Safety Net: Reassessing the Role of Federation in shaping Social Protection, 1901-

1914.  Many people hoped one of the roles of the evolving Labor movement would be to bring support 

and a sense of hope to the folk who often found themselves in a downward spiral of hopelessness and 

social and financial failure. 
372

 Davison: The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne, 1978, p. 251.  
373

 Museum of Victoria: Exploring a vanished community online database.  Note the recognition of 

“slumland sensationalism”. John Archer: Building a Nation – a History of the Australian House, pp. 142-

143.  Even the Harold Cazneaux tableaux of “vermin-infested hovels” actually look quite clean and neat 

for working class districts that have just come out of a depression. 
374

 Alan Mayne and Tim Murray: The Archaeology of Urban Landscapes, p. 90. 
375

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 52. 



213 

 

been the closeness between social groups and classes that the footstepper surely would 

have noticed most clearly.
376

  It was less than a ten minute walk and less than a 

kilometre in distance between Melbourne’s Little Lonsdale Street and Collins Street, as 

it was between Sydney’s Darling Harbour and Wexford Street, and the comparable 

Macquarie Street’s wealthy club society.
377

  This kilometre today would seem to have 

changed in perception from a similar distance a century ago.
378

  A walk or hansom cab 

journey from a gentleman’s club or ladies coffee lounge to the brothel district of Little 

Lon’ and the disreputable characters of Little Bourke Street in Melbourne, or 

Darlinghurst and Wexford Street in Sydney, must have seemed like travelling to another 

world.
379

  Culturally, it really would have been another world and no doubt writers such 

as Dennis and Lawson exaggerated the different social and cultural characteristics for 

effect.
380

  

 

The question posed by Gould and White: “If you had a free choice, where would you 

live?”
381

 is recognised as speculative, since not only does this question vary with 

different peoples from different eras, but with the ideals and cultural ideologies that 

people absorb from their own era.  We now realise that the never-ending suburbia that 

became fashionable after Federation was a false ideology based on false premises.  

Poverty was endemic in the inner city in the lead up to Federation and beyond because 

                                                 
376

 The Argus: 21 January 1905, p. 17.  Sydney and Melbourne Population Statistics. “In his recently 

published work ‘A Statistical Account of Australia and New Zealand 1900-4’, Mr T A Coghlan, 

Government statist (sic) of New South Wales, deals at length with a favourite topic of his, the 

centralisation of population in cities. “The progress of the chief cities of Australasia has been remarkable, 

and has no parallel among the cities of the old world.”  Neville Hicks: Sir Timothy Augustine Coghlan 

(1855-1926), Australian Dictionary of Biography online database. Sir Timothy Coghlan, the NSW 

statistician and public servant was yet another aspirational identity from a working class Irish background 

who used both the expanding public school system and his own family and personal ambition to rise 

through the public service.  “Coghlan contributed substantially to the public debate on the financial 

aspects of Federation. His insistence on safeguards for New South Wales influenced Reid and (Sir) 

William McMillan, and other members of the National Australasian Convention; but it alienated some 

'ultra' Federationists—such as B. R. Wise—who favoured free trade, but were willing to 'sink the fiscal 

issue' if that would achieve Federation.”     
377

 Susie Steinbach: Understanding the Victorians, 2012, Routledge, Oxford, p. 20. “A key Victorian 

tension was between the city’s centre and its slums…between whom there is no intercourse (sic)…as if 

they were dwellers in different zones.” 
378

 Peter Gould and Rodney White: Mental Maps, 1974, Pelican Books, Harmondsworth, chapt. 1. 

UBD Australia: Melbourne Street Directory 2008, map 2, main roads maps 002, 009, and 007.  Gregory’s 

Publishing Company: Sydney Street Directory 2011, maps A, B regional road maps 3, 4, 6. Even when 

walking, it appears to have been the case that people’s sense of distance was quite different; and coming 

from car-oriented Canberra to the centre of Melbourne, the disparity becomes even more noticeable.  
379

 Susie Steinbach: Understanding the Victorians, p. 20. “They [Maps Descriptive of London Poverty] 

revealed not only widespread poverty, but worrying proximity between the classes.” 
380

 However, they also would not have been noted as such by their readers if they were not based upon a 

commonly experienced reality. 
381

 Peter Gould and Rodney White: Mental Maps, 1974, Pelican Books, Harmondsworth, p. 69. 

http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mcmillan-sir-william-1105
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mcmillan-sir-william-1105
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/wise-bernhard-ringrose-9161


214 

 

the nation was in the grip of a depression: one that hit Melbourne particularly hard.
382

  

Working class districts were breeding grounds for disease because services such as 

sewerage had not kept pace with population, and had not been widely developed as 

public services in the first place.
383

  As mentioned in chapter 14 of the Sydney march 

section of this thesis, the end result of suburbanisation is now manifest not only in 

debates regarding the endless expansion of major cities, but also by the fact that these 

very inner city suburbs that were the bane of government health inspectors and planners 

a century ago are now some of the most expensive and desirable residential areas in 

which to live.
384

   

 

 

10.  RACE IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS 

 

Continuing west down Little Lonsdale Street and past Exhibition Street the footstepper 

now enters the Chinese quarter of the city.
385

  This district has expanded south through 

Chinatown in Little Bourke Street, and certainly the whole area seems to have been a 

Chinese enclave from early times.
386

  As with the Anglo Australians one block away in 

Little Lon’, it would surely have been the proximity to the markets that drew small 

manufacturers, traders and labourers to the neighbourhood.
387

  The introductory chapter 

of C J Dennis’s The Moods of Ginger Mick; “Duck and Fowl”, while ostensibly 

depicting the brutal life of the larrikin, actually spends four and a half pages describing 

the Chinese restaurants and the food that was served in the district at the time.
388

  The 

attitudes of the locals (at least as expressed by Dennis) towards the Chinese appear to be 

the off-handed dismissal of familiarity.   Ah Foo and the “Chows” are regarded as an 

                                                 
382

 Geoffrey Blainey: A Land Half Won, chapt. 20. 
383

 Peter Curson and Kevin McCracken: Plague in Sydney – the anatomy of an epidemic, pp. 83-84. 
384

 Brian Turner: The Australian Terrace House, p. 85. Descriptions of the inner city of Sydney, notably 

Paddington.  “As one suburb became fashionable enough to drive its house prices beyond the reach of 

first-home buyers, the process was repeated in neighbouring areas with large stocks of unrestored 

nineteenth century houses.  This pattern continues.”  This closeness to the city now comes without the 

previously attended health concerns.  The closely packed terraces houses continue to serve their original 

function of enabling large populations to reside in small areas, with the always acknowledged advantages 

in public transport, shopping, educational facilities and closeness to the city’s cultural institutions. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 55. 
385

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, pp. 56, 60. 
386

 Sheridan Morris: Melbourne Past and Present, 2008, Axiom Publishing, Adelaide, p. 118. 
387

 Sands and McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, pp. 8-9.  Almost the whole of 

Little Bourke Street, certainly east of Swanston Street consisted of Chinese businesses. 
388

 Clarence James Dennis: The Moods of Ginger Mick, 1976, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, pp. 15-19. 

Duck an’ Fowl. 



215 

 

amorphous group that is certainly not equal to the Anglo and Celtic Australians, but nor 

are they vile creatures to be cruelly discriminated against. 
389

 

 

A level of tension toward Chinese immigrants certainly had existed since the time of the 

Gold Rushes,
390

 and events overseas at the time of Federation sought to further muddy 

the waters.  The same forces within China that had pushed Chinese peasant families to 

sponsor individuals to risk their lives and livelihoods in the goldfields of New South 

Wales and Victoria were creating similar social pressures back home.  With the 

expansion of trade during the nineteenth century due to the same technical 

developments in shipping that led to the settlement of Australia in the first place,
391

 

luxury goods such as porcelain, silk, cotton and tea from China became all the rage in 

Europe.  Racist attitudes expressed towards the Chinese throughout the century co-

existed comfortably with the expanding vogue for Chinoiserie.
392

  

 

 It was then this very fashion that fed the trade imbalance between Britain and China 

and led to so much conflict.
393

  Rather than deplete her own reserves in paying for these 

goods, Britain created a circulatory trade pattern whereby China was “encouraged” to 

import opium from Britain’s other colonies on the sub-continent.  What had been a trade 

imbalance in favour of China now became one detrimental to the Chinese, and as 

always, it was the peasants who paid the price.
394

  This price was not just paid in China.  

Opium became a serious problem among both the Chinese and those who consorted 

with them in Australia.  Opium dens flourished in the inner districts of both Sydney and 

Melbourne, and death from opium addiction became as common as the usual death from 

the results of alcohol.
395

 

 

                                                 
389

 Clarence James Dennis: Selected Verse of C J Dennis, p. 83. The Crusaders. 
390

 Melbourne Argus: 17 March 1858, p. 7.  Even at this time, concern was being expressed over the huge 

and increasing population from the “Celestial Empire”. 
391

 Marshall: The Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire, p. 33. 
392

  Peter Gay: Age of Enlightenment, 1966, Time-Life International, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, p. 60. 
393

  Peter James Marshall: Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire, pp. 3, 103. 
394

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 17 January 1902, p. 6. China and the Boxers. “The Empress Dowager, 

who is represented as having fully recovered her influence over the Emperor, seems according to our 

cables this morning to be pursuing her old policy with necessary modifications. With one hand she 

repressed the Boxers and with the other she helps them. She has, like certain European monarchs who 

have been restored to the throne, learnt nothing and forgotten nothing.”  Bob Nicholls: Bluejackets & 

Boxers, 1986, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, p. 1. Nicholls points out the degree to which Chinese society was 
undermined by the situation. This was reflected in the degree to which the Empress Dowager was caught 

in the middle: trying to keep the more powerful Europeans satisfied, preserve her own country, and 

preserve her own traditional political power. 
395

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 24 April 1888, p. 3.  An even-handed Herald mentions the death of both 

vegetable hawker Ah Jack from opium and Luke Hay, farmer from Ryde, from the effects of alcohol. 



216 

 

Poverty and social discord in China increased, and newspapers of the day recorded the 

exasperation of the ordinary Chinese, as violence against those symbols of European 

incursion, the Christian missionaries, increased.   The Sydney Morning Herald noted the 

degree to which Christian evangelical zeal and insensitivity entered deeper into China, 

acting as a provocation to violence.
396

   The I-ho-ch’uan (the Righteous and 

Harmonious Fists), or Boxers, were one of many dissident organisations that arose 

using what we might think of as an aberration of Kung Fu and Shaolin teachings to both 

provide a sense of unity, and afford intended physical imperviousness to European 

weapons.
397

  Their fanaticism knew no limits: “A Boxer’s battle cry was a simple, 

uncomplicated, even catchy, ‘Sha! Sha!’ (Kill, Kill).”
398

  The North China Daily News, 

which originally coined the term “Boxers” claimed that, “there is no doubt at all about 

its [the Boxer secret society] aim – to get rid of the foreigners in China by killing them 

all.”
399

  Accounts that began with the prosaic short Argus pieces in September 1900, 

mentioned both promises by “Li Hung Chang [the powerful pro-western Chinese 

administrator who aided the European nations to defeat the Boxers], who still remains at 

Shanghai…to take vigorous measures to restore order in China, to protect foreigners 

and to punish the Boxers”, led to coverage of the subsequent slaughter of some two 

thousand Boxers near Beijing by local authorities.
400

 

 

By May 1900, the foreign powers had had enough and some two thousand sailors and 

marines from eight European nations and the United States landed near Taku on the 

Chinese coast.  Events escalated and by 21 June the Chinese Army came out in support 

of the Boxers and besieged the foreign legations in Beijing.
401

  British Secretary for the 

Colonies, Joseph Chamberlain requested assistance and although Australia, like Britain 

herself, had her land forces fully engaged in South Africa, the colonies sought to almost 

                                                 
396

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 22 June 1900, p. 5.  The Position in China.  “Christianity is regarded as 

one of these foreign influences, which accounts for the recent murder of native Christians in the populous 

district mid-way between Peking and Pao-ting. These Chinese Christians, men women and children – 

were barbarously killed because, in the opinions of the Boxers, they had acted as traitors.”  

Understandable sympathy on the part of Europeans for the fate of abandoned children was countered by 

the thoughtless erection of Christian steeples that upset the feng shui of local surroundings. 
397

 Peter Fleming: The Siege at Peking, 1959, Rupert Hart-Davis, London, pp. 38, 49-51. 
398

 Bob Nicholls: Bluejackets & Boxers, 1986, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, p. 6. 
399

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 16 June 1900, p. 5. SMH: Boxers Preparing to Fight.  SMH: 27 

December 1900 p. 5. Boxers Attack a French Force.  SMH: 17 January 1902. China and the Boxers.  The 

issue remained in the press for the next year and a half at least. 
400

 The Argus: 3 September 1900, p. 5. 
401

 Nicholls: Bluejackets & Boxers 1986, pp. 8-9. 



217 

 

outdo each other in their willingness to offer support.
402

  Two hundred men from the 

Victorian Navy, two hundred and sixty from NSW and one hundred crew members 

from the South Australian ship Protector embarked for China in September 1900.
403

  

Arriving too late to give effective assistance for the relief of the legations, the 

Australians performed only routine guard duty and eventually left in March 1901 

having suffered six fatalities, none as a result of enemy action.
404

  As was their 

experience with the Boer War, Australian military personnel would leave six 

independent colonies for China, and return to a newly federated nation.
405

 

 

While the newspapers of the day were covering these events in China,
406

 their reports on 

the uprising concentrated on the political, terrorist and military aspects rather than 

underling racial tensions.  There was little connection made between the Boxer uprising 

and the killing of Europeans in China, and the position of local Chinese in the 

Australian community.  Internally, the Chinese themselves made more of a connection, 

with bitter battles fought in Australia between the various reform movements.
407

  The 

Australian press itself seemed oblivious to the social tensions both within the Australian 

Chinese community, and within China itself, despite this initiating the nation’s offer of 

military assistance.  The Daily Telegraph  almost amusingly reported that, “A riot, said 

to be the most exciting since the historic affair of the Eureka stockade, occurred at 

Ballarat this afternoon…Chairs and tables were seized, and a rack containing spears 

used on feast days, was quickly emptied.”
408

  The social discord being replicated in 

                                                 
402

 Melbourne Argus: 22 November 1900, p. 5.  With the Australians.  Bob Nicholls: Bluejackets & 

Boxers, 1986, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, pp. 24-25. 
403

 Dennis et al: Oxford Companion to Australian Military History 1995, Oxford University Press, 

Melbourne, p. 117. 
404

 Major E W M Norie: Official Account of Military Operations in China 1900-1901, 1995, The Battery 

Press, Nashville. The limited impact of Australia’s role can best be judged by the four brief mentions in 

the index; comparable to that of Austria. 
405

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 22 May 1901, p. 7.  Bob Nicholls: Bluejackets & Boxers, 1986, Allen & 

Unwin, Sydney, p. 51.  One of the overlooked but significant effects of the military mission to the Boxer 

Rebellion was the early (and primitive) use of inoculation against smallpox. Although this would prove to 

be as significant as Ashburton Thompson’s implementation of procedures to counter plague the very 

same year, few of the press reports of the time appear to mention the fact that the troops were given 

“lymph from the Sydney Health Board collected prior to sailing”.  The effectiveness of this early form of 

inoculation was undercut a little by the fact that one of the six who died was Private Charles Walter 

Smart, who actually succumbed to smallpox upon returning to Australia, and was buried at North Head 

Quarantine Station. 
406

 The Argus: 13 August 1900, p. 5. One example of the numerous press reports from the major daily 

newspapers in all capital cities.  Help from Australia. “HMCS Protector, with the South Australian naval 

contingent, left Sydney for Thursday Island en route to China this morning.” 
407

 The Queanbeyan Age: 19 December 1900, p. 2. 
408

 The Daily Telegraph: 18 December 1900.   



218 

 

Australia was viewed as just another internal clan and criminal faction turf war that was 

unfortunately also a common occurrence.
409

 

 

It should have come as no surprise that the same quixotic multi-layered attitude should 

have applied to the representation of Chinese culture during the Federation celebrations 

in Melbourne.  As was the case with the Chinese quarters in both Sydney and 

Melbourne, so it was with the Chinese Arch in Swanston Street.  Although the 

Federation parades passed by, they did not actually enter into these districts or pass 

under the arch since it was located one laneway back up Swanston Street, adjacent to 

Little Bourke Street and the western end of Chinatown.
410

  However, The Age informed 

its readers of the planned proceedings for the Chinese procession on the same pages as 

the prelude to the Stockman’s march; both taking place on 7 May, the day after the main 

Monday parade.  Assembling time in Little Bourke Street was to be 2.30pm; all 

vehicular traffic was halted in Bourke Street and Swanston Streets, and trams restricted 

for both these processions.  Although held the day after the main celebratory march, the 

Chinese procession was reported as a high point of the Federation celebrations in 

Melbourne.  According to The Age, “Probably 200,000 people witnessed and enjoyed 

the Chinese procession through the principal streets of Melbourne.”
 411

  Certainly 

photographs of the time show the large number of people who filled the Bourke Street 

precinct for the later Chinese Parade.
412

 

 

There was a similar recognition and even admiration for the exotic attraction of Chinese 

culture as there was with Italian and French.  The Argus of the following day summed 

up the mixture of cultural attraction and social condescension that many Australians felt 

for the Chinese.  As The Argus commented: 

 

If there is any virtue that can be laid at the doors of the Chinese, it is that responsible for 

first-class processions.  The cold-blooded Westerner many be ignorant of Chinese lore, 

incapable of fathoming the deep symbolism of their pageants, and impressed by noting 

but amused contempt for Chinese militarism; but one thing is certain, when he sees the 

                                                 
409

 The Sydney Morning Herald:  29 April 1880, p. 5. 
410

 UBD Australia: Melbourne Street Directory 2008, map 2. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 58. 
411

 The Age: 8 May 1901, p. 8. 
412

 The Age: 7, 8 May 1901. 



219 

 

commencement of a Chinese procession he will not turn away until the crowd sweeps 

over the opening to signify that no more is to be seen.
413

 

 

Rather than a dismissed aversion to Chinese culture, the attitude expressed seemed 

remarkably similar to the mix of patronising and genuine interest that was shown 

towards Southern European culture during the 1950s and 1960s or towards Asian and 

Middle Eastern culture today.  “There was not a jarring note in yesterday’s procession,” 

noted The Bulletin,  “unless it was that of the Chinese bands…Its main features were 

placed in positions carefully selected , and were approached by contrasts enhancing 

their value.”
414

   There was actually an assumed appreciation of Chinese religious 

knowledge when it came to describing the Chinese Dragon,
415

 although significantly, 

The Argus gave a hint of underlying racism.  “In all countries water is regarded as the 

special abomination of all properly constituted dragons…The battle was conducted 

most effectively and forgetting for once [my emphasis] White Australia, the people 

rose, and gave the clever Chinese the cheers they deserved.”
416

   

 

Even so, as Humphry McQueen admits, attitudes of concern toward the Chinese were 

not merely the result of Anglo imagination.  “Racism in Australia was not a response to 

a tiny minority.  Although the percentage of Chinese in the total population of Australia 

remained small, there were times and places when they were in the majority.”
417

  This 

situation was to change, however.  At their height in 1872, 14,148 Chinese miners were 

in the Victorian goldfields, and from this date there was a decrease to 5,193 by 1880.  In 

the same year the Chinese population of Melbourne was listed as only 500, with 380 in 

the suburbs; a rather small number out of a population of 280,000 in Melbourne and 

850,343 for the whole of Victoria.
 418

  By 1901 this figure was down to 6,230 in 

Victoria, with even fewer in both New South Wales and Queensland.
419

 

                                                 
413

 The Argus: 8 May 1901, p. 8. 
414

 The Bulletin:  24 February 1900, p. 13.  As always, this irrepressible magazine managed in one cartoon 

to exemplify social condescension and underlying gross eroticism toward both the Chinese and lower 

class women. Two buxom ladies looking at a rather dopey [or doped out] Chinese man. “Liz (who is not 

unwilling): There ain’t so much the matter with his face.  You’ve never seen it when it lights up.”   
415

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 59. 
416

 The Argus: 8 May 1901, p. 8. 
417

 Humphrey McQueen: A New Britannia, 2004, p. 38. “This was the case in some of the southern New 

South Wales goldfields in the 1860s. At the Palmer river diggings near Cooktown in 1877, the Chinese 

outnumbered the Europeans by 17,000 to 14,000…Most important was the fact that in the mid 1850s one 

adult male in five in Victoria had been Chinese. 
418

 The Argus: 9 June 1880, p. 10. 
419

 Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics: Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of 

Australia 1901-1907, No.1, p. 108. 



220 

 

 

The previously mentioned issue of Chinese-made furniture seems to have been 

primarily a fear of the loss of white Australian jobs.  Whether this was due to cheaper 

labour, more industrious labour, or a preference for the Chinese furniture’s level of 

quality and style, the Sands & McDougall Directory implies that by 1901 this was 

virtually a lost cause.  Market Lane in the middle of Little Bourke Street’s Chinatown 

almost totally comprised Chinese furniture and carpenter shops.
 420

  Notable among the 

number of Chinese manufacturers were San Lee & Co, Ah Hoy and Wing Loong, with 

Charles Ah Pon in the equally cramped Commercial Lane (now Croft Alley)
421

 down 

the road.  Ironically, in view of the reported attitudes towards the Chinese regarding 

health and cleanliness,
422

 these many small enterprises shared the same laneway address 

as The Melbourne Sanitary Engineering Company.
423

 

 

It would therefore appear that a large part of the furniture purchased by the good 

citizens of the city at the time must have been manufactured by Chinese, or Chinese 

Australians.
424

  Even though there was a concerted campaign against this, the recent 

State Factories Act
425

 precluded the stamping of furniture on the basis of its 

manufacture, so there arose the eternal quandary expressed by The Argus that; “The best 

furniture built by Chinese is rotten rubbish, and this Factory Act,
426

 by tying the white 

man’s hands and letting the Chinese free, compels the public to buy the produce of 

Chinese labour, for they have practically very little else to offer.”
427

  Yet people still 

                                                 
420

 Sands & McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, p. 3. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 60. 
421

 UBD Australia: Melbourne Street Directory 2008, map 2. 
422

 The Argus: 3 October 1874, p. 4. “…the Chinese do not appear to have the slightest notions of 

cleanliness and sanitation.”  The Argus: 27 May 1863, p. 4.  This earlier edition gives an alternative 

opinion.” Both the interior of the two [fishermen’s] huts and the adjacent ground are remarkably clean, 

and quite contradict the ordinary impression of the Chinese being dirty in their homes.” It would appear 

that, as in the case with the Darling Harbour district of Sydney, the Chinese were living in squalid 

conditions, but that individual circumstances and standards varied greatly. 
423

 Sands & McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, p. 3. 
424

 Stuart Ward: Australia and the British Embrace, 2001, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, p. 

139.  Note the disparaging attitude towards the Chinese furniture manufacturer, despite the obvious fact 

that many Australians were purchasing Chinese made goods. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 61. 

 
425

Australian Bureau of Statistics: Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia 1901-1907, 
No.1, p. 1046.  This 1896 Act was one of many introduced to protect working conditions and working 

establishments. “The first Australian Factories Act was passed in 1873 in Victoria and became law on 1 

January 1874.” 
426

 The 1896 Victorian Factories Act set minimum wages (of 50 shillings per week for a journeyman) and 

maximum hours of work, but did not discriminate between who was performing the work. 
427

 The Argus: 14 November 1901, p. 8. 



221 

 

preferred to purchase Chinese goods,
428

 and there arose the ongoing contradiction of 

people willing to separate a practical and artistic interest in antiquity and the purchase of 

necessities and luxuries from foreign cultures, while at the same time more than ready 

to theoretically discriminate against (or at least acquiesce to the discrimination of) the 

very people who produce these items.   

 

The Sydney Morning Herald had earlier reported the same situation in NSW. “Mr 

Cutler, secretary of the United Furniture Trades Society, said that the servants’ quarters 

in the Governor General’s establishment were furnished with furniture made by 

Chinese.  Some time ago one of the public institutions was furnished with Chinese made 

goods, and a promise was then given that such a thing should not happen again.”
429

  

This was certainly not the first time that such a complaint had been made.  Seven years 

earlier The Herald reported that that the same Mr Cutler and other Trade Society 

representatives introduced a deputation to NSW Premier Reid urging the introduction of 

a Factories and Workshops Bill to regulate the lodging houses of Europeans and 

Chinese.  Noted The Herald; “In the suburbs Chinamen were in the habit of working at 

gardening all day and then putting in several hours of the night furniture making.  In a 

number of instances in the city the Chinese were nominally paid the current rate of 

wages – say 30 shillings per week and their board and lodging but the board was of the 

most meagre character, and as for the lodging it frequently happened that some 30 or 40 

of them would be accommodated with bunks in the workshop.”
430

  It would appear that 

concern here was not only for sustaining the wages and conditions of Australian 

furniture makers, but also for the conditions under which many of the Chinese 

themselves worked.
431

 

 

This concern was, unfortunately, compromised by trades unions themselves 

equivocating over allowing Chinese workers to join and thereby being absorbed into the 

                                                 
428

 The Argus: 5 December 1881, p. 9. “The making of chairs is entirely done by the Chinese…In the 

goldfields districts they are still regarded as a useful class of men, and many European farmers are glad to 

depend on them for vegetables, as by doing so time is economised.” 
429

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 15 February 1901, p. 3. 
430

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 23 August 1894, p. 2. 
431

 John Rickard: Australia – a cultural history, p. 108.  And it was not just the Chinese who found 

themselves in this position. “Trade union and liberal opposition to the introduction of Asian or 

Melanesian labour drew on humanitarian concern about the connotation of slavery, particularly when 

recruitment was more akin to kidnapping.  But more generally it reflected an increasingly strident 

obsession that the continent should be kept racially pure: beneath its banner, ‘Australia for the white 

man’, The Bulletin promoted a relentless and vicious brand of jocular racism.”  



222 

 

protective social structures being established.
432

  “The furniture trade had been 

particularly hard-hit by the depression [of the early 1890s], and piece work was 

increasingly being introduced.  But when Melbourne Chinese struck against wage cuts 

in 1892, the union shunned them.”
433

  This all seemed at one with the bewildering 

attitudes applied to non-British communities within Australia.
434

  Attitudes towards 

other races were various and varying even within the Federation celebrations , with The 

Age reporting both a familiarity towards royalty expressed by a Jewish observer and 

offhand attitudes towards Germans and Chinese in a piece that efficiently managed to 

mildly denigrate all three races in the one paragraph:   

 

The Queen’s Arch has been rechristened by Jehu, who is stationed thereabouts, as the 

Cabman’s Arch: an anaemic-faced German youth or two is to seen near the arch their 

countrymen have erected; and the bland faced Celestial forsakes his proverbial vacuity 

of expression, and condescends to look quizzically interested as a brother Mongolian 

deftly twines some costly silken fabric of heliotrope hue about his own curious, pagoda 

fashioned decoration.
435

 

 

 

11.  VICE REGAL MELBOURNE 

 

From the bustle of the eastern city, the Chinese, market and underclass district of Little 

Bourke and Little Lonsdale Streets, the parade now travelled west along Bourke Street 

through the commercial and shopping precinct between Swanston Street and Elizabeth 

Street, before preparing to rise up the hill to the west.  It was here that the Ducal Arch 

was situated.  As with most of the other arches along the Melbourne parade route, there 

does not appear to have been any particular logic or geographical rationale for placing 

this structure at this location, apart from the flatness of the roadway and the closeness to 

the city’s retail hub, and the recently erected General Post Office.
436

  The Ducal Arch 

itself was given a naval flavour, bearing homage to the “Sailor Prince” George’s 

                                                 
432

 Ann Curthoys and Andrew Markus: Who are our Enemies? chapt. 7. Exclusivism and Unionism.  

Humphrey McQueen: A New Britannia, 2004, p. 38. “One of the consequences of this Act [the 1896 

Victorian Factories and Shops Act] was the formation of a Chinese Workers’ Union which immediately 

demanded higher wages. Although assisted by the Furniture Trades Union, the Chinese were refused 

affiliation with the Melbourne Trades Hall Council.” 
433

 Ann Curthoys and Andrew Markus: Who are our Enemies? p. 72. 
434

 Graeme Davison: The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne, 1978, p. 69.  
435

 The Age: 6 May 1901, p. 8. 
436

 National Trust of Australia (Victoria): Walking Melbourne, p. 65. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 63. 



223 

 

connection with the Royal Navy.
437

  Designed by architect G H B Austin, the very non-

classical, almost Art Nouveau curvaceous structure would have been a remarkable sight, 

covered in red and blue velveteen, and trimmed gold.
438

  The side supports contained 

images of the Duke and Duchess, the future King George V and Queen Mary.
439

  

Perhaps spectators would have almost subconsciously absorbed a connection with the 

elaborate richness of the structure and the luxurious material and clothing available in 

the shops on either side of the road. 

 

Although the parades took place a decade or so before the construction of the major 

department stores such as Myers that now dominate the northern side of the street, this 

was still the heart of retail commerce and the centre of the clothing and footwear trade.  

No doubt the trade link with the workshops and clothing manufacturers one and a half 

blocks south towards the river in Flinders Lane would have had bearing on the siting of 

these stores.
440

  One interesting business that was operating in 1901 at this point, 

between 300-310 Bourke Street, was Buckley & Nunn Proprietary Ltd, importers and 

drapers.
441

  This was, however prior to the later 1934 construction of the present 

glorious Art Deco building that still bears their name.
442

  Much has been made over the 

years as to whether the name of this company is the source of the well-known 

Australian expression; “Buckley’s and None”, indicating that an event has essentially 

“little or no chance of occurring”.
443

  Since “Buckley’s chance” apparently referred to 

the slim chance of survival of escaped convict William Buckley who had lived with 

Aboriginal people between 1803 and 1835,
444

 and thus predated the clothing firm by 

over half a century, it would appear to be quite probable that the addition of the “and 

None” was a rather typically Australian play on the well-recognised commercial 

name.
445

  What was also amusingly typical, although certainly not uniquely Australian 

was the name of the establishment next door at number 290 Bourke Street; the building 

                                                 
437

 The Argus: 7 May 1901, p. 10.  
438

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – the story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, pp. 78-79. 
439

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 63. 
440

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 64. 
441

 J Ann Hone: Mars Buckley (1825-1905), Australian Dictionary of Biography online database. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 64. 
442

  National Trust of Australia (Victoria): Walking Melbourne, p. 67.  Sands & McDougall’s: Melbourne 

and Suburban Directory for 1901, p. 3. 
443

 Frederick Ludowyk: Buckley’s Chance, Ozwords database, Australian National Dictionary Centre, 

Australian National University, Canberra. 
444

 Marjorie J Tipping: William Buckley (1780-1856), Australian Dictionary of Biography online 

database.  
445

 The Argus: 7 March 1856, p. 7.  “A short notice appeared announcing the death of William Buckley, 

who for thirty-two years lived amongst the natives of this colony prior to its settlement.” 



224 

 

that would be later demolished for the new Buckley & Nunn emporium.  We tend to 

think of artificially created heritage as a modern phenomenon, yet here was Mrs Minnie 

De Faro’s “Ye Olde Albion Bar”,
446

 managing in four words to encapsulate a link to a 

rather out of place Olde Worlde charm, a direct connection to the Motherland and 

memories of “home”, and the offer of a cold beer to the parade spectators on a hot 

antipodean day. 

 

One other point of significance passed by the marchers at this end of Bourke Street, 

although now long gone, would have been the city’s Jewish Synagogue.  This notable 

structure was located at number 472 Bourke Street, adjacent to Little Queen Street; 

formerly Synagogue Lane.
447

  The very traditional and classical building contrasted 

with the more ornate, almost oriental aspect of Sydney’s Synagogue, although both 

structures emphasise the degree to which the local and substantial Jewish population 

wished to conform architecturally to the general fashion of time.  That this religious 

centre, including the Hebrew Congregational School should have sat next to the 

Hibernian Australian Catholic Benefit Society and the St Francis branch of the Catholic 

Young Men’s Society would again point to a society where the level of intolerance was 

perhaps not all that pervasive in everyday life.
448

  The Synagogue was demolished in 

1929 when the congregation moved out to St Kilda, still the hub of Melbourne’s Jewish 

culture.  The subsequent Equity Trustees Building was erected on the site just in time 

for the Great Depression of the 1930s, and now contains the Monash University Law 

Chambers; itself symbolically named for the great Jewish Australian military leader and 

public engineer. 

 

One concern that would have been brought to mind by the military nature of this 

particular arch, and one that was obviously on the minds of the event organisers, was 

the ever-present threat of assassination.  While the 1868 attempt on the life of Prince 

Albert in Sydney was viewed as an aberration,
449

 concerns over Irish Nationalist threats 

would have no doubt been behind Melbourne Archbishop Thomas Joseph Carr’s 

sermon at St Patrick’s Cathedral on the Sunday prior to the march.  Likening Federation 

to the “political baptism of the Commonwealth of Australia”, Carr went on to state;  

                                                 
446

 Sands & McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, p. 3. 
447

 UBD Australia: Melbourne Street Directory 2008, map 1.  Only Melbourne: Melbourne Lanes online 

database. 
448

 Sands & McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, p. 4. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 65. 
449

 Dictionary of Sydney: Assassination attempt on Prince Alfred 1868 online database. 



225 

 

 

And the minister of that baptism would be his Royal Highness the Duke of Cornwall 

and York, who would dedicate the Commonwealth to the glory of God and the service 

of the people.  [That] as members of the Catholic Church, they [the Catholic hierarchy] 

would do their part to assist at the celebrations and in future time to prove themselves 

amongst the most loyal  adherents and most fervent supporters of all that would be 

needed to increase the strength and glory of United Australia.
450

 

 

In the end, there appeared to have been little threat even from dedicated Fenians, 

although many Irish Australians retained a sentiment for a free and united Ireland.  

According to Keith Amos, “a crowd of 20 000 gathered at Sydney Showground in 1912 

to celebrate St Patrick’s Day, all joined in singing ‘God Save Ireland’, the Fenian hymn 

of 1867.”
451

  However, the sole former Fenian convict living in Melbourne after 

Federation, Hugh Brophy had already “established himself successfully as a building 

contractor, and in later years was also a clerk of works.”  Former Fenian John Flood 

also settled into a productive middle class life in Queensland after 1872 and became 

captain of Gympie’s company of the Queensland Irish Volunteers.  When challenged 

about adopting the Queen’s uniform in view of his rebel past, he responded: “I was 

never a disloyalist [sic].  If we had had the government in Ireland that we have here, I 

should have been wearing the Queen’s uniform all my life.”
452

 

 

By the end of the 1800s, it was not just Irish Nationalists who were perceived to be a 

potential threat to well-ordered society.  The rise of the ordered Socialist movement 

through the nineteenth century, which sought to use the same political institutions as 

Capitalism but for different ends, inevitably contained within itself the polar opposite; 

Anarchism.  Harking back to a more romantic ideal, Anarchism sought to replace 

ordered monarchies and ordered oligarchies not with equally ordered social elites who 

would act “in the best interests of working people”,
453

 but with formally unordered 

                                                 
450

 The Age: 6 May 1901, p. 9. 
451

 Keith Amos: The Fenians in Australia (1865-1880), 1988, University of NSW Press, Sydney, p. 281.  

Which concluded with the refrain: “Never till the latest day, Shall the memory pass away, Of the gallant 

lives thus give for our land…” 
452

 Keith Amos: The Fenians in Australia (1865-1880), p. 282. Gerald Patrick Fitzgerald, son of a 

Limerick Fenian who had fled to America after the failed rising of 1867, spent his life as a career 

Commonwealth public servant before writing a history of Australian Fenian connections. 
453

 Communist Party of Australia: 1948 online database. “Communism is in the best interests of the 

Australian People” by Edgar Argent Ross.  Ross himself represented this culturally, if not politically, 

accommodating side of the Communist movement in Australia, often appearing on the very commercial 

radio station 2UE during the 1940s.  



226 

 

societies.  Along with Socialism itself, Anarchism encompassed a wide range of 

ideologies from theoretical idealism to a more fanatical form of direct action. 

 

While deplored by theoreticians such as George Woodcock and political activists such 

as Emma Goldman, assassinations committed in the name of Anarchism fuelled a public 

fear of radical ideology.  As Woodcock noted in his classic study, highly publicised 

assassinations did “enormous harm” to the Anarchist cause by “implanting in the 

popular mind an identification which lingers long after its justification has vanished.”
454

  

Such actions performed in the name of Anarchism did much to destroy public 

support,
455

  and as the press of the day stated: “The police are not unmindful of the 

possibility of an attempt being made on the life of the Duke of Cornwall and York 

during his visit to Australia” although “the risk is considered much less from the fact 

that Australia is far removed from the hotbeds of anarchy.”
456

  Needless to say, the 

editor of The Age continued: “No effort will be spared to afford the Royal visitors every 

possible protection. While it is recognised that the Anarchist does not wear his heart on 

his sleeve, or carry his bombshell conspicuously, pains will be taken to detect any 

suspicious movements on the part of foreigner or others.”
457

  Thus the large police and 

military presence at both the Sydney and Melbourne marches was obviously not there 

just for crowd control or ceremonial presentation, but reflected a genuine concern over 

the possibility of assassination of dignitaries and the attendant risk to the thousands of 

spectators.   

 

The large number of troops present at both Federation parades would therefore have 

been designed to generate a general feeling of well-being.  Part of the justification for 

the Federation of Australia in the first place was that of the effective defence of the 

continent.  Defence matters had become of far greater import to the colonies with 

British withdraw of land military forces from Australia after August 1870;
458

  the 

colonies essentially being thrown back onto their own resources for all but blue water 

naval defence.
459

  The arrival of the overland telegraph in 1872 that now constantly 

reminded Australians of the outside world, and the recently amplified the German 

                                                 
454

 George Woodcock: Anarchism, 1962, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, p. 14. 
455

 Emma Goldman: Anarchism and other essays, 1969, Dover Publications, New York, chapt. 3 The 

psychology of political violence. 
456

 The Age: 3 May 1901, p. 5. 
457

 The Age: 3 May 1901, p. 5. 
458

 W H Newnham: Melbourne – the Biography of a City, pp. 189-190. 
459

 Dennis, Grey, Morris, Prior: The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History, pp. 121-124. The 

British Army in Australia. 



227 

 

nation’s imperialist intentions in the Pacific all served to keep the issue of defence in the 

public’s mind.
460

  The communication and transport technologies that enabled imagined 

communities to become practical nations also placed additional practical threats on 

these same societies.  The socially irresponsible and destructive were just as capable of 

imagining their own communities, and utilising these same modern developments to 

their own ends. 

 

As with the Sydney parade, the numbers of military personnel were significant, with 

twelve thousand soldiers and cadets taking part.  These not only made up a substantial 

part of the more than two thousand yards, or two kilometre, length of the cavalcade,
461

  

but also a significant part of the pre-march logistical organisation.  Even before the 

event, the large number of military personnel had to be accommodated and kept 

occupied.  As The Age noted: 

 

At Royal Park the whole vast infantry camp is now in apple pie order.  All the tents are 

stretched and repatched, trenched and furnished, and as there are over 1,400 men in 

camp, the scene is beginning to wear a lively and warlike [sic] air…The men are very 

pleased to find that there are no field kitchens to dig, no wood or water to fetch, no extra 

work to do, and no trouble to take as to cooking and kindred jobs.  The Contractors are 

doing all that, and doing it well, too.
462

   

 

The scene presented was perhaps just a little too bucolic, knowing the predicaments that 

unoccupied soldiers and sailors can get themselves into.   

 

But what is more ridiculous than some of the pickles into which Jack Tar gets himself?  

He is a noteworthy convivial fellow ashore, and has managed to obtain leave somehow, 

and rolls along unsteadily, but manages to steer clear of collisions.  Here is another of 

him bowling along wearing a busby that belongs to the Herculean highlander who 

follows and hides a meek capacious smile from beneath Jack’s straw hat.
463

 

 

                                                 
460

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 29 June 1870, p. 5.  The Overland Telegraph. “A Register publishes a 

telegram received from the Agent-General in England, and also a letter from Commander Osborn, on the 

subject of the overland telegraph to Port Darwin, to connect with the submarine cable.”  This was the 

beginning of the Australian enterprise to construct the telegraph line from Darwin to Adelaide and the 

southern capitals.  The final connection was made in October 1872. 
461

 The Age: 6 May 1901, p. 9. 
462

 The Age: 1 May 1901, p. 8. 
463

 The Age: 6 May 1901, p. 8. 



228 

 

The military presence was therefore regarded as most significant in both Federation 

Parades.  The Argus published an article specifically listing the various uniforms of the 

major military contingents so that the parade spectators would know; “How to 

Distinguish the Uniforms.”
464

   The notion that military authorities tend to lag behind 

the times appeared at variance with public expectations however, with both the soldiers 

themselves and The Argus appearing uncomfortable with the exigencies of war in the 

age of the machine gun.  

 

The West Australian mounted men are somewhat disappointed, because they have not 

had time to obtain brighter uniforms than their field service khaki.  They are all men 

who have lately returned from South Africa, and the garb they wear will be what they 

wore through the campaign.  They may rest assured that the people of Australia will 

think none the less of them, and cheer them none the less heartily for that.
465

   

 

 

12.  WOOL AND HERITAGE 

 

From the substantial climb up Bourke Street after the Ducal Arch, the Melbourne march 

now would have reached William Street and the north-eastern extremity of Batman Hill.  

Although the parade was over a kilometre in length along the two main thoroughfares of 

Bourke and Collins Streets, the location of most of the arches was restricted to a small 

four hundred metre square centred either side of Swanston Street.  No doubt this was 

partly to accommodate to the topography, where one would imagine that steep 

roadways would make arches more difficult to construct, or at least more unstable.  

Consequently, this half block from the top of Bourke Street, down William Street and 

into the top of Collins Street was devoid of arches and formal ceremonial sites, even 

though it would have surely been recognised at the time as the business district of the 

city.
466

  When finally arriving at William Street, it also becomes obvious to the 

footstepper why the parade was planned to turn left and follow this road back down to 

                                                 
464

 The Argus: 4 May 1901, p. 15. 
465

 The Argus: 4 May 1901, p.15. This of course contrasts with later military parades, notably through the 

streets of Sydney during the Second World War and the Vietnam War, where it was the drab olive 

woollen and cotton field service uniforms that gave such a sense of pride to both soldiers and spectators 

alike. 
466

 Sands and McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, pp. 7, 8, 9, 15, 16, 22, 23, 66, 

67.  This entire half block consists almost entirely of financial, business and trading houses, banks and 

insurance companies.  No doubt the proximity to the Law Courts and legal centre of the city one block 

north on Lonsdale Street was of significance, as well as the proximity to the old docks on the Yarra River. 



229 

 

Collins Street.  As well as the natural symmetry of balancing the route with three city 

blocks on either side of Swanston Street, William Street forms a ridge running down 

towards the slopes of the Yarra River.  Travelling any further west, the parade would 

have gone down another slope towards the Spencer Street Railway Station, a slope that 

the march would have had to return back up again to return to Swanston Street.
467

  

 

On the inside of this William Street corner stood at the time one of the city’s notable 

structures: the Menzies’ Hotel.
468

  Although now replaced by the modern BHP 

House,
469

 this hotel would no doubt have served a similar purpose to the up-market 

boarding houses along Sydney’s Macquarie Street; that of providing temporary city 

accommodation for country folk coming to the city by train, since it would have been 

only a short walk up from Spencer Street, now Southern Cross, Railway Station.  The 

hotel thus had connections with the famous and the powerful throughout much of its 

existence.  Early in the Pacific Theatre of the Second World War, the hotel hosted 

General Douglas MacArthur, prior to his permanent move closer to the action in 

Brisbane.  One apocryphal tale also had the boilers in the hotel being stoked by Mark 

Twain while on his lecture tour of Australia prior to Federation in 1895.
470

  Although 

forced to make a world-wide tour to recoup financial publishing losses, one would 

suspect that the sixty year old would not really have had to engage in such strenuous 

manual work to merely survive and that the episode, had it occurred, was one of 

affectation.
471

 

 

If the hotel’s name has a familiar ring to it, then of course it is also that of one of 

Melbourne’s most famous and influential sons, former Prime Minister Sir Robert 

Menzies.  In reality, there was apparently no connection between the Archibald Menzies 

who established the hotel in 1867 and the western Victorian family from which the 

political leader hailed.  This did not prevent Sir Robert’s young daughter, Heather from 

reading out the hotel’s name on one of their excursions into the city and asking, full of 

                                                 
467

 UBD Australia: UBD Melbourne Street Directory 2008, map 1. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 70. 
468

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 71. 
469

 National Trust of Australia (Victoria): Walking Melbourne, pp. 53-54.  Sands and McDougall’s: 

Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, p. 8. 
470

 Wilde, Hooton, Andrews: The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, p. 765.  The Argus: 20 

September 1895, p. 8.  Mark Twain. “Bijou Theatre, Friday 27
th

 September.  First appearance in 

Melbourne of the author of ‘Innocents Abroad’.” 
471

 W H Newnham: Melbourne – the Biography of a City, p. 61. 



230 

 

astonishment; “Daddy, is that yours already!”
472

  What is more telling is the entry on 

BHP House in the National Trust of Australia’s booklet: Walking Melbourne.  Although 

keen to point out other heritage sites within the Bourke Street and William Street 

precinct, no mention is made of the original occupant of this corner, even though the 

Menzies Hotel was not demolished until the early 1970s.
473

   

 

William Street in 1901 embodied the degree to which Australia rode on the sheep’s 

back and the backs of those who had money to invest in agriculture.  The massive 

Goldsborough Mort grain and wool warehouse stood opposite the Menzies Hotel, while 

the Gray’s Building running down the western side of William Street was filled with 

auctioneers, agents and pastoral companies such as Campbell and Felton.
474

  The 

Melbourne branch of the Australian Club was also found here, at 102 William Street;
475

 

and it remains to this day, a hub for the financial elite of society.
476

  Whatever one’s 

views of rapacious capitalism may be, one surely has to admit that such buildings 

shown in the photograph booklet add to the elegance and splendour of the city, a theme 

that will be repeated further around the corner.  The club itself appears to have 

transformed from a residential abode for the wealthy and powerful to primarily an 

eating establishment, although even their website still discriminates between members 

and the public.
477

   Again, this instance reflects an evolution in the role of the city over 

the course of a century: from a place to live, work and shop every day in 1901, to 

somewhere only to work and shop in the 1950s, to now a place to visit on special 

occasions for celebratory meals. 

 

As the marchers turned from William Street south and back into Collins Street they 

would have passed the Western Markets of the city.
478

  As with many of these more 

mundane but necessary structures of the day, few images remain, although this was one 

of the three major market sites within the city.  Unlike the ‘Paddy’s’ Eastern Market; 

the Bourke Street haunt of Ginger Mick, the Western Market appeared to have been a 

                                                 
472

 W H Newnham: Melbourne – the Biography of a City, p. 60. 
473

 National Trust of Australia (Victoria): Walking Melbourne, pp. 53-54.  Perhaps the evocative power 

and aversion to the Menzies name still holds sway in many circles today.  Still, it is rather apt that the 

parade should now have entered the commercial and capitalist heart of the city at this significant site. 
474

 Sands and McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, p. 67. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 70. 
475

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 74. 
476

 Sands and McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, p. 67. 
477

 The Australian Club:  Public Site online database. 
478

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 75. 



231 

 

far more civilised affair.
479

  The Eastern Market had more in common with the current 

Victoria Markets on the north eastern corner of the city, while these Western Markets 

with their Victorian Romanesque formality may well have been an inspiration for the 

Queen Victoria Building in Sydney.  This distinction becomes even more apparent 

when we look at what had become of the original 1842 edifice.  While one boot maker, 

A J Carnaby, remained on site, by 1901 the rest of the building had been converted to 

offices for merchants, architects and trade and finance brokers.
480

  No doubt the same 

general movement out to the suburbs that was evident in Sydney at the time was also 

beginning in Melbourne, leaving those supplying the more mundane everyday services 

with fewer customers.  The old Western Market building was finally demolished in 

1961, and the current AXA Centre erected on the site.
481

   

 

Even these markets were not the first institution to occupy the 455 Collins Street site.  

Jeff and Jill Sparrow dedicate a chapter of their heritage publication to the original 

1840s function of the block, that of housing Melbourne’s first gaol.
482

  It was also at this 

location, opposite the now small Market Street intersection that the Butter Arch was 

located.
483

  As mentioned by Tessa Milne, this arch was the only one along the 

Melbourne route that represented an Australian industry.
484

  While Sydney’s arches 

embodied an eclectic mix of three nationalities (French, American and German) and 

three industries (Coal, Wool and Wheat), the arches in Melbourne were primarily social 

and regal (Municipal, Citizens’, King’s, Queen’s and Ducal).   

 

I would argue that Sydney was celebrating the creation of a new nation and wanting to 

both represent this nation to itself, and to feel a new found sense of solidarity with those 

other centres of European culture that had recently become united modern states.
485

  

Hence the added links with France and America through their arches and with Canada 

and Italy through their cars indicated a sense of looking outward to the wider world, and 

                                                 
479

 Walking Melbourne: Melbourne’s Lost Markets online database. 
480

 Sands and McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, p. 23. 
481

 National Trust of Australia (Victoria): Walking Melbourne, p. 53. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 76. 
482

 Jeff and Jill Sparrow: Radical Melbourne, vol.1, chapt. 8, p. 44. 
483

 The Argus: 26 March 1901, p. 6. The Butter Arch. “Mr D Buzolich, chairman of the citizen’s 

committee, yesterday received information from Mr Fitts, architect, that the design for the arch to 

represent the butter industry had been approved of.  The arch will be erected in Collins Street, between 

Market Street and William Street.”  

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 77. 
484

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 79. 
485

 The incentive for these other nationalities’ arches invariably came from the foreign nations 

themselves, or from their representatives and communities in Australia. 



232 

 

wishing to be accepted by other unified nations.  Footstepping revealed a nation intent 

on becoming part of an international community that offered opportunities, but one that 

also represented a level of threat.  Melbourne, on the other hand, sensed the more 

immediate practical responsibility of now forming a government that could bring these 

hopes to a practical reality with their reliance upon British institutions and British 

security.  This would have needed to be convincingly expressed to the society in 

general, and to those members within the local community who were perceived to be 

either a political or economic threat. 

 

That said; Melbourne’s parade did include one expression of agricultural activity and 

wealth, the Butter Arch.  Although sited logically adjacent to the markets, the structure 

itself does not appear to have been overly inspiring, if judged by the descriptions given 

at the time.  Money had been difficult to raise, with the country’s dairy producers 

showing “poor support …to subscriptions to pay for its construction [and] the cost had 

fallen on the shoulders of the Melbourne salesmen and export merchants.”
486

  While 

featuring the usual mix of shields and coats of arms, the coarse medieval appearance of 

the arch was intensified by the use of eight thousand unpainted butter boxes; the daily 

output of the dairy industry in Victoria.
487

   Even The Argus could not explain away the 

less than impressive result.  “The main cost of erection has been borne by the city 

agents, exporters and merchants who supplied the novel and interesting [sic] 

materials.”
488

  

 

 

13.  FINANCIAL MELBOURNE 

 

The lower end of Collins Street in 1901, as with the Collins Street of today, was the 

financial hub of Melbourne and what still strikes the footstepper is the interplay of 

institutions that held, and still hold sway over particularly, the western slope of the 

street.  The Stock Exchange dominated the corner of Queens Street,
 489

 and remains 

today as an elegant and elaborate portion of the ANZ Banking Museum,
490

 while other 

buildings between William and Elizabeth Street gloried under the names of Rothschild 

                                                 
486

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 80. 
487

 The Argus: 7 May 1901, p. 10. 
488

 The Argus: 7 May 1901, p. 10. 
489

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 79. 
490

 Photograph Booklet vol.2 p. 80. 



233 

 

Chambers, Trustees Chambers and Temple Court.
491

  However, these same blocks also 

included the Australian Widow’s Fund Building, Citizen’s Life Assurance Buildings 

and the Mutual Provident Buildings.
492

  In the days before government assistance and 

unemployment relief, it was up to ordinary working people to put away insurance for a 

rainy day, and certainly the banking collapse a decade earlier,
493

 would have further 

encouraged  citizens to place their financial future in their own mutual organisations.
494

   

 

As was the case with the Coal Arch and the participation of trades unions in the Sydney 

Federation parade, one could argue that choosing to parade down this section of Collins 

Street unconsciously reflected the desire of the staunch respectable working class to 

refine and control capitalism, rather than do away with it through revolutionary 

activity.
495

  As Davison states; “Building society propagandists aimed to give…the 

suburban ideology…substance by demonstrating with mathematical precision, how an 

ordinary Melburnian might acquire a House of His Own.”
496

  No doubt the modern 

footstepper would also appreciate the need to balance working people’s budgets when 

they aspire to the security of home ownership.
497

 

 

The Temperance and General Life Assurance Society was one working class financial 

institution that was not represented along this part of Collins Street.  Established in 

Swanston Street prior to Federation the initial headquarters of the T&G stood 

symmetrically between the Bourke Street and Collins Street route of the parade, and 

would have been glanced at as the marchers passed to and from Spring Street and 

Parliament House.
 498

   Their massive 1929 art deco structure would later be placed in 

Collins Street, but on the other side of the hill, leading back up to Spring Street.
499

  

Unlike the equally impressive social centre that existed on the corner of Park and 

Elizabeth Streets in Sydney, this structure still remains, if only as a façade.  The T&G 

                                                 
491

 Sands and McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, pp. 15-16. 
492

 Sands and McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, pp. 20-23. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 81. 
493

 W H Newnham: Melbourne – the Biography of a City, p. 30. 
494

 Deborah Tout-Smith: Melbourne – a City of Stories, p. 45. “Beyond Little Lon’, other Melbourne 

residents worked to create safer communities. In the absence of government support, benevolent 

Melburnians founded orphanages, aid societies, refuges, hospitals and other charitable institutions.” 
495

 Humphrey McQueen: A New Britannia, 2004, p. 211.  “Respectability was the keystone of union 

organisation, especially where union membership was just one more way by which the urban tradesman 

could ensure that improvement of social standing so dear to his heart.” 
496

 Graeme Davison: The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne, 1978, p. 178. 
497

 Graeme Davison: The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne, 1978, p. 179. 
498

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 81. 
499

 National Trust of Australia (Victoria): Walking Melbourne, p. 27. 



234 

 

was only one representation of this aspirational movement, having been founded as a 

Friendly and Temperance Society by the Independent Order of Rechabites.  Allied to 

non-conformists, their forefathers recognised the previously mentioned dangers of 

basing social support institutions within the hotels that dotted the inner suburbs in both 

Sydney and Melbourne, and so created associations of their own, free from the reliance 

upon such sources of temptation.
500

 

 

Mechanics Institutes had formed the United Benefit Society as early as February 1839, 

stating that:  “We can perceive nothing to cheer us in the prospect of sickness and 

adversity, except from our united efforts to save from our weekly earnings, such an 

amount as may form a fund to relieve those who may be unable to provide for 

themselves and their families the common necessaries of life.”
501

  Eastwood notes that, 

“The ambitions of the people were overwhelmingly economic. Most free immigrants 

came to Australia to get on in the world, to do better in a financial sense than they could 

see themselves doing at home.”
502

  While the absence of large scale persecution behind 

most of the immigration to Australia could be seen as obviously positive, the financial 

imperative placed its own burden upon those coming out to the new nation.  If the new 

settlers failed to become as materially and financially successful as they and their 

relatives were back in Britain, then the whole rationale for their uprooting and moving 

across to the other side of the world, evaporated.  This was most noticeable in Victoria 

where the depression of the 1890s had hit hard and was actually responsible for a net 

decrease in the number of arrivals over departures of over one hundred thousand.
503

 

Many more potential settlers were leaving than arriving.  Although these figures would 

also have included Chinese who were being repatriated back to China, many tens of 

thousands of immigrants from Britain would also have deemed it not financially 

worthwhile staying. 

 

                                                 
500

 The Argus: 15 March 1916, p. 10. Soldiers and Drink. “A conference of the Independent Order of 

Rechabites was opened today.  The Chief Ruler (Bro J Lydiate) said that there had never been a time in 

the history of Australia when alcohol had been used to worse effect than during the past 18 months since 

the troops had been in training for active service.”  The organisation was one of those advocating the 

introduction of 6 o’clock closing following the February 1916 Liverpool Riot.  Box Hill Reporter: 22 

February 1907, p. 4. However, they were not as fundamentalist as some.  “The Rechabites were founded 

in England in 1835, only 72 years ago. They were in Melbourne 12 years later, starting with 39 

members… They now have 26,000 in Victoria alone.  It was not a total abstinence society, many of its 

members taking a little wine for dinner, but it was a step in the right direction.” 
501

 Jill Eastwood: Melbourne –The Growth of a Metropolis, p. 20. United Benefit Society pamphlet 1839. 
502

 Jill Eastwood: Melbourne – The Growth of a Metropolis, p. 27. 
503

 
503

 Australian Bureau of Statistics: Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia 1901-1907, 

No.1, 1908, p. 154. 



235 

 

It was this drive for respectable material success that lay behind the rapid and effective 

rise of the labour movement amongst the working people of the new nation at 

Federation, and the rapidity with which radicalism disappeared once the representatives 

of the working class gained control of the political and financial levers of capitalism.
504

  

Labour organisations and their associated Friendly Societies were given pride of place 

during both cities’ celebrations; directly in the Sydney march and through a separate  

parade in Melbourne on the following Saturday.
505

  Apart from the Chamber of 

Manufacturers’ column, capitalism itself tended to remain in the background, appearing 

to be satisfied in having its instruments take public spectacle in the parades.  Working 

men, soldiers, and representatives of all levels of government comprised the proud 

performers
506

 while the financial pillars of society stood aside and calmly provided the 

structural and material backdrop.
507

  So the INF, GUOOF, Protestant Alliance, St 

Patrick, Free Gardeners, UAOD and many other such institutions were not only 

represented on the streets of Melbourne, they were also represented in the march by 

their respective bands.
508

 

 

With Germans providing the largest non-British migrant group at the time of 

Federation,
509

 it was understandable that both Sydney and Melbourne marches should 

have had substantial German Arches.  It is interesting to appreciate the attitudes that 

Australians held towards the Germans in their midst prior to the memory of the 

intervening century marked by two world wars, where Germany came to be regarded as 

an efficient, if brutal enemy.
510

  As opposed to most of the Irish, and certainly most of 

the Chinese migrants and migrant families at the time of Federation, the Germans 

                                                 
504

 Humphrey McQueen: A New Britannia, 2004, chapt. 17, p. 229.  “The idea of the Government getting 

into power, as is sometimes said, and then taking advantage of the fact that they are in power to do all 

sorts of revolutionary and impossible (sic) things never occurs to the Labour man in Australia.”  One 

could argue that mildly radical reforming governments such as that of Chifley and even that of the more 

conservative Menzies did far more good for working people than theoretical radicals. 
505

 The Argus: 6 May 1901, p. 6. Trades and Friendly Societies March, starting at 10:00am. 
506

 The Argus: 6 May 1901, p. 6. Trades and Friendly Societies March, starting at 10:00am. 
507

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 82. 
508

 The Argus: 4 May 1901, p. 15. 
509

 Australian Bureau of Statistics: Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia 1901-1907 

No.1, pp. 166-174.  Again note not only the 38 352 persons born in Germany compared with the 29,907 

born in China, but the far more even balance between the genders and population spread across Australia. 

Note also the 75 021 people of Lutheran faith listed on page 174, just below Baptist and Congregational. 

Allowing for the fact that not all Germans would have been Lutheran, this figure does indicate an even 

greater number of second generation Australians of German heritage. 
510

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 20 July 1918, p. 13. German Brutality.  The Argus: 11 June 1940, p. 5. 

German Brutality.  Compare this with the treatment of Germans in The Bulletin of 3 March 1901, p. 14, 

where a confused and obviously not overly intelligent German farmer is not only confounded by the 

English language and simple logic, but is I suspect, also being inadvertently compared with one of his 

own pigs. 



236 

 

represented the more traditionally cultural aspects of the community.  As one historian 

has put it, there were “prominent business establishments which carried German names; 

Australians of German descent were active in the medical and legal profession, in 

education, the arts as well as in commerce, science and politics.”
511

  Although also a 

source of the mockery evident earlier in the Sydney press, Germans had a considerable 

effect upon Australian agriculture, not only by weight of the numbers of settlers, but 

also through the application of German efficiency in farming in districts such as the 

Darling Downs “where they played a significant role in the pioneering work of opening 

up the country for agriculture.”
512

 

 

Consequently there was also a German Citizen’s Arch present, although as with most of 

the Melbourne arches, there appeared little geographical reasoning behind its actual 

location.
513

  The only obvious link tying the structure to the lower slope of Collins 

Street was its being adjacent to the Vienna Cafe at 268 Collins Street.
514

  This business 

of Edlinger and Goetz has long gone, having been subsumed by the Hotel Australia on 

Collins and the Magnificent Arcade.
515

  While the placement of this last arch seems to 

have been an afterthought, the lumping together of those nations with a “Germanic” 

heritage strikes one now as a little tactless.  At the Market Street corner of Collins 

Street, after the Butter Arch and just prior to the march passing under the German Arch, 

stretched a banner across the street proclaiming “Denmark’s Greeting.”
516

  This Royal 

Banner of Denmark was supplied by the Consul General Mr Peter Hansen.  Given that 

one of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck’s first actions when seeking to create a 

united Germany thirty years earlier had been to “wrest” the German speaking provinces 

of Schleswig and Holstein from Denmark, it is unlikely that Mr Hansen would have 

chosen this location himself.
517

  

 

The German Arch was unusual in that it consisted of two fluted columns connected by a 

horizontal bar carrying a painted banner portraying “The Genius of Australia” on one 

                                                 
511

 Gerhard Fischer: Enemy Aliens, 1989, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, p. 19.  Franz 

Wallach, Charles Rasp and Edmund Resch were just some of those of German heritage who had helped 

develop Australian industry at the time. 
512

 Gerhard Fischer: Enemy Aliens, p. 17. 
513

 Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 83. 
514

 The Age: 7 May 1901, p. 10. 
515

 Sands and McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, p. 13.  Australia on Collins: 

Centre Information and History online database. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 84. 
516

 The Argus: 7 May 1901, p. 10. 
517

 Neville Kingsley Meaney: The West and the World 1789-1914, 1972, Science Press, Sydney, p. 316. 



237 

 

side and the German Imperial Standard on the other.  The Age claimed that this was a 

particularly popular arch: “an artistic success and a credit not only to the designer, but to 

the German citizens who have worked so enthusiastically to worthily welcome the 

descendent of a Queen whose death their own Emperor mourned with the loving 

affection of a son.”
518

  Again, the all pervasive influence of the recently deceased Queen 

Victoria continued to hold a strong sway over both Australian, and even European 

society well into 1901.   The German arch was also deemed to be important and 

significant enough that a serious error in spelling in the motto across the top bar should 

have been pointed out, and then excused, since there was apparently too little time to 

alter the wording.  In the included quotation from Schiller’s William Tell; “Wir woollen 

seine in, einig Volk von Brudern (One People we, United and Fraternal), the word 

‘einzig’ (only or retraction) was given instead of ‘einig’ (to be in agreement), and the 

sense of the motto was altered from one of goodwill to doubtfulness.”
 519

 

 

The German nation appeared as fervent and enthusiastic as German Australians 

themselves although with what would have been considered even at the time an 

ominous overtone.  One of the last visiting vessels to arrive in Melbourne in time for the 

opening of Federal Parliament 
520

 was the German cruiser Cormoran.
521

  Even the 

Examiner in Launceston noted the significance of the incident,
522

 with many of the 

parade spectators aware that this particular vessel, known as SMS Cormoran I, was 

instrumental in expanding Germany’s imperial empire in the Pacific and China, then 

and in the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion.  Later, while laid up in the Chinese port of 

Tsingtau (Quingdao) her guns were removed and fitted to a captured Russian vessel at 

the outbreak of the First World War, which was then renamed Cormoran II.  This 

renamed ship would eventually be scuttled at Guam as one of the first actions between 

Germany and the United States in the war.
523

 

 

                                                 
518

 The Age: 7 May 1901, p. 10.  Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory 

Arches of 1901, p. 82.    
519

 The Age: 6 May 1901, p. 10.  

The Argus: 7 May 1901, p. 5. Melbourne en Fete. No matter that the 1804 play William Tell was based 

upon the famous Swiss nationalist who fought against the Germanic Austro Hungarian overlords. 
520

 The Argus: 4 May 1901, p. 15. 
521

 Chris Coulthard-Clark: Where Australians Fought – The Encyclopaedia of Australia’s Battles, p. 194. 

It would later be the successively named auxiliary cruiser SMS Kormoran that would sink HMAS Sydney 

II off the Western Australian coast in 1941. 
522

 Launceston Examiner: 9 April 1917, p. 5.  
523

 The Argus: 17 December 1914, p. 7. Cruiser Cormoran interned at Guam. 



238 

 

One noticeable difference evident in photographs of the Central Business District of 

Melbourne at the time of Federation, and those of Melbourne City today, is in the 

number of trees lining the streets.  Perhaps this could be regarded as an example of the 

gentrification of the city, as well a change in the public’s relationship with the natural 

world made possible also by practical changes in the use of the streets.  We do not even 

need to go back a century to see this quite remarkable transformation.  The photographs 

of the central city, as well as individual streets in Morris’ Melbourne Past and Present, 

show through the development of aerial photography that even later in 1935 the city’s 

greenery remained sparse.
524

  Tree filled parks and public spaces were of course as 

numerous then as today and recognised as an important requirement for both the 

physical and psychological health of the inhabitants.  However, fully grown trees were 

restricted to these specific sites, and the business sections of the city remained largely 

vegetation free. 

 

This greening of the inner city streetscape appears to have accelerated over the 

intervening decades within both Sydney and Melbourne, although the significance of 

verdant spaces was well established by 1900.  Hyde Park, Centennial Park and the 

Botanical Gardens surrounding Melbourne’s Government House all played their parts 

as significant locations for the Federation parades, since it was these very open areas 

that could accommodate the numbers of spectators and participants for the various 

ceremonies and parade formations.  If this leafy infill represents a general trend towards 

a softer, more pleasing environment as well as compensation for the large number of 

awnings that have been removed (or modern buildings constructed without awnings at 

all), then this also presents problems of its own.  The detrimental effects of tree roots on 

even more antiquated subterranean water, sewage and gas pipes have also been noted 

from the beginning.
525

 

 

The imagery of the tree also as a symbol of growth was well recognised by the 

nineteenth century, and when Henry Parkes attended the Federation Conference in 

Melbourne during February 1890, he commemorated the event by planting a spreading 

                                                 
524

 Sheridan Morris: Melbourne Past and Present, 2008, Axiom Publishing, Adelaide, pp. 96, 102-103. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 85. 
525

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 23 May 1939, p. 10.  “The Alderman McElhone’s lament lists tree roots 

getting into water pipes, tree roots being cut to lay new water pipes, and even tree roots being adversely 

affected by leaking gas as issues needing to be addressed.” Arthur McElhone was another scion of a 

powerful Irish Catholic family that had held civic positions in Sydney for generations. He had married 

into the Anthony Hordern family and became director of both corporate and civic icons in the city.  G N 

Hawker: The Parliament of New South Wales 1856-1965, 1971, NSW Government Printer, Sydney. 



239 

 

oak tree near Parliament House.
526

  It was at this conference that Parkes made his 

famous “crimson thread of kinship” statement;
527

 no doubt realising that despite the 

“lion in the path” of intrastate taxation, the progress towards the Federation of the 

nation was now as relentless as would be the growth of this tree.  A month later Parkes 

planted another tree in Berrima’s central square having given yet another tree stump 

speech at Bowral School in support of Federation.
528

  

 

 

14.  AFTER THE PARADES 

 

As previously mentioned, the initial parade through the city of Melbourne on 6 May 

1901 was only one of the many celebrations during that week.  This introductory parade 

was mirrored by the equally significant march on 9 May to the Exhibition Buildings
529

 

in Carlton Gardens for the formal establishment of the new Federal Government.
530

  

There were also the smaller Stockman’s, Chinese, Fireman’s and Trades’ marches that 

utilised the arches and various parts of the main parade routes. 

 

Once all these parades and accompanying celebrations were over, the arches and 

accompanying celebratory structures were dismantled, and in view of their underlying 

flimsiness, broken up and dumped as their public memory quietly faded away.  Despite 

all the arches in both parades originally intended to be of a temporary nature, very little 

mention was made of their removal, and what eventually happened to the remains.  

Slabs of plaster and fibre from the Sydney arches may well have ended up in the 

recently established Tempe Tip.  This former brick pit on the otherwise unused 

swampland near the Chinese market garden district around the Cooks River was already 

being used as a dumping ground.
531

  The Bairnsdale and Tambo and Omeo Chronicle, 

                                                 
526

 Australian Broadcasting Commission: Gardening Australia, Melbourne’s historically significant trees 

online database. 

Photograph Booklet vol.2, p. 85. 
527

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 25 April 1890, p. 4.  Helen Irving: The Centenary Companion to 

Australian Federation, 1999, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, p. 364. 
528

 Parliament of NSW: Private Member’s Statement by Mr Seaton, page 10608 Hansard online database. 
529

 Photograph Booklet vol. 2, p. 87. 
530

 Photograph Booklet vol. 2, p. 88. 
531

 Richard Cashman and Chrys Meader: Marrickville – Rural Outpost to Inner City, p. 57.  “But in the 

twentieth century Tempe declined rapidly in social status and the popular phrase ‘Tempe Tip’ became a 

derogatory expression for a suburb which suffers from a considerable amount of air and noise pollution.”  

Marrickville Council: The 1950s online database.  From the 1930s to the 1980s all the other brick pits 

surrounding Gumbramorra Swamp were converted to parkland and sporting ovals.  With gentrification of 



240 

 

of all press outlets, mentioned the calling of tenders in August 1901 for the removal of 

the Queen’s Arch in Collins Street.  “The structure is in a lamentable state of decay and 

has become an eyesore.”
532

  Overall the process of constructing and then dismantling 

the arches in both cities appeared to have involved a considerable squandering of both 

social effort and financial value, with Melbourne’s arches listed by the West Australian 

newspaper as costing  upwards of £20,000,  out of the  £100,000 allocated for all that 

city’s celebrations.
533

  

 

This is not to suggest that the concept of a permanent reminder of these significant 

events was immediately lost.  There were, even at the time, many proposals in both 

these capital cities for some permanent memorial to mark the Federation of the 

nation.
534

  However, interest waned and nothing substantial eventuated.  As I intimated 

in the Sydney march chapter dealing with the Commonwealth Arch at Hyde Park, even 

in 1901 there seemed to be an unconscious evolution of a national characteristic that 

looked forward to the future and the modern
535

 with less of a concern over the distant, 

or even very recent, past.  The fate of the 2001 Centenary of Federation construction on 

Princes Bridge certainly strikes the modern footstepper as a sad confirmation of this 

national characteristic.   

 

Less tangible remains from the era also appear to have faded without trace.  The 

nomenclature of Federation Place at the present junction of Anzac Parade, Cleveland 

Street and Lang Road has never to my knowledge been commonly used.
536

  While a 

pleasant open parkland in Sydney’s east, the area’s main claim to fame today is as 

parking for cricket and football spectators at the Sydney Cricket Ground and Football 

Stadium.  There is certainly little record or use of this term today, apart from the small 

print in street directories,
537

 and the only physical palimpsest that connects to the 

                                                                                                                                               
the district, even the remnant waste disposal area next door to the old tip holding the Olympic Rings is 

now referred to as a Recycling Depot. 
532

 Bairnsdale and Tambo and Omeo Chronicle: 27 August 1901, p. 2. 
533

 The West Australian: 23 April 1901, p. 5. 
534

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, 2000, pp. 60-64.  

Milne dedicates the final half a dozen pages of her Sydney parade study to a discussion on the possible 

proposals for a permanent memorial to Federation. 
535

 The Australian: 24 March 2011, online database.  “Australians buy 1 million mobiles monthly.” 

Australians' love affair with mobile phones shows no sign of abating, with more than 1 million units 

purchased each month last year. 
536

 Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Sydney Street Directory 2011, map 20.  As with the 

hanging swamp at Elizabeth Street Sydney, until I began researching this thesis, I was not even aware that 

this named location ever existed. 
537

 Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Street Directory of Sydney 2011, map 20. 



241 

 

Federation era are the now difficult to recognise mounds alongside the bus roadway 

which are all that remains of the tram station that served sporting and showground 

patrons in the past.
538

 

 

When the Centenary of Federation was planned, it was also as much a social as a 

political event.
539

  On the 1
 
January 2001, an abbreviated celebratory march retraced 

part of the original Sydney parade route from the Domain directly up College Street and 

along Oxford Street before, ironically diverting down the old tramway along Anzac 

Parade, so as not to disrupt then more important everyday traffic.
540

  By the time a 

century had passed, the quiet Oxford Street amble out to the relaxed Eastern Suburbs 

had be become a congested thoroughfare clogged with motor vehicles connecting some 

of the densest packed suburbs of Sydney with the city.  Modern drivers would not have 

appreciated the necessary blockage of the street, even for the commemoration of the 

centenary of such a significant national event.   

 

Ironically this meant that the smaller parade a century after Federation actually did turn 

left at Federation Place.  The intersection and walkway were partially replanted at the 

time, no doubt with the intention of reinvigorating the area.
541

  Again however, nothing 

further eventuated, and the city continues to rely for its tangible memory upon the 

Tzannes 1988 Federation Pavilion in Centennial Park.
542

  Melbourne has also attempted 

to demonstrate respect to the city’s and the nation’s heritage through the permanent 

construction of Federation Square, offering a more long lasting tribute to the 1901 

Federation of the Australian nation.  Whether this, essentially entertainment area 

adjacent to the site of the principal Melbourne Arch causes citizens to reflect upon the 

significance of events that took place at this location a century ago, is difficult to judge. 

 

                                                 
538

 Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Street Directory of Sydney & Suburbs 1934, maps 8, 12.  

Note the prevalence of tram tracks along Anzac Parade at the height of the system’s popularity and 

extent.   The Sydney Morning Herald: 7 October 1887, p. 9.  SMH: 8 November 1920, p. 9 “Night smash 

in Moore Park”.  SMH: 18 February1954, p. 8.   Even as early as 1887, mention is made of another 

strange characteristic of the to-be-named Federation Place; its role as the Bermuda Triangle of Sydney 

tram crashes. 
539

 Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Australia’s Centenary of Federation., online program guide and 

events. 
540

 Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Federation Story 2001, online internet map. 
541

 Centennial Parklands: Centenary of Federation Fact Sheet online database. 
542

Apperly, Irving, Reynolds: A Pictorial Guide to Identifying Australian Architecture, p. 265. As 

mentioned, this pavilion had originally been constructed as part of Australia’s Bi-centennial of First 

Settlement celebrations, not the Centenary of Federation 



242 

 

With the establishment of the National Museum of Australia, recognition was finally 

afforded to the effort that had been put into preparing for the Federation of the nation a 

century earlier.  A half scale model of Melbourne’s Citizen’s Arch was constructed and 

placed on display in the year 2000.
543

  Significantly, this was not a model of one of the 

two principal political Federation Arches from 1901: the Sydney Commonwealth Arch 

from Park Street, or Melbourne’s Municipal Arch from the Princes Bridge, but rather 

the structure commemorating the citizens and population of the city of Melbourne; the 

one that was originally located in the retail hub of Bourke Street.  While general interest 

in heritage has no doubt increased over the intervening century, such a choice of arch 

could be seen as not so much reflecting the vagaries of fashion as centring 

commemoration on the sense of the recognised local community, rather than a more 

abstract imagined national identity.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                 
543

 National Museum of Australia: Citizens’ Arch – Flash interactive online database. 

Photograph Booklet vol. 2, p. 89. 



243 
 

CONCLUSION 

 

What conclusions have I been able to draw from the application of the methodology of 

footstepping and thick description to the investigation of the two 1901 Federation 

parades in Sydney and Melbourne?  What kind of society was being imagined at the 

time and who was to be considered part of this society?   

 

Footstepping is first and foremost the retracing through the physical, and then the 

cultural environment as it currently exists, overlaying the experienced physical setting 

with the known or imagined environment of the past.  The process of footstepping can 

therefore be considered a form of re-enactment based on the traditional process of 

visiting historical sites while researching and being guided by traditional literary 

sources to uncover instances and episodes relating to either individuals or whole 

societies.  The thick description of Ryle and Geertz has previously been applied in 

sociological terms to the interpretation of exotic cultures in the present.  

 

Just as individual diaries and personal records were employed by Richard Holmes as the 

practical initiators and motivation for the research into his individual biographical 

subjects , so I integrated the experiences of the cities of Sydney and Melbourne and 

their communities through the press and historical commentary to the analyse the 

biography of the Australian community.  Evidence was then further collated through the 

photographic record of the era.  Geographical and architectural photography was 

subsequently used as part of the recording process for my own methodology, resulting 

in both a written evaluation of the Australian nation a century ago, and the visual 

analysis of what still remains today. 

 

As mentioned in the Introduction, I have not regarded footstepping as a new technique, 

but rather as a new frame of reference.  Visiting historical sites has a long and proud 

tradition in both travelogues and historical studies.  However, by inter-playing this 

traditional approach with literary records of the time and newspaper reports of the 

events, I sought to apply a process that has been more common in the field of literary 

biography and the biography of individuals, to gain insight into the attitudes of the 

wider community: in essence, the biography of a nation. 

 



244 
 

By combining these two processes to investigate my own Australian culture in the past, 

rather than analysing a current society from a cultural or physical distance, I was able to 

follow E P Thompson’s ideal;  getting inside the episodes of the principal Federation 

parades to apprise the Australian imagined community of a century ago.  My thesis 

therefore intended to add to the historical record directly through the analysis of these 

two events, but also indirectly through advancing this methodological and research 

process.  It was through the practice of footstepping the routes of the parades that I not 

only revealed a differing view of Australia’s attitudes to the non-British members of the 

community to the one that has traditionally been presented but also advanced a 

theoretical approach to the practice of historical research itself. 

 

 

FOOTSTEPPING ANALYSIS 

 

One obvious feature of both cities that became evident from footstepping these two 

routes was the importance of the geography and landform.  Following the routes of the 

two marches informed a wider appreciation of the two cities, and the degree to which 

geography can influence, or interact with culture: the degree to which shadows, shades  

and vestiges from the past still remain, even if dependent upon cultural and literary 

memory.  As previously mentioned, even the nature of the routes themselves reflected 

the differing landscapes and political establishment of the two cities.  Sydney grew in a 

haphazard manner over the course of its initial century, and the route of the Sydney 

Federation parade reflected this by almost zig zagging through the city before 

eventually breaking out into the long straight course to Centennial Park.  Melbourne 

began as a rectilinear planed city, and again the Melbourne march mirrored this 

formality even to the extent of the four sided route being evenly spaced three blocks 

either side of the Swanston Street entry into the city. 

 

Initially of course, the purpose behind both Federation parades was to showcase aspects 

of Australian society, and present the newly federated nation to both the world and to 

itself.  Consequently, the routes chosen had social and political considerations.  This 

does not mean that the parameters governing the routes were necessarily chosen 

intentionally, although certain points of significance and notable thoroughfares were 

considered essential.  Certain buildings would have to have been included: Parliament 

Houses and governmental offices were consciously chosen, while centres of Christian 



245 
 

worship and culture were chosen unconsciously simply by their inadvertent location 

throughout the city.  Particular roadways were decided upon both through simple 

mathematical logic as well as the conscious need to present the more attractive and 

culturally prestigious districts within the cities.  Sites were naturally included as the 

marches were stepped out to a length that could accommodate both the size of the 

parades themselves, and the time and distance that the participants could be expected to 

walk; not much more than an hour, and subsequently around six kilometres or four 

miles.    

 

The remnants of streets, lanes and buildings, along with government services such as 

trams and railways often still existed in some form, literally providing the pathway for 

the footstepper to follow.  However, uncovering them was dependent upon the approach 

employed by Richard Holmes; through both a varying level of intimacy with the city 

and the society, and the written literary record.  It is for this reason that I also followed 

Holmes’ lead in taking side tracks to three other locations adjacent to the marches in the 

two cities to uncover districts that were not regarded as showcases of Australian culture.  

Although kept outside the boundaries of the parades, Darling Harbour, Wexford Street 

and Little Lonsdale Street did demonstrate the all-encompassing interconnected nature 

of society at the time through a physical familiarity that could be considered closer than 

the one experienced by suburban residents today.  This was borne out of the need to be 

physically near to work and church, school and social services, as well a cultural 

closeness that may have been simply due to the freshness of so many of the cultural 

establishments that were evolving at the time.  Not only the new Federal Government, 

but a newly developing labour movement and newly established public education 

systems were all becoming institutions that had not yet become institutionalised. 

 

The result of the expansion of public transport also meant that most members of the 

Sydney and Melbourne communities were able to attend significant events such as these 

parades and associated celebrations.  The society of the time was not just theoretically 

imagined, but the practical embodiment of every day experience, with citizens at the 

time getting inside the episodes themselves as both participants and immediate 

spectators.  Divisions of class, race, gender and religion existed, but these did not 

preclude participation in the Federation celebrations.  There may have been restrictions 

on Chinese and Mediterranean immigration, the purchase of Chinese made furniture, 



246 
 

women in the workforce and Catholics in aspects of politics and employment, but there 

were no restrictions on who could attend and view these marches.   

 

The road surface encountered by participants and spectators arriving by public transport 

may have been rougher than that encountered today, although the wooden blocks and 

hard gravel were being replaced by more modern surfaces, partially to accommodate the 

newly laid tram tracks.  Photographic images of the time indicate that the experience of 

actually marching along the principal roads that formed the routes of the marches would 

probably not have been much different to that of walking the streets today.  Gradients 

were kept as low as possible within the other parameters since it was obvious that the 

Sydney march would need to go down the steep slope from State Parliament House to 

the Central Business District and the Melbourne march would need to travel up the 

equally steep slope from Swanston Street to Spring Street.  Tight bends were kept to a 

minimum, interestingly paralleling the soon to be adjusted turning radii of corners to 

accommodate the expanding tram networks in both cities.
1
  

 

The routes taken by the two Federation parades are still logically obvious in terms of 

these gradients, the actual distance needed to be travelled and the number of sharp 

corners that needed to be traversed.  The width of roadways, however, provided an 

interesting point of comparison.  Melbourne began as a planned city, and the streets that 

were originally laid out were the ones followed by the 1901 march and the ones that I 

retraced through a century later.  Sydney began unplanned and rather cramped, so that 

some streets such as Martin Place were in the process of being widened at the time of 

Federation, while others such as Park Street and Oxford Street were widened over the 

subsequent decades.   

 

The modern footstepper can thus still obtain a strong sense of the narrow canyon effect 

remaining in districts such as Pitt Street and the sensation that people of the time must 

have felt after the Sydney parade turned from the breadth of Macquarie Street and 

plunged down Bridge Street.   Moving from the equally narrow confines of old Park 

Street, through the Commonwealth Arch out into the expanse of Hyde Park would now 

have to be imagined although the taller buildings on the southern side of the street 

replicate much of the original sensation.  Such buildings themselves, including large 

                                                           
1
 The one notable exception was the zig zag that the Sydney March made at Martin Place, moving from 

the economically influential Pitt Street onto the commercially influential George Street. 



247 
 

government offices and churches have remained in place over the course of a century or 

more, and even when they are altered, regulations usually mean that the actual sites 

retain their original purpose.
2
  Smaller shops and offices often change, although, as I 

found, whole districts tend not to change their tone unless governmental 

instrumentalities consciously decide to re-zone or alter building codes.  Thus, 

government, business and retail areas in both cities have remained stable over the 

century, even as individual buildings have been replaced or reassigned to new roles.
3
 

 

Where change has often occurred is in residential districts.  This has been due to a 

combination of government incentive and regulation and the changing aspirations and 

expectations of people themselves.  The availability of public transport, along with a 

desire to escape the unhealthy inner city of a century ago led to the expansion of 

suburbia.  The subsequent congestion of private transport and the elimination of most of 

the sources of ill-health have now led to a conscious (if still relatively small) move back 

to city living for those who can afford it.  Consequently, the available inner urban 

districts themselves have changed.  The Little Lonsdale precinct is now high rise 

modern, rather than medium density disreputable, Wentworth Avenue is becoming a 

mix of contemporary medium rise residential and early twentieth century warehouse 

restored, while Darling Harbour has lost virtually all low level residential status in 

favour of high rise city offices, and now high rise, high end casinos and apartments. 

 

Assembling and dispersal points for the two Federation parades a century ago were a 

significant consideration, with both dependent upon large park land or open space.  The 

footstepping experience demonstrated this clearly in the case of Sydney, where the 

closeness of the Domain to the centre of the city made this site logical.  The long 

extended component of the march was then out to Centennial Park where again the large 

park land would have afforded room for the necessary dispersal of the marchers.  In the 

case of Melbourne, the assembly point was St Kilda with the final dispersal at the 

Botanical Gardens and Government House.  For most participants this again would have 

been within easy walking distance back to the city and the rail and tram network within 

central Melbourne.  One characteristic that was not so obvious from walking the two 

                                                           
2
 It is here that the redevelopment of the old government buildings in Macquarie Street, and of the Paris 

end of Collins Street can be thought of as the exceptions (or compromises) that prove the rule. 
3
 This seems to be more the case in Melbourne, where the formal city grid pattern retains the Central 

Business District within strict confines.  Sydney has been more fluid, with the previously mentioned 

fluctuations isolating department stores, for example. 



248 
 

routes, but which emerged from press reports of the day was the previously mentioned 

lack of sustenance and the poor public facilities available at the time.  While much 

thought was put into transportation to and from the events, and even the possible need 

for first aid in the event of mishap, the lack of water and toilet facilities appears 

regretfully modern, and mirrors the current experience with even annual events such as 

Anzac Day parades and New Year’s Eve concerts.   

 

As mentioned, the two marches also differed in their expectations, and this was also 

reflected in the organisation at the time.  Sydney’s parade was a one off event 

celebrating the day when Australia became a united and federated nation, while 

Melbourne’s march was one event among many that accompanied the establishment of 

a Federal Parliament.  The number of events in Melbourne was enough for even 

newspapers to become confused over routes and dates, so that the initial public 

procession investigated in my thesis was the largest, but not the principal parade.  This 

would have been the shorter march three days later to the Exhibition Building for the 

formal opening of Parliament.  Therefore, we could construe that Sydney’s Federation 

parade wished to present the new nation as a unique cultural entity both to the rest of the 

world and to itself, while Melbourne’s event was more organisational and reflective of 

both governmental responsibility and the desire to retain links to a wider protective 

culture.  Sydney was thus more inclusive, at least consciously inclusive of those groups 

who were to be consciously embraced in the new society, while Melbourne appeared 

more regal and vice-regal, reaffirming political and military connections to the British 

Empire. 

 

One other interpretation of Australian society that emerged from both my footstepping 

methodology and my wider accompanying research; and one that exposed questions 

within my theoretical approach, was the obvious importance of individuals to 

Australia’s development.  At one level this went against the social philosophy of 

Wilhelm Dilthey who had argued for a community approach to determining wider 

social attitudes, and what actually constitutes history.  I too began by looking to uncover 

the ideals of a community in general and continually found myself returning to 

examples of the individual enterprise that influenced this community; particularly in the 

case of Sydney.  So the question arises; to what degree were my own investigations a 

party to these same historical evidential limitations?  Were the imaginings of the whole 

population really being expressed?  Was the culture I uncovered through my 



249 
 

experiences, the press and other written material just another historical representation of 

narrow personal experience, or was the society of the time really so influenced and 

determined by individuals such as Mort, Ashburton Thompson, Martin and Baracchi?    

I essentially was left with two possibilities: either the views of these social leaders 

really did largely embody the views of the community, which is why they became 

leaders in the first place, or conversely, the views of the community were naturally so 

wide and diverse that I would have had to contemplate dozens of varying opinions on 

each aspect of the national identity being created.  In this case, the social aspects of the 

footstepping methodology would have to be considered problematic.  If the new 

community really was being imagined, then this imagining was occurring in the minds 

of many people on an individual level, and while the overall outcome would have to 

reflect a community consensus for the process to come to practical fruition, analysing 

responses actually brings out an individualistic aspect. 

 

Perhaps it was the very familiarity that I brought to my analysis of the Sydney parade 

that caused me to inevitably cast my view wider, and that the recognised contrast with 

footstepping the Melbourne march route; that of a lack of familiarity with the city and 

its history, thus really did become a methodological advantage.  I was forced back into 

an analysis of what was before me without prior knowledge of individual influence on 

the city.  The individuals who were considered part of Melbourne’s history were those I 

found through, for example, the statuary and works of art along the route of the march, 

rather than through any sense of cultural memory. 

 

 

PRESENT AND MISSING 

 

If Australia was imagining itself to be both intrinsically and almost protectively British, 

and at the same time embodying a level of tolerance within this tradition, who actually 

were the non-British who were to be tolerated (or not, as the case may be)?  In 1901 the 

number of Australians of non-British birth was relatively small, although this also 

depended upon definition.
4
  With almost three million citizens born in Australia and a 

further quarter of a million born in England out of a total population in 1901 of 

                                                           
4
 Wray Vamplew: Australians, Historical Statistics, 1987, Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, Sydney, 

p. 12.  Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics: Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of 

Australia 1901-1907, No.1, pp. 166-169. 



250 
 

3,773,801,
5
 the 30,000 born in China, and 38,000 born in Germany, for example, would 

have been fairly significant in themselves.
6
   However, if one takes into account the 

large numbers of second generation non-British people who would have been 

considered, and considered themselves, as Australians to quite varying degrees, these 

figures would have been much greater. 

 

What is also noteworthy was the wide number of nationalities represented in the 

statistics.  As well as Germans, Chinese and Italians, there were significant numbers of 

migrants from Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway, Sweden), Japan, the United States of 

America and Canada, and even the Austro Hungarian Empire and Switzerland.  With 

the White Australia policy coming into force, the numbers born in Africa and Asia in 

general were small, with numbers in the mere hundreds nationwide.  Still, while many 

nationalities had mere token representation, the variety filled one complete page of the 

1901 census.
7
 

 

Of course, the interpretation of such figures can reflect the opinions of people today as 

much as the attitudes of Australians at the time.  The events at the turn of the century 

can be pressed into service to underplay the racist attitudes that obviously have existed 

in the Australian community or to exaggerate the lack of tolerance, although the results 

of my footstepping suggest that a more accurate picture lies somewhere in between. 

While it may be current to believe that Australian society has attempted to cover up and 

hide the less admirable aspects of the past, there is also the tendency, noted by David 

Lowenthal, for current commentary to overstate the inverse.  The past can be presented 

in an unnaturally positive light, although “the past is not always benignly exhibited; on 

occasion its infamies too are exaggerated.”
8
  While Lowenthal’s example of “historical 

self-flagellation” is American, can the same be said of fin de siècle Australia?
9
 

 

                                                           
5
 Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics: Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia 

1901-1907, No.1, p. 168. Note also the discrepancy at the bottom of the page, where the correct figure of 

3 773 801 is incorrectly listed as 37,37,801. 
6
 If all numbers are multiplied by six to equate with Australia’s current population, almost two hundred 

thousand Chinese and well over two hundred thousand Germans would not be inconsiderable. 
7
 Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics: Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia 

1901-1907, No.1 p. 168.   
8
 David Lowenthal: The Past is a Foreign Country, p. 345. 

9
 David Lowenthal: The Past is a Foreign Country, p. 346.  Quoting Kenneth Adelman: “US National 

Park Service battlefield interpretations today focus so much on the horrors of war that some suspect 

pacifist leanings.” 



251 
 

At one level, these marches appeared to be representative of the community, and yet 

also unrepresentative of the wider society of the time.  In terms of those people who 

were looked upon as the principal actors within society, the marches were quite 

inclusive.  Australian tolerance and egalitarianism extended to the respectable and even 

organised working class as well as to those non-British migrants who were seen as 

contributing to the community.  There seemed to have been what author and flâneur 

Edmund White would later describe as a particularly “French” attitude towards such 

minorities (or in the case of women, an actual majority, if also a cultural minority).
10

  

According to White, our current Australian preoccupation with identity politics and 

“hyphenated cultural membership”
11

 is at a variance with the ideal of cultural inclusion.  

“The French themselves would argue that their rejection of all ghettoization, far from 

being a sign of closetedness or cynicism, is in fact consistence with their ‘singularity’ as 

a nation.”   “The French,” he continues, “believe that a society is not a federation of 

special interest groups but rather an impartial state that treats each citizen – regardless 

of his or her gender, sexual orientation, religion or colour – as an abstract, universal 

individual.”
12

  This state of affairs is, of course, dependent upon a reality where all 

citizens actually are treated as equal individuals; and at the time of the Federation 

parades, this was not the case.
13

  

 

German and Chinese migrants suffered abuse and racism at the time of the Federation 

parades, as did Greek and Italian migrants then and later.  However, these non-British 

migrant groups had been allowed into the country for both their own political and 

economic benefit, and for the economic benefit of Australia as a nation.   For some, the 

process was always too open and liberal, and for others it was always too restrictive.  

One of the weaknesses of relying solely on press reportage of historical events is that, as 

I mentioned at the beginning, the press and the media tend to be polarising institutions; 

by their nature open most to opinions that are often extreme, or at least the most 

confrontational and engaging.
14

  I would argue that only through all-encompassing 

                                                           
10

  Edmund White: The Flâneur, chapt. 5.  
11

 Deakin University: Hyphenated Australia online database. “Putting intercultural identity on the 

conceptual map.” 
12

  Edmund White: The Flâneur, p. 166. 
13

 Davison, McCarty, McLeary: Australians 1888, 1987, Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, Sydney, p. 

421.  “The Chinese Restriction Bill [introduced into the colonial NSW Parliament] that troubled Lord 

Carrington was rushed through parliament, limiting entry by a variety of shipping and residential 

qualifications.” 
14

 While I have revealed instances of negative racial attitudes expressed through cartoons and articles in 

publications such as The Bulletin, it is worth remembering that the gist of my thesis is such traditional 



252 
 

social experiences such as these major parades do calmer underlying and more 

pervasive attitudes become consciously visible. 

 

The Australian community celebrated at Federation was to be white Anglo-Saxon and a 

proud member of the British Empire.  However, the evidence demonstrates a more 

complex less differentiated society.  The marches were organised by a Croatian in 

Melbourne and Irish Catholics in Sydney.  Weather reports for the Melbourne parade 

and medical support for the citizens of Sydney were supplied by Italians, and the 

establishment of the Federal Parliament in Melbourne was celebrated through a formal 

Italian Conversazione, while there was an Italian float in Sydney.  Groups such as the 

Chinese were either patronised as token members of the wider community or feared due 

to their numbers, while at the same time their contribution to the new society was 

recognised through the Chinese arch and Chinese parade in Melbourne.  The Federation 

of the nation had been partially planned in Chinese tea rooms in Sydney while Chinese 

social influence was informally acknowledged through the reliance upon their furniture, 

food supplies and eating establishments.
15

 

 

Men from all levels of the community who were to be the constituent members of the 

new democracy were actively involved as both the participants and the organisers of the 

marches.  Political dignitaries, the vice-regal representatives of course, military and 

police forces and working men were all proudly represented within both parades.
16

  

However, it is those who were missing from the marches who tell us as much about the 

kind of society that Australia hoped to build from the Federation of the nation.  These 

groups existed as outsiders to some degree at the time, and certainly existed as shadows 

behind my later footstepping experience.  Women, for example, hardly appeared to be 

represented at all in the parades.  Apart from the Duchess of Cornwall and York, whose 

own position was essentially dependent upon that of her husband, and the female 

manikins on the Italian and Canadian cars, no other women were present as participants.  

No doubt the restrictive nature of women’s fashions of the time goes a long way to 

explaining why they did not walk the full distances of the parades, although by contrast, 

                                                                                                                                                                          
written outlets can be limited in their sources and consequently unrepresentative in the opinions they 

express. 
15

 Graeme Davison: The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne, 1978, p. 178. Davison states that “The 

Chinese in particular constituted a separate market from the rest of the [furniture] trade, marked off by 

their disregard for European standards of wages, hours, conditions and prices.” However, as mentioned, 

European trades unions rarely supported the Chinese in attempting to improve their own conditions. 
16

 The Daily Telegraph: 2 January 1901, p. 14. 



253 
 

women were conspicuously present in the throngs viewing the marches and in those 

assembled for the Centennial Park ceremony after the Sydney march.
17

 

 

However, in the case of the Melbourne march at least, there was a serious proposal to 

include a Women’s Arch.  “At the conclusion of the citizen’s committee yesterday, 

Miss L White, who originated in a letter published in The Age, the idea of a women’s 

arch, introduced a deputation of ladies to the Mayor.”
18

  There was initially considerable 

confidence in the raising of the necessary £500 from the women of Victoria for such a 

structure.  However, by the next week, the project appeared to have been taken over by 

senior female civic leaders in Melbourne, and the less substantial £100 that had already 

been raised was transferred into financing a new ward for the Queen Victoria Memorial 

Hospital.
19

  While it may have been understandable that a women’s leader such as Mary 

Elizabeth Chomley, a Red Cross Society worker who would later work in London 

supporting wounded soldiers during the First World War, should be behind the move, it 

seems strange that Ida Goldstein, feminist, mother of activist Vida Goldstein, and a 

staunch campaigner for women’s suffrage would have agreed to forgo such an 

opportunity to promote the cause.
20

 

 

Moreover, despite at least one fifth of the workforce by this time being female,
21

 women 

workers were also not included in the trades sections of the parades.  At a certain level 

the fact that women were working, or having to work, was increasingly at odds with the 

middle-class ideal of gendered domesticity that had gathered momentum during the 

second half of Queen Victoria’s reign.
22

  Notwithstanding the fact that both families and 

industries themselves were often dependent upon a female workforce, the aim of the 

labour movement was increasingly centred on the principle of giving all men the 

                                                           
17

 This is clearly evident in the photographic evidence of the time. 
18

 The Age: 12 March 1901, p. 5. 
19

 The Age: 22 March 1901, p. 5.  “ I [Lady Sargood] will have much pleasure in asking the ladies who 

have so generously promised and subscribed upwards of £100 towards the erection of a triumphal arch to 

her Royal Highness, if they are agreeable to hand over their subscriptions to your fund.”  
20

 Wilde, Hooton, Andrews: The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, 1985-1994, p. 320. 
21

 Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics: Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia 

1901-1908, No.2, pp. 544-547.  Note that certainly from Federation well over one quarter of the 

workforce in manufacturing was female. In 1903, 149,246 males and 46,564 females were employed in 

manufacturing industries. 
22

 The Australian Women’s Weekly: 27 November 1968, p. 2.  Note Dr Jean Battersby’s quote from the 

1966 Commonwealth Census stating that 26.6% of married women worked.  Granted that there were far 

greater restrictions on married women in public service employment a century ago, it still seems ironic to 

boast that female employment in the 1960s was essentially the same as it had been at Federation. 



254 
 

opportunity to support their families.
23

  The Harvester Judgement of 1907 and the Fruit 

Pickers’ Case of 1912 would certainly later enshrine this ideal through the concept of 

the basic wage.
24

 While Davison quotes Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class to the 

effect that “the consumption habits of the middle class were mainly directed towards the 

maintenance of ‘the lady of the house’ in a state of conspicuous abstention”, the reality 

often appeared to apply more in theory than in practice.
25

  Working class families still 

typically relied upon the wages of both parents.  There were occupations apart from 

domestic service, such as nursing, teaching and clerical work, where women were 

considered to be suited, although those in the public service were expected to resign 

upon marriage.  On one level, their work was deemed to be socially significant, and 

even essential, although it was also the lower wages paid to women, and their 

supposedly more malleable temperaments that made them attractive to employers.  Even 

then, as Melanie Raymond points out in her discussion of female industrial action at the 

Guest Biscuit factory in the 1890s, in practice this was not always the case.
26

  However, 

it was the hard physical labour undertaken by men in earning their living that was 

lauded and represented in the marches and by the arches that the participants passed 

underneath.
27

  In certain instances, the position of women actually retreated.  As 

Raelene Francis and Bruce Scates have noted; “In 1901 women had won equal pay in 

the new Federal public service.  [Consequently] women who held responsible positions 

in the Victorian postal service were relegated to the lowest position and could no longer 

sit the public service examination for 1902.”
28

 

 

Interestingly, factory inspection was apparently still deemed suitable for women.  

Cuthbertson mentions the Victorian Government Gazette as early as 1894 advertising 

                                                           
23

 The Dawn: 1 January 1903, p. 12.  “Numbers of young women having no male supporters went to 

work, earning as much as 9s and 10s per week.  With this they have to cover all their own expenses and 

help at home.”  The issue raised by Tom Mann was part of the push to extend the franchise from Australia 

to Britain so that women were to vote to improve their economic standing.  The Australian Women’s 

Weekly: 27 November 1968, p. 2. “And once again Dr Battersby touched on another source of tension, the 

Australian disapproval of working wives and their resultant sense of guilt.”  Perhaps this attitude in the 

Weekly was more class based. I recall little sense of guilt over working wives in Newtown and 

Marrickville. 
24

 Mark Hearn and Greg Patmore: Working the Nation – Working Life and Federation 1890-1914, p. 38.  

“The Harvester Judgment.” 
25

 Graeme Davison: The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne, 1978, p. 201. 
26

 Raelene Francis and Bruce Scates: Women, Work and the Labor Movement in Australia and 

Aotearoa/New Zealand, 2006, pp. 123-132. 
27

 Helen Irving: To Constitute a Nation – a Cultural History of Australia’s Constitution, chapt. 10. 
28

 Raelene Francis and Bruce Scates: Women, Work and the Labor Movement in Australia and 

Aotearoa/New Zealand, 2006, p. 113. 



255 
 

for “Female Inspectors of Factories.”
29

  Although obviously intended to cover the 

inspection of “all factories, shops, work-rooms, dressmaking and millinery 

establishments, where females are employed; to report on the sanitary arrangements, 

hours of labour, remuneration etc,” the advertisement inadvertently hints at the range of 

occupations utilising females, and the large numbers of women employed in the decade 

leading up to Federation.
30

  Perhaps the attitude to working women was analogous to 

that towards non-British migrants, in that on the one hand society feigned opposition 

and even attempted to enact legislation to prevent or preclude female employment,
31

 

while on the other hand accepting the reality of the practical need for many women to 

have financial income and many industries to be reliant upon either women’s skills or 

simply their (cheaper) presence in understaffed employment.  This being the case, there 

was also no representation of the importance of domestic womanhood in the parade.  

The composition of the two marches in Sydney and Melbourne thus contrasted with the 

make-up of the spectators actually watching both the parades, and even in the 

preparations for the week’s events.  The Argus itself commented on the presence of 

women and even their offspring in assisting with assembling the parade infrastructure. 

“Women seemed to predominate, and babies were everywhere.  Oh!  What a blessing 

the stands at the Town-hall in Swanston Street, proved to be.”
32

  And, as previously 

mentioned, women took a significant role in volunteering as first aid officers during the 

march.
33

  

 

One other group notable for their absence from these two principal Federation parades 

were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People.  They were both physically and 

legally missing in that they were not included in the Constitution; a provision that 

remained in force until the 1967 referendum.
34

  Initially, those Aboriginal people who 

                                                           
29

 Mark Hearn and Greg Patmore: Working the Nation – Working Life and Federation 1890-1914, p. 251. 

The Adelaide Advertiser: 6 February 1894, p. 5. Female inspectors for Victoria.  “The Government have 

decided to follow the practice inaugurated by the London County Council of having female inspectors of 

factories.”  
30

 Notably, the first International Women’s Day rally in Australia calling for equal pay for equal work, an 

8 hour day and annual leave did not take place until 28 March 1928. 
31

 Mark Hearn and Greg Patmore: Working the Nation – Working Life and Federation 1890-1914, p. 258.  

“The fear that women would be taking men’s jobs was based on the anxiety that they would undercut the 

basic wage. The Harvester Judgement entrenched the notion of the family breadwinner being a male 

worker, and thus undermined feminist campaigns for equal pay.”  The Adelaide Advertiser: 16 October 

1907. The Harvester Excise. 
32

 The Argus: 3 May 1901, p. 5. 
33

 The Age: 2 May 1901, p. 6. The pattern no doubt reflected the number of female medical practitioners 
in Collins Street at the time. 
34

 John Rickard: Australia – a cultural history, p. 189.  “Aborigines could hardly be treated as 

immigrants, but, more tellingly, they could be ignored, their very existence almost expunged from the 



256 
 

had voted in South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania as well as 

women in South Australia and Western Australia voted in the first Federal Elections.
35

  

However, the Commonwealth Franchise Act of 1902 formalised both the vote for all 

Australian women, and disenfranchised all Aboriginal people, and it would not be until 

the Commonwealth Electoral Act was amended in 1962 that this right would return.
36

 

 

Aboriginals however were not totally ignored during Federation celebrations.  There 

was a significant Aboriginal Arch in Brisbane that was later viewed by the Duke and 

Duchess of Cornwall and York.
37

  The first of the Brisbane arches was a standard Royal 

Arch or Grand Arch that was described in a laudably parochial fashion to be “the best 

arch that has ever yet been constructed in Australia”.
38

  More significantly, the second 

remaining structure was the Aboriginal Arch, seeming to stand as a reflection of 

“Aboriginal culture and native Australiana”.  Apparently, two solid piers carefully 

covered with tea-tree bark, grass trees, stag horns and bird’s nest ferns were each topped 

by a “typical aboriginal gunyah.”
39

  The piers were connected by an arch meant to 

represent bush covered rock ledges.  As with the Coal Arch in Sydney, people were 

actually integrated into the arch presentation, with sixty Aboriginal men on the stepped 

piers and arch.  Aboriginal men and women were also placed around the arch by Mr A 

Meston, the Queensland State Protector of Aborigines, who went to the effort of 

securing a quantity of tea-tree bark from Pialba near Hervey Bay to cover the wooden 

frame.  These people were obviously not local, since they were brought to Brisbane 

especially for the event, and were camped at the sensitively named Woolloongabba 

Sports Ground.
40

  The Brisbane Courier described the arch as “one of the most original 

and tasteful [sic] conceptions of the whole display.”
41

   

                                                                                                                                                                          
national consciousness. So the Constitution laid down that they should not be counted at the census as 

members of the Australian population.” 
35

 NSW State Archives: Federation 1901-1914 online database, p. 1. 
36

 Australian Electoral Commission: History if the Indigenous vote online database. “In March 1962 the 

Commonwealth Electoral Act was amended to provide that Indigenous people could enrol to vote in 

federal elections if they wished. Unlike other Australians it was not compulsory for them to enrol. It was 

also an offence for anyone to use undue influence or pressure to induce them to enrol. Once they enrolled, 

however, voting was compulsory.” 
37

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 9.  The Royal 

party had departed Melbourne on 18 May 1901, after the formal opening of Federal Parliament, and took 

“a quiet train journey of thirteen hundred miles” to Brisbane.  During the two day excursion, the Duke 

and Duchess presented themselves to the populations of the towns and cities along the route, and arrived 

in Brisbane on the morning of Monday 20 May.  They were then taken on a ceremonial tour through the 

city, passing the two arches that remained from the earlier January celebrations. 
38

 The Brisbane Courier: 11 May 1901, p. 5. 
39

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, pp. 95, 97. 
40

 The Queenslander: 4 May 1901, p. 872. 
41

 The Brisbane Courier: 21 May 1901, p. 5. 



257 
 

 

This would appear to eloquently combine that mix of patronising condescension, overt 

racism and even inverted racism that has characterised much public opinion toward 

Australian Aboriginals over the last century.
42

  As Markus states, at the time of 

Federation Australia’s original inhabitants were considered doomed to extinction.
43

  

Only by the 1930s were welfare policies being considered, and as Markus also notes, it 

was the conservative John McEwan who, as Federal Minister for the Interior in 1939, 

stated that “the objective of government policy in the Northern Territory was the raising 

of the status of Aboriginals to enable them by right and qualification to the ordinary 

rights of citizenship.”
44

   

 

A further notable omission from the two Federation parades was any considerable 

representation from the business community.  To what degree were the Vice Regal 

representatives themselves regarded as bastions of the corporate and political 

establishment; or were they viewed as actually separate from this commercial world?
45

  

Certainly with the more restricted power of the British monarchy, Queen Victoria 

appeared throughout the celebrations as a cherished figure head with little connection to 

the political world that had brought the Federation into being in the first place.  

Business and political leaders were not necessarily so regarded, with Alfred Deakin’s 

quote in the Morning Post quite telling.   

 

As anticipated by those behind the scenes, what may be termed the aristocratic side of 

the display was as great a failure as the democratic aspect of it was a success.  There 

was, for instance, no proper provision for the reception and accommodation of many of 

our most distinguished guests.  Partly owing to the unsuitable quarters provided some of 

them changed their lodgings, and, no record being kept of their new addresses, they 

were altogether lost to view. There was, again, nowhere any proper discrimination.  The 

official table of precedence was so much departed from that certain dignitaries refused 

                                                           
42

 Ann Curthoys and Andrew Markus: Who are our Enemies? p.147. Note the opinion of the Communist 

Party of Australia in 1922: “The blacks are by no means as bad as they are painted.”  Painted by whom?  

As with the working class, women and non-British migrants, there has always existed the strange inability 

of fashionable opinion to regard those within such groups with calm balance and objectivity.  They are 

considered either far worse than reality would imply, or far better than reality would imply; often at the 

same time. 
43

 Ann Curthoys and Andrew Markus: Who are our Enemies? p.145. 
44

 Ann Curthoys and Andrew Markus: Who are our Enemies? p.145. 
45

 Paul Pickering: Hearts of Millions – Chartism and Popular Monarchism in the 1840s, History, vol. 88 

issue 290 pp. 227-248. “Of course anti-parliamentary sentiments, calls for strong leadership or veneration 

for some supposed golden age were not necessarily anti-monarchical: Chartists said much the same in 

relation to past monarchs such as Alfred the Great and ‘Good Queen Bess’, Elizabeth I.” 



258 
 

to join the procession.  The distribution of seats at the state banquet also produced 

innumerable heart burnings.  The crowds outside were admirably provided for; but the 

more official side of the proceedings was not quite the success that it might easily have 

been.
46

 

 

As well as the Chamber of Manufactures’ Column that was present in Collins Street 

Melbourne, Milne mentions that there had also been a Sydney Arch of Commerce and 

Manufacture initially proposed for the entrance to Randwick Road and Moore Park.
47

  

This was part of a planning exercise that would have seen the original parade march 

down Randwick Road, now Anzac Parade, and turn left at Cleveland Street to enter 

Centennial Park from the west, at what is now Federation Place.  Measurements indicate 

that this route’s distance would have been identical to the two and a half kilometres 

from Taylor Square along the eventual Oxford Street route, although the marchers 

would have been tramping through open parkland, adjacent to the city’s tip and zoo, 

rather than through the fashionable Eastern Suburbs.
48

 

 

One other absent group that strikes the modern footstepper is that of the sportsman.  

Perhaps the far greater significance placed upon sporting personalities today is one 

social difference to the Australia of a century ago.  Sportsmen were of significance at 

the time, although not of the social standing to have been regarded as representative of 

the wider society.  Professional sports had evolved at the time with social changes such 

as Saturday afternoon recreation and the availability of public transport to and from 

events.  Football, cycling and boxing were all popular, although prior to the influence of 

the amateur ideal of the Olympic Games were also regarded as having a disreputable air 

about them.
49

  The modern notion of sport as an integral part of the wider community 

was more limited, with not even cricketers included in any of the parades, even though 

                                                           
46

 Cairns Morning Post: 8 January 1901, p. 3. 
47

 Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, p. 18.  This would 

have been located at the, then, aptly named Federation Place, where Anzac Parade (then Randwick Road) 

junctions with Cleveland Street and the now Lang Road.  The nomenclature of Federation Place and 

Federation Way has never, to my knowledge, been used for this location apart from on the NSW 

Government’s Centennial Parklands on line guide.  Interestingly, the greatest historical claim to fame for 

this intersection is its setting next to Mount Rennie, the site of the infamous 1886 rape. 
48

 Gregory’s: Sydney Street Directory 1934, maps 7, 8. 
49

 Gordon Cheers: Australia Through Time, p. 145. 



259 
 

Federation sporting events were held in the evenings and on the weekends of the 

Federation celebrations.
50

 

 

 

THE IMAGINED AUSTRALIAN COMMUNITY 

 

What have we learned about this Australian community that was being imagined at the 

time?  In particular, what have we learned by footstepping that may have been 

previously overlooked or even ignored?  How have this methodology and the results of 

my investigation added to the historical record of the time?  

 

There did appear to have been a dichotomy in feelings towards the nation’s British 

heritage in terms of practical and cultural support which was evident through both the 

respect accorded to Queen Victoria and the notable presence of the military.  As 

mentioned, on the one hand, there was the proud expression of being a member of the 

largest empire and most dominant culture in the world, but at the same time, a sense of 

being an endangered outpost of this culture.  While this may appear to embody 

contradictions, at the time of Federation people did not consider this to be the case.  

Here Ernesto Laclau’s evaluation of Benedict Anderson’s sense of community is 

revealing. 

 

Let’s put it bluntly; a national community is not one whose particularism excludes all 

kinds of universal reference, but one whose relation between universality and 

particularity is negotiated in a different way than the communities claiming to be 

strictly universal…in the case of the national community – and in other comparable 

cases – the limits of the community – i.e. its difference from other communities – 

determine what the community actually is.
51

   

 

The community is limited in this degree, but not limited in the variety and inclusiveness 

that it can encompass.  The concept of a newly Federated nation expressing a new level 

of independence thus did not exclude reverence for the British monarchy.  If anything, it 

                                                           
50

 The Sydney Morning Herald: 1 January 1901, p. 3. “Monster Swimming Carnival and Highland 

Gathering.”  The Age: 11 May 1901, p. 11.  Note that there was even a Commonwealth Challenge Cup for 

Greyhounds. 
51

 Peng Cheah and Jonathan Culler:  Grounds of Comparison – around the world of Benedict Anderson, 

pp. 27-28.  “Communities in a globalised world constantly oscillate within this set of contradictory 

possibilities, where ethnocentric universalism or particularisms are always possible, but where a universal 

assertion of national and cultural diversity is also a non-excluded alternative.” 



260 
 

increased it as a form of sentimental unification, as well as a more pragmatic source of 

protection for the newly unified but still isolated country.  The newly created Australia 

thus appeared both united but also proudly imperial.  This was not just a reflection of 

the press but appeared genuine throughout most of the population.  The enthusiasm for 

all things British and the enthusiasm even for Britain’s foreign wars (and later of course, 

the First World War) indicated an underlying need to be a part, and to be seen to be a 

part, of an empire that was still the strongest political force in the world.  

 

What was therefore evident through footstepping the Federation parades was the greater 

fluidity over time in the political and cultural ideals expressed by the general 

population.  What is seen from the distance of a century as the confusion of continual 

changeability in attitudes and politicking in both the lead up to Federation and its 

expression through the parades, may well have been a population constantly reacting to 

circumstances at the time, without feeling that they need to justify themselves to a later 

sense of historical logic.  One could argue that the lack of constancy and consistency on 

the part of leaders such as Henry Parkes and George “yes/no” Reid was the very 

adaptable change and compromise that was eventually to result in wide enough 

community support for Federation for it to be democratically accepted.
52

   

 

The same flexibility of opinion reflected the immediacy of contact with non-British 

members of the community, resulting in the conscious recognition of issues that migrant 

groups raised in the community as well as the recognition of the benefits and even the 

essentials that such migrants also supplied.   This meant that the wide-ranging dismissal 

or acceptance of views that characterises modern discourse appeared rare.  I would 

argue that modern attitudes tend to be borne of cultural distance and isolation from the 

actual positioning of cultural issues, and this was not the case a century ago.  If attitudes 

towards the creation of a newly Federated nation were limited in the degree to which 

they were reported at the time, and in how we therefore interpret them today, then it 

should be possible to widen an understanding of the opinions presented on national and 

cultural acceptance.  Will a student of history in a century’s time be footstepping the 

streets of Auburn and Richmond to uncover attitudes and posit opinions that are not 

                                                           
52

 That the Australian Republican Movement a century later adopted the narrower focus of only one 

restricted and restrictive convention, followed by only the one “take it or leave it” referendum perhaps 

indicates that we have not learned that much from history. 



261 
 

being presented in the media of today, and which are overlooked by current 

commentators? 

 

Opinions on what constituted membership of even Anglo-Australian society varied 

then, as it does now. While the national tenor appeared strongly pro-Australian, there 

was a practical transience with many avowed nationalists and republicans still returning 

back to mother Britain.  This tendency also reflects the importance of the financial 

imperative behind their original emigration to Australia.  If emigration was the result of 

the threat of political or religious persecution in the old country, there would have been 

less of an interest in returning “home”.  Financial pressure, however, placed additional 

pressure onto the immigrants, and would no doubt have driven their desire to improve 

themselves within the developing democratic process, rather than undermining it.  If the 

newly arrived did not better themselves socially and financially, then there would 

appear to have been little point emigrating in the first place.
53

  Since this was reflected 

at all levels of society, Federation also symbolised a widening of the concept of 

radicalism amongst the nascent labour movement.  Workers appeared more inclined to 

want power over the means of production and gain influence over the political system 

rather than overthrow it.  While Australia was becoming regarded as a better Britain in 

everyday practical terms, what came across through both the press and my experience of 

footstepping the marches was that Australia was still not regarded as comparable to the 

real Britain, at least by those who viewed their position culturally.  The nation was 

British, but perhaps less of England than of an “England of the imagination”.
54

    

 

Australia therefore quickly adopted the advanced technology of the time, with metal 

casting, iron building frames and large scale water supply systems.  However, due to 

population size limitations, engineers were often unable to fully develop their ideas in 

economic terms.  While defence and racial fears are often advanced as the reasons 

behind the desire to expand the population, the simple financial imperative to improve 

economies of scale would also have been equally important.
55

   This interconnectedness 

with the rapid adoption of modern technology was also mirrored in the general 

Australian population then as it is today.  As a nation populated primarily by free 

                                                           
53

 As noted by the previously mentioned numbers of those returning to Britain as a result of the 1890s 

Depression. 
54

 Hence the attraction of those who continued (and continue) to go “home”. 
55

 In a situation that exists to this day, industries that do not have a level of government support find it 

difficult to compete with mass production from overseas. 



262 
 

settlers, Australia naturally selected for those who looked to the future.  Were 

Australians, by the nature of their settlement, primed to look to the potential with all its 

possibilities, and less inclined to dwell on a real or imagined past?   Certainly the arches 

themselves would indicate so.  Not only did they generally consist of the most modern 

construction techniques, even allowing for their classical and traditional style, but their 

very temporality hinted at a society anxious to look more to the future.   

 

This subconscious sense of the temporary therefore reflected a wider national 

characteristic evident even today.
56

  There are still few significant permanent markers 

indicating that Federation had taken place, while attempts at the time to engender a 

physical sense of permanence to the celebrations proved singularly ineffective.   

Although apparently planned to be permanent, the Commonwealth Arch in Park Street 

Sydney remained a most temporary structure, as was the Municipal Arch on Princes 

Bridge in Melbourne.  The Centenary Arch erected in 2001 on Princes Bridge appeared 

to do little to inspire commemoration, and while the central location of Federation 

Square does give a sense of presence to the concept, I doubt whether those generally 

young folk attending events there ever stop to ponder the significance of the Federation 

that the square commemorates.  Apart from some markers in the footpath and a couple 

of forlorn trees, there is little else to draw one’s attention to the cultural intention behind 

the site.   As previously mentioned, Sydney’s own Federation Square, created at the 

intersection of Randwick Road, Cleveland Street and Lang Road has hardly ever been 

used and certainly was not listed as such even in the 1934 Sydney Road Directory.  

Plans for a permanent memorial, either at the time, or more recently for the centenary of 

Federation, have not been inspiring, with the most impressive commemoration, the 

pavilion in Centennial Park, notable for having been built at the wrong time. 

 

What was, however, noticeable footstepping around both cities were the number of 

statues presented as examples of very permanent public art.  This could be construed as 

both an expression of political power, based on their subject matter, but also, by their 

very existence and perceived significance, a reflection on the more communal nature of 

the society.  The public art in both bronze and stone statuary was certainly of a 

                                                           
56

 Apperly, Irving, Reynolds: A Pictorial Guide to Identifying Australian Architecture, p. 260.  Glenn 

Murcutt 1995, Touch the Earth Lightly online database.  It is interesting that the Australian architect 

Glenn Murcutt has presented the ideal of “touching the earth lightly.”  Is this temporality and 

unwillingness to lay a solid foundation into the ground, either architecturally or structurally with a 

permanent arch, a reaction to this unresolved issue? 



263 
 

traditional classical form, with some of the bronze figures being copies of overseas 

originals and having to be cast with some difficulty in the less than mass industrial 

culture.  Architectural styles have appeared to follow the international or empire fashion 

of the time, although up to Federation these reflected, and were more restricted by, the 

locally available materials.  Davison describes the effect of the rapid growth of 

Melbourne, in particular, prior to Federation: “The buildings of Melbourne are perhaps 

a better guide to its citizens’ aspirations than their cultural achievements.”
57

  He goes on 

to point out that, “Melbourne’s architecture bespoke a preoccupation with metropolitan 

and even imperial aspirations, shamelessly aping the classical modes of Greece, Rome 

and Renaissance Italy.”
58

  However, the city, like others around the empire was really 

only aping the same style, if not the slower development, of other major cities in Europe 

and America. 

 

Culturally, the nation also continued to uphold the long held mythology of the bush 

ideal, notably expressed in the Stockman’s parade in Melbourne.  However, the city 

reality of an urban based industrial working nation was demonstrated through the major 

parades themselves and even their organisation.  While some arches noted the 

importance of agricultural enterprise, the two Federation marches actually presented 

themselves as a celebration of the city life that had evolved in Australia in a relatively 

short period of time.  Although writers such as Paterson, Lawson and Dennis critiqued 

the experience of the industrial city, in the reality of their everyday existence, they 

themselves continued to live the urban life.
59

   

 

Thus, although race was evident as a defining characteristic of the period, the issue of 

social class appeared equally significant.   While the staunch upright and responsible 

working class was an integral a part of the marches and the celebrations, the underclass 

denizens of Little Lon’ and Wexford Street were, in many respects, more isolated than 

the Chinese.  They did not have an arch or a formal role in the parades.  As with the 

plague areas above Darling Harbour in Sydney, they were by-passed both physically 

and culturally.  The newly federated Australian society thus appeared to express varying 

degrees of racial and cultural tolerance and intolerance, with opinions toward its non-

British members being determined as much by acceptability or unacceptability on the 

                                                           
57

 Graeme Davison: The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne, 1978, p. 233.  
58

 Graeme Davison: The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne, 1978, p. 233.  
59

 Even Henry Lawson, born as he was in rural poverty, constantly returned to Sydney and ended his days 

living in inner city urban poverty. 



264 
 

part of members of these groups as by any overt racism on the part of the host nation.  

Whether it was a political threat from another developing European nation such as 

Germany, a financial and quality of life threat from the Chinese, or a health and 

physical threat from a white underclass, there was little attempt to mask attitudes that 

were obviously felt to be understandable at the time.   

 

Religious tolerance, to a degree, was also evident as part of this imagined community 

although generally within the confines of Christianity.    The newly imagined Australia 

was to be secular but still nominally Christian, so that despite sectarianism, British and 

Christian also included Irish and Catholic to a greater degree than would have been the 

case in England;
60

 with a practical accommodation that appeared more social and 

political than doctrinaire.  The only other religious buildings that appeared close to the 

marches were Jewish Synagogues.  The large Central Synagogue in Elizabeth Street 

Sydney and the smaller but impressive Synagogue in Bourke Street Melbourne were 

either passed, or would certainly have been noticed, by the marchers.  There were no 

mosques in either city, while Chinese temples or “Joss Houses” in the internal Little 

Bourke Street would have been no doubt considered quaint attractions (or moral threats 

through the presence of opium) rather than religious institutions.  The Chinese religion 

itself appeared to be accepted as part of their culture, partly because its insular and non-

evangelical nature meant that it was not a threat to the outside community.
61

  What was, 

however, noticeable in both Wexford Street in Sydney and the Chinese Quarter of 

Melbourne was the degree to which the Chinese adopted Western Christian institutions.  

Many of the Protestant denominations were present through specifically Chinese 

churches, although these were also in districts bypassed by the marches.  Their smaller 

size would have put them outside both the conscious and subconscious consideration of 

the march organisers and participants. 

 

This then linked in with the most significant aspect of racial and cultural acceptance.  

The parades presented an Australia that was financially and culturally aspirational,
62

 and 

consequently any group that would threaten this aspiration had to be controlled or 

                                                           
60

 Although still a figure of mockery and fun, the Irish Catholics (as most Catholics were) were finding a 

place in society that they would not have attained back in either England or Ireland. Although still under-

represented per head of population, the situation was changing, and those in government appeared to 

suffer little discrimination on the basis of race or religion.  
61

 That Christianity should be allowed to proselytise throughout China appeared not to be considered in 

conflict with this notion, although of course many Chinese expressed this conflict through the Boxer 

Rebellion. 
62

 This, again, was one of the prime reasons why people came out to Australia in the first place. 



265 
 

expelled.  Cultural and racial differences were tolerated while ever the numbers of 

outsiders did not present a threat.  Hence, Italians, Germans and Jews were perceived as 

different and often sources of amusement, but were also accepted within the 

community, while the potential numbers of Chinese, rather than Chinese people 

themselves were the threat.  I uncovered the roles that Italian, Croatian and Chinese 

people played, not only in the actual celebrations themselves but in the wider 

community of the time, to the degree that placing one’s life in the hands of Italian 

doctors, Chinese cooks, Italian weather forecasters, and purchasing items from Chinese 

and Jewish retailers were treated as a normal part of everyday life.  Even the employing 

of Italian masons such as Tomaso Sani to carve the façade on the new General Post 

Office, the most prestigious new building in the city, was seen as taking advantage of 

the traditional skill of a local resident who happened to be non-British.   

 

What was evident from comparing the footstepping of the actual routes of the two 

parades with the legislation introduced by the governments of the day was this disparity 

between the formal attitudes expressed towards non-British members of the community 

and the way these people were actually regarded and treated by this community.  

Articles, media reports and the formal written word that the footstepper relied on to 

provide the skeleton of the investigation were all expressing one point of view, while 

the actual experience of footstepping through the thick description of the routes 

themselves was presenting a society with a far more relaxed attitude to everyday living 

with the same varying cultural groups. 

 

 

REFLECTION 

 

As well as adding to the historical record, I also considered how my thesis might add to 

historical practice and the research process.  If the distinctive methodology of 

footstepping through the process of re-enacting and getting inside specific episodes does 

provide a valid analysis of the two major Federation parades, then to what degree can it 

be replicated for historical studies of other historical events?  The test of its real 

effectiveness would be not only whether it was possible to evaluate these two particular 

events in two specific cities, and determine the attitudes of the nation to the non-British 

members of the community in its midst, but whether footstepping could be adapted to 



266 
 

analyse other overlooked aspects of one’s own culture and aspects of other and even 

unknown cultures.   

 

All history is subjective to the degree that it must choose specific instances and specific 

aspects of these instances in order to relate a coherent story.  Every part of even a small 

event cannot be recorded, let alone retold; therefore there is always an element of choice 

and refinement in deciding what evidence to use.   In the case of Sydney my 

discrimination was influenced by memory and cultural knowledge interacting with the 

formal methodology, while my analysis of Melbourne centred on a reliance on the 

written record that has always traditionally formed the foundation of, and has also 

limited, historical interpretation.   While it became obvious the degree to which 

historians are still dependent upon written records, such records do not have to be the 

only source of historical evidence.  They can serve to introduce aspects of social culture 

that can then be expanded through processes such as footstepping.   

 

The written record of course is still the foundation upon which such history is conveyed 

once it has been researched.  Even oral history and storytelling can only become 

historically useful when they are written down and transposed from their original 

source.  Cultures that do not employ a written text themselves are able to relay 

information from one generation to the next by often intricate oral traditions.  However, 

this information remains locked within their culture, and remains at the level of myth 

and legend until it can be transposed into a wider framework and justified by external 

verification.  In reality, there is no other method for laying down this foundation of 

historical information apart from the written word, even while we recognise its 

limitations and cultural restrictions.  However, I believe that utilising a thick description 

of events can enable the historian to enter into historical episodes by accessing 

additional geographical, cultural and social information to amend these limitations and 

restrictions.  This was the process employed in sociological terms by Ryle to describe 

the events in Marmusha in 1912 Morocco, and then later used by Geertz to further 

develop the concept of thick description.  Holmes’ practical process of footstepping 

further expanded this with a methodology of linking written records with the 

observations obtained by traversing the locations of these events.  While my 

methodology was limited in that it also confirmed that literary sources still need to form 

the backbone of the historical research process, the degree to which footstepping 

supplemented these records, did appear practical and successful.   



267 
 

 

One obvious example of this within my thesis was within the Little Lonsdale Street 

district of Melbourne.  I was already familiar with the works of C J Dennis, with 

knowledge of the existence of the district and its relation to similar areas within the 

Sydney of 1901.  However, when walking the site and noting what remained, and what 

was consciously and even unconsciously commemorated, this created a link with the 

Chinese Little Bourke Street area that was both closer to the route of the Federation 

parade but also less known to me at the time.  The fact that the cultural isolation of the 

social class represented around Little Lon’ contrasted with the acceptance (to some 

degree) of the Chinese community through their own arch and later parade, 

demonstrated that it was not race per se that was going to be the determining factor in 

the newly imagined nation created through Federation. 

 

In practical terms, this footstepping methodology would appear to have two distinct 

applications. On the one hand, it would be and has always been, essential in those fields 

of historical study where there is no other option, where there are no written or other 

historical records in existence.   Much anthropology, human evolution and pre-history 

studies consider human communities that have not handed down any written or even 

oral record.  Consequently, all that is left are material remains in the locations where it 

is supposed that these communities lived.  In many of these instances, the physical 

environment itself has changed over time to a far greater degree than central Sydney and 

Melbourne, so the imaginative aspects of re-enactment become an even more significant 

component of footstepping. 

 

There are also areas of historical study which, by their nature, have not had a great 

number of written records assembled at the time.  Industrial and migrant history and 

heritage can often only be approached through the footstepping process.  Manufacturing 

industries usually retain formal written business records but these rarely include the 

physical environment experienced by the people who worked in these industries.  

Photographs of streetscapes in the inner west of Sydney, for example, show the large 

factories that once employed thousands of people during the nation’s industrial boom.  

However, only by walking around the districts does it become obvious the degree to 

which geographical and cultural factors influenced the process.  Flat land, for example 

that was prone to flooding and hence restricted for housing often became prime 

industrial real estate.  This development was then made possible through an extended 



268 
 

public transport system, whereby the railways and tramways that enabled workers to 

travel to and from their place of employment, also facilitated the raw materials to be 

brought into the factories, and finished products removed for consumption.  These are 

now often only visible through a physical investigation of their remnants within the 

district.
63

 

 

However, limitations also became evident through the application of thick description to 

footstepping.  The shortcomings of imaginative re-enactment are understandable, with 

the risk of relying totally upon imagination and therefore “over guessing” and creating 

totally false interpretations.  Becoming reliant upon physical resources such as maps 

and photographs and even written records for interpretation can therefore ameliorate 

this, and was the foundation of Richard Holmes development of literary footstepping in 

the first place.  Where the historian has previous knowledge of a site,  personal 

recollections can assume a greater than expected influence on analysis, while the 

interpretation of sites where there is no previous personal experience can come to reflect 

the often limited written opinions that the footstepping process attempts to circumvent 

in the first place. 

 

In summary, the Australian nation may have federated partly to protect itself from the 

Chinese hordes, but it also celebrated with a Chinese arch and parade.  It may have 

restricted southern Europeans and looked askance at German immigrants but relied 

upon the food produced by Chinese, Greek, Italian and German farmers.  The nation 

that, through the two parades, proclaimed itself as the workingman’s paradise was 

reliant upon women as factory workers and even their social support for the parades; 

and the nation that lauded the staunch common man, owed much of its ever developing 

standard of living to the enterprise of individuals.  A society that was consciously 

creating a modern, independent, secular community also appeared subconsciously 

spiritually and emotionally attached to its British heritage, British monarch and an all 

pervasive, almost inadvertent Christianity.  And all this existed within an urban 

community that happily relished a bushman mythology that even then was really the 

experience of only a small section of the rural population.  One could say that Australia 

saw itself as egalitarian, but within certain limitations.  To paraphrase George Orwell; 

all Australians were equal, but some were more equal than others.  Subconsciously, the 

                                                           
63

 This is now often undertaken through either direct footstepping, or through the often invaluable indirect 

“footstepping” of aerial reconnaissance. 



269 
 

parades appeared to present an ethereal ideal in that federated Australia was to be 

modern and industrial, socially progressive, tolerant and religiously orthodox in theory; 

but primarily practical, aspirational and communal.   

 

 All this became evident through the practical application of footstepping and analysed 

through a thick description of the two Federation parades; a methodology that I believe 

could prove invaluable as an adjunct to traditional historical enquiry.  Perhaps the 

grounding of such research in the physical experience of society will enable future 

generations to create imagined communities that more accurately reflect the reality of 

the experience of all social members. Such footstepping is thus a valid exercise to 

undertake, but also as an adjunct to other primary and secondary sources of evidence, 

with written reports still being required to put this more practical process into context.   

 

The methodology also lends itself to a further wider adaption, be it analysing other 

aspects of Australian history and society, or expanding into international fields of 

research beyond the literary form that Richard Holmes himself has already established.  

While this has already been done in a format for popular entertainment such current 

performances tend to relate less to a formal reference base, being under the limitation of 

a brief presentation window.   I believe that by following a more prescribed historical 

methodology, the technique of footstepping expanded through the interpretive analysis 

of thick description can provide valuable insights into cultures that may be previously 

known to the historian, exist as unknown aspects of their own society and nation, or 

even belong to totally foreign and international communities.   Such an academic 

approach would, in this case, be quite reliant upon the footstepping process and local 

records where they exist, with fewer preconceptions on the part of the historian. 

 

While footstepping does not answer all historical questions and cover all historical 

issues, and often does not cope with the issues of the individual and biographical as 

opposed to the communal and historical, it is where practical, an essential component of 

the historical process.  I would go as far as to say that an academic investigation without 

both footstepping the location of the historical event, and without analysing this location 

through a process of thick description can therefore be considered to be somewhat 

lacking. 

 



270 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 

 

 

MONOGRAPHS AND JOURNALS 

 

ed. Michael Ackland: Charles Harpur – Selected Poetry and Prose, 1986, Penguin 

Books, Melbourne, Australia. 

 

Ansel Adams: The Camera, 1980, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, United States 

of America. 

 

Patsy Adam Smith: Romance of Australian Railways, 1973, Rigby Ltd, Adelaide, 

Australia. 

 

ed. Jeffery C Alexander, Philip Smith, Matthew Norton: Interpreting Clifford Geertz, 

2011, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, United States of America. 

 

ed. Stephen Alomes, Catherine Jones: Australian Nationalism – a documentary 

history, 1991, Collins Angus & Robertson, Sydney, Australia. 

 

Keith Amos: The Fenians in Australia (1865-1880), 1988, University of NSW Press, 

Sydney, Australia. 

 

Benedict Anderson: Imagined Communities, 2006, Verso Press, London, United 

Kingdom. 

 

Perry Anderson: Arguments within English Marxism, 1980, NLB and Verso, London, 

United Kingdom. 

 

Perry Anderson: Lineages of the Absolutist State, 1974, NLB Publication, London, 

United Kingdom. 

 

Alessandro Antonello:  Learning and Settling – An Environmental History of the 

Federation Drought in New South Wales, 1895-1903, 2007, unpublished thesis, 

Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. 

 

Richard Apperly, Robert Irving, Peter Reynolds: A Pictorial Guide to Identifying 

Australian Architecture, 1989 , Angus & Robertson, Sydney, Australia. 

 

John Archer: Building a Nation – a History of the Australian House, 1987, William 

Collins, Sydney, Australia. 

 

Thomas Archer: The War in Egypt and the Soudan, 1887, Blackie, London, Great 

Britain. 

 

Ken Arnold: Australian Tins, 2005, Crown Castleton Publishers, Bendigo, Australia.

  

Raymond Aron: Introduction to the Philosophy of History, 1961, George Weidenfeld 

and Nicolson Ltd, London, United Kingdom. 



271 

 

 

Raymond Aron: The Opium of the Intellectuals, 1962, Secker & Warburg, London, 

United Kingdom. 

 

Raymond Aron, ed Franciszek Draus: History, Truth, Liberty, Selected writings of 

Raymond Aron, 1985, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, United States of 

America. 

 

The Australian Football League: The Australian Game of Football, 2008,  Geoff 

Slattery Publishing, Melbourne, Australia. 

 

The Australian Football League: The Clubs – the complete history of every club in the 

VFL/AFL, 1998, Penguin Book, Melbourne, Australia. 

 

The Australian Football League: 100 Years of Australian Football, 1996, Penguin 

Books, Melbourne, Australia. 

 

Massimo D’Azeglio: I miei ricordi – Things I Remember, 1966, Oxford University 

Press, London, United Kingdom. 

 

ed. Geoffrey Barraclough: The Times Atlas of World History, 1982,Times Books, 

London, United Kingdom. 

 

Roland Barthes: Vintage Barthes: Mythologies, 2009, Vintage Books Random House, 

London, United Kingdom. 

 

C E W Bean: Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918, 1941,  Angus & 

Robertson, Sydney, Australia. 

 

Walter Benjamin: The Arcades Project, 1999, Harvard University Press, 

Massachusetts , United States of America. 

 

Margaret Betteridge: Sydney Town Hall, the Building and its Collection, 2008, 

Council of the City of Sydney, Sydney, Australia. 

 

Alan Birch and David Macmillan: The Sydney Scene 1788-1960, 1962, Melbourne 

University Press, Melbourne, Australia. 

   

Geoffrey Blainey: A Land Half Won, 1995, Pan Macmillan, Sydney, Australia. 

 

Geoffrey Blainey: Triumph of the Nomads, 1975, Macmillan Company, Melbourne, 

Australia. 

 

Peter Bridges and Robin Appleton: The City’s Centrepiece – The History of the 

Sydney GPO, 1988, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, Australia. 

 

Peter Bridges and Don McDonald: James Barnet, Colonial Architect, 1988, Hale & 

Iremonger, Sydney, Australia. 

 



272 

 

James Broadbent: Crimes, Follies and Misfortunes – Demolished Houses of NSW, 

1988, Historic Houses Trust of NSW, Sydney, Australia. 

 

ed. Philip Bull, Chris McConville, Noel McLachlan: Irish-Australian Studies – 

Papers delivered at the Sixth Irish-Australian Conference July 1990, 1990, La Trobe 

University, Melbourne, Australia. 

 

John Burdick: William Morris – Redesigning the World, 2006, New Line Books, New 

York, United States of America. 

 

ed Göran Burenhult: Great Civilizations, 2003, Weldon Owen Pty Ltd, San Francisco, 

United States of America. 

 

Samuel C Burchell: Age of Progress, 1967 Time-Life International, Amsterdam, 

Netherlands. 

 

David Burke: Making the Railways, 1995, State Library of NSW, Sydney, Australia. 

 

Peter Burke: Eyewitnessing – the Uses of Images as Historical Evidence, 2001, 

Reaktion Books, London, United Kingdom.  

 

ed. Peter Burke: History and Historians in the Twentieth Century, 2002, Oxford 

University Press, Oxford, United Kingdom. 

 

ed. Peter Burke: New Perspectives on Historical Writing, 1991, Polity Press, 

Cambridge, United Kingdom. 

   

Cliff Butcher: Gundagai – a track winding back, 2002, A C Butcher, Canberra, 

Australia. 

 

Anita Callaway: Visual Ephemera – Theatrical Art in Nineteenth Century Australia, 

2000, University of NSW Press, Sydney, Australia. 

 

Albert Camus: The Fall, 1957, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, United Kingdom. 

 

Basil Cannon: Ansel Adams – Photographs from the National Park Service Archive, 

1999, Grange Books / Regency House Publishing, Rochester, Great Britain. 

 

Michael Cannon: Australia – a History in Photographs, 1983, Currey O’Neil Ross, 

Melbourne, Australia. 

 

Brian Carroll: The Hume, Australia’s Highway of History, 1983, Kangaroo Press, 

Sydney, Australia. 

 

Maie Casey et al: Early Melbourne Architecture, 1963, Oxford University Press, 

London, United Kingdom. 

 

Damien Cash: A guide to St Francis’ Church Melbourne, Australia, 2009 St Francis’ 

Church, Melbourne, Australia.  

 



273 

 

Richard Cashman and Chrys Meader: Marrickville – Rural Outpost to Inner City, 

1997, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, Australia. 

 

Dorothy Catts: King O’Malley – man and statesman, 1938, Publicity Press, Sydney, 

Australia. 

 

Michael Caufield: The Vietnam Years – From the Jungle to the Australian Suburbs, 

2007, Mullion Creek Productions/Hachette, Sydney , Australia. 

 

ed. Peng Cheah and Jonathan Culler:  Grounds of Comparison – around the world of 

Benedict Anderson,  2003, Routledge, New York, United States of America. 

 

Alec H Chisholm: The Making of a Sentimental Bloke, 1946, Georgian House, 

Melbourne, Australia. 

 

ed. Gordon Cheers: Australia Through Time, 1993, Random House, Sydney, 

Australia. 

 

Sir Valentine Chirol: The Egyptian Problem, 1920, Macmillan and Co, London, 

United Kingdom. 

 

C Y Choi: Chinese Migration and Settlement in Australia, 1975, Sydney University 

Press, Sydney, Australia. 

 

Frank Clune: Saga of Sydney, 1962 Angus & Robertson, Sydney, Australia. 

 

T A Coghlan: The Seven Colonies of Australasia – a statistical account, 1902, 

Commonwealth Statistician’s Office, Sydney, Australia. 

 

Robin George Collingwood: The Idea of History, 1993, Oxford University Press, 

Oxford , United Kingdom. 

 

Robin George Collingwood: The Principles of History, 1999, Oxford University 

Press, Oxford, United Kingdom. 

 

Lenore Coltheart: Significant Sites – History and public works in New South Wales, 

1989, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, Australia. 

 

Lenore Coltheart and Don Fraser: Landmarks in Public Works, 1987, Hale & 

Iremonger, Sydney, Australia. 

 

Chris Coulthard-Clark: Where Australians Fought – The Encyclopaedia of Australia’s 

Battles, 1998, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, Australia. 

 

Philip Cox and Clive Lucas: Australian Colonial Architecture, 1978, Lansdowne 

Publishing, Sydney, Australia. 

 

Gianfranco Cresciani: The Italians in Australia, 2003, Cambridge University Press, 

Port Melbourne, Australia. 

 



274 

 

Peter Curson and Kevin McCracken: Plague in Sydney – the anatomy of an epidemic, 

1989, University of NSW Press, Sydney, Australia.  

 

ed. Ann Curthoys and Andrew Markus: Who are our Enemies?, 1978, Hale & 

Iremonger, Sydney, Australia. 

 

L Perry Curtis Jr: Apes and Angels – The Irishman in Victorian Caricature, 1997, 

Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington and London, UK and USA. 

 

ed. Mike Darton: The Illustrated Book of Architects and Architecture, 1990, Tiger 

Books, London, United Kingdom. 

 

Charles Darwin: The Descent of Man, 1871, D Appleton and Co, New York, United 

States of America.  

 

Graeme Davison: The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne, 1978, Melbourne 

University Press, Melbourne, Australia. 

 

ed. Graeme Davison and Kimberley Webber: Yesterday’s Tomorrows – The 

Powerhouse Museum and its precursors, 2005, Powerhouse Publishing, Sydney, 

Australia. 

 

ed. Graeme Davison, J W McCarty, Ailsa McLeary: Australians 1888, 1987, Fairfax, 

Syme & Weldon Associates, Sydney, Australia. 

 

David Day: Andrew Fisher, 2008, Harper Collins, Sydney, Australia. 

 

David Day: Chifley, 2001, Harper Collins, Sydney, Australia. 

 

Daniel Defoe: A Journal of the Plague Year, 1969, Oxford University Press, London, 

United Kingdom. 

 

Ursula M De Jong: St Patrick’s Cathedral – a guide, 2005, Catholic Archdiocese of 

Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia. 

 

Clarence James Dennis: The Moods of Ginger Mick, 1976, Angus & Robertson, 

Sydney, Australia. 

 

Clarence James Dennis: The Sentimental Bloke, 1957, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 

Australia. 

 

Clarence James Dennis: Selected Verse of C J Dennis, 1975, Angus & Robertson, 

Sydney, Australia. 

 

Kathleen Dermody: A Nation at Last – the Story of Federation, 1997, The 

Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra, Australia. 

 

William Dick: A Bunch of Ratbags, 1965, Penguin Books, Melbourne , Australia. 

   



275 

 

Wilhelm Dilthey: The Critique of Historical Reason, 1978, University of Chicago 

Press, Chicago, United States of America. 

 

Alan and Barbara Donagan: Philosophy of History, 1965, The Macmillan Company, 

New York, United States of America. 

 

William H Dray: History as Re-enactment – RG Collingwood’s Idea of History, 1995, 

Oxford University Press, Oxford, United Kingdom. 

 

ed. Franciszek Draus: History, Truth, Liberty – selected writings of Raymond Aron, 

1985, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, United States of America. 

     

Jill Eastwood: Melbourne – the Growth of a Metropolis, 1983, Thomas Nelson, 

Melbourne, Australia. 

 

ed. Helen Ennis: Cazneaux, the Quiet Observer, 1994, National Library of Australia, 

Canberra, Australia. 

 

Rodolphe C Escouflaire: Ireland: an enemy of the Allies? 1919, John Murray, 

London, United Kingdom. 

 

Raymond Evans, Clive Moore, Kay Saunders, Bryan Jamison: 1901 Our Future’s 

Past, 1997, Pan Macmillan, Sydney, Australia.  

 

Brian M Fagan: The Adventure of Archaeology, 1985, The National Geographic 

Society, Washington. United States of America. 

 

Geoffrey Harry Fearnside: All Stations West, 1970, Haldane Publishing, Sydney, 

Australia. 

 

Martin Fichman: Alfred Russel Wallace, 1981, Twayne Publishers, New York, United 

States of America. 

 

Marc Fiddian: Flinders Street Station – Melbourne’s Taj Mahal, 2003, Galaxy Print, 

Melbourne, Australia. 

 

Gerhard Fischer: Enemy Aliens, 1989, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 

Australia. 

 

John Fitzgerald: Big White Lie – Chinese Australians in White Australia, 2007, 

University of NSW Press, Sydney, Australia. 

 

Shirley Fitzgerald: Rising Damp – Sydney 1870-1890, 1987, Oxford University Press, 

Melbourne. Australia. 

 

Peter Fleming: The Siege at Peking, 1959, Rupert Hart-Davis, London, United 

Kingdom. 

 

George Forbes: History of Sydney, 1926, William Brooks & Co, Sydney, Australia. 

 



276 

 

Patrick Ford: Cardinal Moran and the ALP, 1966, Melbourne University Press, 

Melbourne, Australia. 

 

ed. Raelene Francis and Bruce Scates: Women, Work and the Labor Movement in 

Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand, 2006, University of Sydney Press, Sydney, 

Australia. 

 

Mary Fulbrook: Historical Theory, 2002, Routledge, London, United Kingdom. 

 

ed. Patrick Gardiner: The Philosophy of History, 1974, Oxford University Press, 

London, United Kingdom. 

 

ed. Patrick Gardiner: Theories of History, 1959, The Free Press, Glencoe, United 

States of America. 

 

John Gascoigne: The Enlightenment and the Origins of European Australia, 2002, 

Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, Australia. 

 

Peter Gay: Age of Enlightenment, 1966, Time-Life International, Amsterdam, The 

Netherlands. 

 

Clifford Geertz: The Interpretation of Cultures, 1973, Harper Collins, London, United 

Kingdom. 

 

Clifford Geertz: Local Knowledge, 1983, Basic Books, United States of America. 

 

William Gilpin: Observations on the river Wye, and several parts of South Wales, 

relative chiefly to picturesque beauty made in the summer of the year 1770, 1782 and 

1879, T Cadell and W Davies, London, United Kingdom. 

 

James Gleeson: Colonial Painters 1788-1880, 1971, Lansdowne Press, Melbourne, 

Australia. 

 

Emma Goldman: Anarchism and other essays, 1969, Dover Publications, New York, 

United States of America. 

 

Adam Lindsay Gordon: Selected Poems of Adam Lindsay Gordon, 1979, Angus & 

Robertson, Sydney, Australia. 

 

ed. Richard Gordon: The Australian New Left, 1970, William Heinemann, Melbourne, 

Australia. 

 

Christopher Gosden: Social Being and Time, 1994, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 

United Kingdom. 

 

ed. Gordon Greenwood: Australia: a Social and Political History, 1955, Angus & 

Robertson, Sydney, Australia. 

 

Peter Gould and Rodney White: Mental Maps, 1974, Pelican Books, Harmondsworth, 

United Kingdom. 



277 

 

 

Trevor Hall: Sherlock Holmes and his creator, 1977, St Martin’s Press, New York, 

United States of America. 

 

W Keith Hancock: Australia, 1930, Ernest Benn Limited, London, United Kingdom. 

 

W Keith Hancock: Country and Calling, 1954, Faber and Faber, London, United 

Kingdom. 

 

L P Hartley: The Go-Between, 1953, Hamish Hamilton, London, United Kingdom. 

 

John Haskell: Haskell’s Sydney, 1983, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, Australia. 

 

G N Hawker: The Parliament of New South Wales 1856-1965,  1971, Victor Blight 

NSW Government Printer, Sydney, Australia. 

 

ed. Mark Hearn and Greg Patmore: Working the Nation – Working Life and 

Federation 1890-1914, 2001, Pluto Press, Sydney, Australia. 

 

G W F Hegel: Introduction to the Philosophy of History, 1988, Hackett Publishing 

Company, Indianapolis, United States of America 

 

Ronald Hingley: Dostoyevsky, his Life and World, 1978, Paul Elek Ltd, London, 

United Kingdom. 

 

John Hirst: The Sentimental Nation – The Making of the Australian Commonwealth, 

2000, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, Australia. 

 

Richard Holmes: Footsteps – Adventures of a Romantic Biographer, 2005, Harper 

Perennial, London, United Kingdom. 

 

Richard Holmes: Sidetracks – Explorations of a Romantic Biographer, 2005, Harper 

Perennial, London, United Kingdom. 

 

Edmund Husserl: Ideas pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to A 

Phenomenological Philosophy, 1983, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 

Netherlands. 

 

Helen Irving: The Centenary Companion to Australian Federation, 1999, Cambridge 

University Press, Melbourne, Australia. 

 

Helen Irving: To Constitute a Nation – a Cultural History of Australia’s Constitution, 

1997, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, Australia. 

 

Terry Irving and Rowan Cahill: Radical Sydney, 2010, University of NSW Press, 

Sydney, Australia. 

 

Historic Houses Trust of NSW: For the Public Good – Crimes, Follies and 

Misfortunes, 1988, Sydney, Australia 

 



278 

 

R Ian Jack and Aedeen Cremin: Australia’s Age of Iron, 1994, Oxford University 

Press, Sydney, Australia. 

 

Chris Jenks: Visual Culture, 1993, Routledge, London, United Kingdom. 

 

Hugh Johnson: World Atlas of Wine, 1989, Mitchell Beazley Hugh Johnson, London, 

United Kingdom. 

 

Colin Jones: Cambridge Illustrated History of France, 1994, University of Cambridge 

Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom. 

 

Kerry Jones: The People’s Protest, 2000, ACM Publishing, Sydney, Australia 

 

James Jupp: Immigration, 1991, Oxford University Press, Sydney, Australia. 

 

Grace Karskens: The Colony – a history of early Sydney, 2009, Allen & Unwin, 

Sydney, Australia. 

 

H R F Keating: Sherlock Holmes, the man and his world, 1979, Thames and Hudson, 

London, United Kingdom. 

 

ed. Colm Kiernan: Australia and Ireland 1788-1988 – Bicentenary Essays, 1986, Gill 

and Macmillan, Dublin, Ireland. 

 

Neville Kirk: Comrades and Cousins – Globalisation, workers and labour movements 

in Britain, the USA and Australia from the 1880s to 1914, 2003, Merlin Press, 

London, United Kingdom. 

 

Neville Kirk: Labour and the politics of Empire, Britain and Australia 1900 to the 

present, 2011, Manchester University Press, Manchester, United Kingdom. 

 

Geir Kjetsaa: Dostoyevsky, 1987, Viking Penguin, London, United Kingdom. 

 

Edward Frederick Knight: With the Royal Tour: a recent narrative – 1902, Longmans 

Green, London, United Kingdom. 

 

Elizabeth Kwan: Flag and Nation – Australians and their National Flags since 1901, 

2006, University of NSW Press, Sydney, Australia. 

 

ed. Walter Laqueur: The Terrorism Reader, 1979, Wildwood House, London , United 

Kingdom. 

 

Henry Lawson: A Campfire Yarn – Complete Works 1885-1900, 1984, Lansdowne 

Press, Sydney, Australia. 

 

Henry Lawson: A Fantasy of Man – Complete Works 1901-1922, 1984, Lansdowne 

Press, Sydney, Australia. 

 

Henry Lawson: Poetical Works of Henry Lawson, 1979, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 

Australia. 



279 

 

 

Robert Lee: The Railways of Victoria 1854-2004, 2007, Melbourne University Press, 

Melbourne, Australia. 

 

Gordon Leff: History and Social Theory, 1969, University of Alabama Press, 

Alabama, United States of America. 

  

M C Lemon: Philosophy of History – A Guide for Students, 2003, Routledge, London, 

United Kingdom. 

 

ed. Kevin T Livingston, Richard Jordan, Gay Sweely: Becoming Australians - The 

movement towards Federation in Ballarat and the Nation, 2001, Wakefield Press, 

Kent Town, South Australia. 

 

David Lowe: Riot Acts – The history of Australian rioting, 1993, ICS and Associates, 

Sydney, Australia. 

 

David Lowenthal: The Past is a Foreign Country, 1985, Cambridge University Press, 

Cambridge, United Kingdom. 

 

J A Lyne: Greater Melbourne, 1974, Cambridge University Press, London, United 

Kingdom. 

 

Jens Sorensen Lyng: Non-Britishers in Australia, 1927, Melbourne University Press, 

Melbourne, Australia. 

 

Dame Enid Lyons: So we take comfort, 1966, Heinemann, London, United Kingdom. 

 

Martyn Lyons: The Writing culture of Ordinary People in Europe C1860-1920, 2012, 

Cambridge University Press, London, United Kingdom.  

 

ed. Iain McCalman and Paul A Pickering: Historical Re-enactment – from Realism to 

the Affective Turn, 2010, Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills, United Kingdom. 

 

Chris McConville: Croppies, Celts & Catholics – The Irish in Australia, 1987, 

Edward Arnold Australia, Melbourne, Australia. 

 

ed. Oliver MacDonagh and W F Mandle: Irish Australian Studies – Papers delivered 

at the Fifth Irish-Australian  Conference, 1989, Australian National University, 

Canberra, Australia. 

 

Humphrey McQueen: A New Britannia, 4
th

 edition 2004, University of Queensland 

Press, Brisbane, Queensland. 

 

Bryan Magee: The Story of Philosophy, 2001, Dorling Kindersley, New York, United 

States of America. 

 

Maxwell Maltz: Psycho-cybernetics, 1960, Simon & Schuster, New York, United 

States of America.  

 



280 

 

ed. Peter James Marshall: Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire, 1996, 

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom. 

 

ed. Alan Mayne and Tim Murray: The Archaeology of Urban Landscapes, 2001, 

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom. 

 

ed. Neville Kingsley Meaney: The West and the World 1789-1914, 1972, Science 

Press, Sydney, Australia. 

 

Tessa Milne: Archways to Federation – The story of the Celebratory Arches of 1901, 

2000, The 1901 Centre, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. 

 

ed. Kenneth O Morgan: The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, 1984, Oxford 

University Press, Oxford, United Kingdom. 

 

Sheridan Morris: Melbourne Past and Present, 2008, Axiom Publishing, Adelaide, 

South Australia. 

 

Suzanne Mourot: This Was Sydney – a pictorial history from 1788 to the present time, 

1969, Ure Smith, North Sydney, Australia. 

 

Alun Munslow: The New History, 2003, Pearson Education Limited, Harlow, United 

Kingdom.  

 

ed. D.J. Murphy: Labor in Politics, the state Labor parties in Australia1880-1920,  

1975, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, Australia.  

 

Robert Murray: The Ironworkers – a history of the Federated Ironworkers 

Association of Australia, 1982, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, Australia.  

 

The National Geographic Society: The Adventure of Archaeology, 1985 Washington, 

United States of America. 

 

National Trust of Australia (Victoria): Walking Melbourne, 2008, National Trust of 

Australia, Melbourne, Australia. 

 

John Andrew Nauze: The Making of the Australian Constitution, 1972, Melbourne 

University Press, Carlton, Australia. 

 

W H Newnham: Melbourne – the Biography of a City, 1956, F W Cheshire, Angus & 

Robertson, Melbourne, Australia. 

 

W H Newnham: Melbourne Sketchbook, 1967, Rigby Ltd, Adelaide, Australia. 

 

Bob Nicholls: Bluejackets and Boxers, 1986, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, Australia.  

 

Major E W M Norie: Official Account of Military Operations in China 1900-1901,  

1905, 1995, The Battery Press, Nashville, United States of America. 

 



281 

 

Brendan O’Keefe and Michael Pearson: Federation, A National Survey of Heritage 

Places, 1998, Australian Heritage Commission and Heritage Victoria, Canberra, 

Australia. 

 

Michael Oakeshott: On History – and other Essays, 1983, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 

United Kingdom. 

 

George Orwell: Essays, 1984, Penguin Books, London, United Kingdom. 

 

George Orwell: The Orwell Reader, 1984, Harcourt Inc, Florida, United States of 

America. 

 

George Orwell: The Road to Wigan Pier, 1989, Penguin Books, London, United 

Kingdom. 

  

Andrew Barton Paterson: The Collected Verse of A B Paterson, 1979, Angus & 

Robertson, Sydney, Australia. 

 

Andrew Barton Paterson: Singer of the Bush, 1983, Lansdowne Publishing, Sydney, 

Australia. 

 

Paul Pickering: Chartism and the Chartists in Manchester and Salford, 1995, 

Macmillan Press, London, United Kingdom. 

 

ed. Daniel Potts and Karin Sowada: Treasures of the Nicholson Museum, 2006, 

University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia. 

 

Tom Prior: Bolte by Bolte, 1990, Craftsman Publishing, Melbourne, Victoria. 

 

Jonathan Raban: Arabia through the Looking Glass, 1979, Fontana Books, Glasgow, 

United Kingdom. 

 

Therese Radic: Australasian Music Research, 2002, vol. 6.  Federation: music in 

service to national ambition.  

 

John E Redmond MP: Historical and Political Addresses 1883-1897, 1898, Sealy, 

Bryers and Walker, Dublin, Ireland. 

 

John Rickard: Australia – a cultural history, 1988, Longman Group, London, United 

Kingdom. 

 

ed. H P Rickman: Meaning in History – W Dilthey’s Thoughts on History and Society, 

1961, Allen & Unwin, London, United Kingdom. 

 

L L Robson: The Origin and Character of the First AIF 1914-1918, 1973, Historical 

Studies vol 15 no 61 October 1973. 

 

Michael Roe: Nine Progressives – Vitalism in Bourgeois Social Thought 1890-1960, 

1984, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, Australia. 

 



282 

 

Eric Rolls: Sojourners: The epic story of China’s centuries old relationship with 

Australia, 1992, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, Australia. 

 

Eric Rolls: Citizens: sequel to Sojourners, 1996, University of Queensland Press, 

Brisbane, Australia. 

 

Gilbert Ryle: The Concept of Mind, 1949, Hutchinson & Co, London, United 

Kingdom. 

 

Gilbert Ryle: The Thinking of Thoughts – What is ‘Le Penseur’ Doing? 1968, 

University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada. 

   

St Mary’s Cathedral: St Mary’s Cathedral Sydney – A Living Cathedral, 2004, St 

Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney, Australia. 

 

St Stephen’s Church: The Three Faces of St Stephen’s, St Stephen’s Uniting Church, 

Sydney, Australia. 

 

Edward Leroy Schaub: Philosophy today, essays on recent developments in the field 

of philosophy, 1928 – 1968, Books for Libraries Press, New York, United States of 

America. 

 

Hugh Seton-Watson: Nations and States, 1977, Westview Press, Boulder, United 

States of America. 

 

Alan Sharpe: Pictorial History of the City of Sydney, 2000, Kingsclear Books, 

Sydney, Australia. 

 

Alan Sharpe: Pictorial History of Newtown, 1999, Kingsclear Books, Sydney, 

Australia. 

 

C  P Snow: The Realists – Portraits of Eight Novelists, 1978, Macmillan Press Ltd, 

London, United Kingdom. 

 

Gavin Souter: Lion and Kangaroo – the initiation of Australia 1901-1919, 1976, 

William Collins, Sydney, Australia. 

 

Jeff and Jill Sparrow: Radical Melbourne – volume 1 A secret history – volume 2 The 

enemy within, 2001, The Vulgar Press, Melbourne, Australia. 

 

Peter Spearritt: Sydney’s Century – a History, 2000, University of NSW Press, 

Sydney, Australia. 

 

Suzie L Steinbach: Understanding the Victorians – Politics, Culture and Society in 

Nineteenth Century Britain, 2012, Routledge, Oxford, Great Britain. 

 

Percy Reginald Stephensen: The Foundations of Culture in Australia- An Essay 

towards National Self-Respect, 1986, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, Australia. 

 



283 

 

Suzanne Stirling and Helen Ivory: QVB – an improbable story, 1998, IPOH Ltd, 

Sydney, Australia. 

 

Ilija Sultalo: Croatians in Australia, 2004, Wakefield Press, Adelaide, Australia. 

 

Julian Symons: Portrait of an Artist – Conan Doyle, 1979, AH & AW Reed, Sydney, 

Australia. 

 

Ross Terrill: R H Tawney and His Times, 1973, Harvard University Press, 

Massachusetts , United States of America. 

 

ed. Dorothy Thompson: The Essential E P Thompson, 2001, The New Press, New 

York, United States of America. 

 

Edward Palmer Thompson: The Making of the English Working Class, 1968, Pelican 

Books, London, United Kingdom. 

 

Edward Palmer Thompson: The Poverty of Theory and other essays, 1978, Merlin 

Press, London, United Kingdom. 

 

Deborah Tout-Smith: Melbourne – a City of Stories, 2008, Museum Victoria, 

Melbourne, Australia. 

 

Brian Turner: The Australian Terrace House, 1995, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 

Australia. 

  

Henry Gyles Turner: The First Decade of the Australian Commonwealth, 1911, 

Mason, Firth, McCutcheon, Melbourne, Australia. 

 

Henry Gyles Turner: A History of the Colony of Victoria, 1904, Longmans, Green & 

Co, London, Great Britain. 

 

John Turner: A Pictorial History of Newcastle, 1997, Kingsclear Books, Sydney, 

Australia. 

 

ed. C Turney: Pioneers of Australian Education, 1969, University of Sydney Press, 

Sydney, Australia. 

 

Wray Vamplew: Australians, historical statistics, 1987, Fairfax, Syme & Weldon 

Associates, Sydney, Australia. 

 

Jennifer Walsh: The Tunnels of Tarcoola, 2012, Allen& Unwin, Sydney, Australia. 

 

Anne-Maree Whitaker: Pictorial History of Marrickville, 2006, Kingsclear Books, 

Sydney, Australia. 

 

Anne-Maree Whitaker: Pictorial History of South Sydney, 2002, Kingsclear Books, 

Sydney, Australia. 

   



284 

 

Edmund White: The Flâneur, 2001, Bloomsbury Publishing, London, United 

Kingdom. 

 

Jill White: Dupain’s Sydney, 1999, Chapter & Verse, Sydney, Australia.  

 

Craig Wilcox: Australia’s Boer War, 2002, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 

Australia. 

 

Graham John Rutledge Wilcox: The Struggle for Unity, A story of the Federation of 

Australia, 2014, Ligare Publishing, Sydney, Australia. 

 

Myra Willard: History of the White Australia Policy to 1920, 1923 Melbourne 

University Press, 1967 Frank Cass and Co Ltd, Melbourne, Australia. 

 

Granville Wilson and Peter Sands: Building a City, 100 years of Melbourne 

Architecture, 198, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, Australia. 

 

ed. J M Winter: History and Society: Essays by R H Tawney, 1978 Routledge & 

Keegan Paul, London, United Kingdom. 

 

Michael Wood: In Search of Shakespeare, 2005, BBC Books, London, United 

Kingdom. 

 

Michael Wood: In Search of the Trojan War, 1985, BBC Books, London, United 

Kingdom. 

 

George Woodcock: Anarchism, 1962, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, United 

Kingdom. 

 

George Woodcock: The Anarchist Reader, 1977, Fontana Collins, Glasgow, United 

Kingdom. 

 

Barry York: Our Multicultural Heritage 1788-1945, 1995, National Library of 

Australia, Canberra, Australia. 

 

 

 

REFERENCE PUBLICATIONS 

 

Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics: Official Year Book of the 

Commonwealth of Australia 1901-1907, No.1 – 1908, Commonwealth of Australia, 

McCarron, Bird & Co, Melbourne, Australia. 

 

Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics: Official Year Book of the 

Commonwealth of Australia 1901-1908, No.2 – 1909, Commonwealth of Australia, 

McCarron, Bird & Co, Melbourne, Australia. 

 

Commonwealth of Australia, ed. Cheryl Saunders: The Australian Constitution, 1997, 

Constitutional Centenary Foundation, Melbourne, Australia. 

 



285 

 

Commonwealth of Australia, Centenary of Federation Committee: 1901-2001 

Centenary of Federation, Your guide to Australia’s celebrations, 2000, 

Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra, Australia. 

 

ed. Simon Blackburn: The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, 1994, Oxford University 

Press, Oxford, United Kingdom. 

 

Peter Dennis, Jeffrey Grey, Ewan Morris, Robin Prior: The Oxford Companion to 

Australian Military History, 1995, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, Australia. 

 

Global Vision: One Destiny! The Federation Story kit, 1997, Global vision 

Productions, Melbourne Victoria. 

 

ed. Ted Honderich: The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, 1995, Oxford University 

Press, Oxford, United Kingdom. 

 

ed. Thomas Mautner: The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy, 2005, Penguin Books, 

London, United Kingdom. 

 

ed. William Morris: The Heritage Illustrated Dictionary of the English Language, 

1975, McGraw-Hill International, New York, United States of America. 

 

ed. Bede Nairn: Australian Dictionary of Biography, 1988, Melbourne University 

Press, Melbourne, Australia. 

 

NSW State Government: Journal of the Legislative Council of NSW, Session 1900 

Vol LXII Part 1, William Applegate Gullick Government Printer, Sydney, Australia. 

 

NSW State Government: Votes and Proceedings for the Legislative Assembly of NSW, 

Session 1900 Vol LXII Part 1, William Applegate Gullick Government Printer, 

Sydney, Australia. 

 

Oxford University Press: The Dictionary of National Biography – The Concise 

Dictionary, 1882, Oxford University Press, Oxford, United Kingdom. 

 

Oxford University Press: The Oxford English Dictionary, 2001, Oxford University 

Press, Oxford, United Kingdom. 

 

Oxford University Press: Pocket Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2001, Oxford University 

Press, Oxford, United Kingdom. 

 

Oxford University Press: Pocket Oxford Classical Greek Dictionary, 2002, Oxford 

University Press, Oxford, United Kingdom. 

 

Victorian State Government: Legislative Assembly of Victoria, Session 1900, Vol III, 

Robert S Brain Government Printer, Melbourne, Australia. 

 

William H Wilde, Joy Hooton, Barry Andrews: The Oxford Companion to Australian 

Literature, 1985-1994, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, Australia. 

 



286 

 

STREET DIRECTORIES AND GUIDES 

 

Anderson Gowan Pty Ltd: Melbourne Street Directory 1921, 1921, Anderson Gowan, 

Melbourne, Australia. 

 

GeoCentre: Euro-Road Atlas of France Paris 1:80,000, RV Verlag, Germany. 

  

Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Melbourne Compact Street Directory 

1993, 1993, Universal Press, Melbourne, Australia.  

 

Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Street Directory of Sydney & Suburbs 

1934, 2006, The Australian Book Guide Company, Sydney, Australia.  

 

Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Revised Maxi Street Directory of Sydney 

1988, 1988, Universal Press, Sydney, Australia.  

 

Gregory’s Publishing Company: Gregory’s Sydney Street Directory 2011, 2011, 

Universal Press, Sydney, Australia. 

 

H E C Robinson: Robinson’s Map of Sydney and adjacent suburbs 1907/1910, 1910, 

Robinson Publishing, Sydney, Australia. 

 

John Sands: Sands’ Sydney and Suburban Directory for 1900, 1900, John Sands, 

Sydney, Australia. 

 

Sands and McDougall’s: Melbourne and Suburban Directory for 1901, 1901, Sands 

& McDougall, Melbourne, Australia. 

 

UBD Australia: UBD Sydney Street Directory 2000, 2000, Universal Press, Sydney, 

Australia. 

 

UBD Australia: UBD Melbourne Street Directory 2008, 2008, Universal Press, 

Melbourne, Australia. 

 

 

 

PRINCIPAL DATABASES 

 

Australian Broadcasting Commission: Australia’s Centenary of Federation, 2000, 

ABC 100 years, Sydney, Australia.  

http://www.abc.net.au/federation/fedstory/home.htm 

 

Author: Subject, Australian Dictionary of Biography – online, National Centre of 

Biography, Australian National University, Canberra. 

http://adb.anu.edu.au/ 

 

Australian Broadcasting Commission: Coverage of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, 

Black Tuesday bushfires remembered. 

http://www.abc.net.au/ 

 

http://www.abc.net.au/federation/fedstory/home.htm
http://adb.anu.edu.au/
http://www.abc.net.au/


287 

 

The Australian Club: Australian Club Home. 

https://theaustralianclub.com.au/ 

     

Australian Standards HB 330:  Living in bushfire-prone areas; Black Saturday 

Bushfires. 

http://www.blacksaturdaybushfires.com.au/ 

 

Heritage Victoria: Gordon Reserve and other locations in Melbourne. 

http://vhd.heritage.vic.gov.au/vhd/heritagevic 

 

Historic Houses Trust of NSW: Hyde Park Barracks. 

http://sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/hyde-park-barracks-museum 

 

Howard League for Penal Reform. 

http://www.howardleague.org/ 

 

eMelbourne: The City Past & Present.   

http://www.emelbourne.net.au/ 

 

New South Wales Government: Barangaroo Delivery Authority.  

http://barangaroo.com/ 

 

New South Wales Government Centennial Park and Moore Park Trust: Centennial 

Parklands. 

http://www.centennialparklands.com.au/ 

 

New South Wales Government: Parliament of NSW, 2011, NSW Govt, Sydney, 

Australia. 

https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/ 

 

New South Wales Heritage Council: The Department of Education Building. 

http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/Heritage/heritagecouncil/ 

 

Public Art:  Public Art Around The World. 

http://www.publicartaroundtheworld.com/ 

 

Rail Corporation New South Wales: Southern Aurora celebrates 50 years of rail 

travel. 

http://www.transport.nsw.gov.au/railcorp 

 

Royal Australian Historical Society: Home Page. 

http://www.rahs.org.au/ 

   

Sydney Vista: Sydney General Post Office.  

http://www.sydneyvista.com/Sydney-General-Post-Office.html 

 

Sydney for Everyone: Lost Tramways. 

http://sydneyforeveryone.com.au/placecategory/lost-tramways/ 

http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/insidethecollection/2011/02/sydneys-last-trams/ 

http://sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/stories/shooting-through-sydney-tram 

https://theaustralianclub.com.au/
http://www.blacksaturdaybushfires.com.au/
http://vhd.heritage.vic.gov.au/vhd/heritagevic
http://sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/hyde-park-barracks-museum
http://www.howardleague.org/
http://www.emelbourne.net.au/
http://barangaroo.com/
http://www.centennialparklands.com.au/
https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/
http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/Heritage/heritagecouncil/
http://www.publicartaroundtheworld.com/
http://www.transport.nsw.gov.au/railcorp
http://www.rahs.org.au/
http://www.sydneyvista.com/Sydney-General-Post-Office.html
http://sydneyforeveryone.com.au/placecategory/lost-tramways/
http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/insidethecollection/2011/02/sydneys-last-trams/
http://sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/stories/shooting-through-sydney-tram


288 

 

 

The Victorian Web:  Charles George Gordon and other subjects in Melbourne.  

http://www.victorianweb.org/ 

 

Heritage Council of Victoria: State Parliament House. 

http://heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/ 

 

http://www.victorianweb.org/
http://heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/


FOOTSTEPPING TO FEDERATION

An alternative approach to analysing Australian Society at the beginning of the 
Twentieth Century.

SYDNEY FEDERATION PARADE 
PHOTOGRAPH BOOKLET VOLUME 1

Eric Carpenter 

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   1 9/19/2016   11:05:02 AM



      1

SYDNEY MARCH

The Sydney Morning Herald:
2 January 1901,  p. 12.
The route of the Sydney Federation 
parade through the city.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   1 9/19/2016   11:05:12 AM



      2

1.  ARRIVAL IN SYDNEY

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   2 9/19/2016   11:05:13 AM



      3

The Sydney Daily 
Telegraph:
2 January 1901,  p. 8.
The route of the Sydney 
parade out to Centennial 
Park.

1107.
Sydney’s Land Titles Offi  ce exempli-
fi es the elegant possibilities of the 
local sandstone, and is typical of 
structures that still domonate the 
eastern side of the city.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   3 9/19/2016   11:05:14 AM



      4

2.  COMMENCEMENT OF THE MARCH

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   4 9/19/2016   11:05:15 AM



      5

1105.
The State Art Gallery of NSW today.  It was on the fi eld before this newly 
constructed institution that the Federation parade assembled prior to its 10:00am 
commencement on 1 January 1901.

1098.
The broad expanse of the Outer Domain, as it would have been in 
1901. This was the most suitable location for assembling the huge 
number of march participants.  The large fi eld still hosts major events 
such as rock concerts and Christmas carols by candlelight.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   5 9/19/2016   11:05:16 AM



      6

1101.
Robbie Burns on Art GalleryRoad, 
between the Art Gallery and the 
entry gates.  
Although erected in 1905, a few 
years after Federation, Burns’ 
romantic ideals of nationalism 
would have struck a chord, not 
only with Sydney’s infl uential 
Scottish population.

1097.
Th e point where Prince Albert Road on the left , now joins the more recent Art 
Gallery Road on the right; which now goes out to Mrs Macquarie’s Chair.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   6 9/19/2016   11:05:17 AM



      7

1099.
The Coal Arch location today, looking back down the remnant Prince Albert Road into 
the Domain. Note the degree to which the wide Moreton Bay fi g trees bordering the 
open spaces have grown over the road.

National Library of Australia: nla.pic an 13143006-8.
The Coal Arch in place near the Domain Gates in 1901.   
Prince Albert Road was then the main thoroughfare through 
the Domain.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   7 9/19/2016   11:05:18 AM



      8

3.  RACE AND RELIGION

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   8 9/19/2016   11:05:19 AM



      9

Powerhouse Museum collection: 
239- 2429893881-422cff7.
View from St Mary’s to Govern-
ment House and Sydney Harbour.  
The partially constructed Art Gal-
lery in the mid ground would date 
the image to around 1900.  This 
view, with the still separated Garden 
Island in the background indicates 
the dominant position of the site.

St Mary’s Cathedral: World Youth Day database.
This modern aerial view of St Mary’s Cathedral indicates its pre-eminent position even 
today. The vegetation would have been less obscuring a century ago as the march would 
have passed by the lower left, where the modern traffi c lights control the intersection.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   9 9/19/2016   11:05:19 AM



      10

National Library of Australia: nla.pic-an 13148760-s42.
The Coal Arch location looking forward through an additional 
fl oral arch to St Mary’s Cathedral.  This structure commemo-
rated the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York 
late in May 1901, on their return from the opening of the 
Federal Parliament in Melbourne.  A century ago, there were 
fewer trees, and the road surface is indicative of horse trans-
port rather than the later automobile.

1096.
Looking from Coal Arch site through the Domain Gates south to St Mary’s Cathedral 
today. Note the current alignment visible through the overgrowth of vegetation.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   10 9/19/2016   11:05:20 AM



      11

State Library of Victoria: H21766  
b52333.
St Mary’s from Hyde Park in 1900, 
indicating the southern end and main 
entry yet to be constructed.  The cathe-
dral has long been the focal point for 
Sydney’s infl uential Irish Catholic 
community.

1094.
The corner of St Mary’s that had been completed in 1901, and 
where Archbishop Moran sat, presiding over his demonstartion at 
the passing parade.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   11 9/19/2016   11:05:21 AM



      12

1201.
Cardinal Moran now dominates the main southern entrance to St Mary’s Cathedral, 
symbolically placing his blessing upon the modern city of Sydney.

1091.
Statue of Australia’s patron saint, St Mary, 
Help of Christians, in the western Chapel 
of the Sacred Heart in St Mary’s 
Cathedral.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   12 9/19/2016   11:05:22 AM



      13

4.  CITY DEVELOPMENT

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   13 9/19/2016   11:05:22 AM



      14

1110.
The drinking fountain at the 
junction of St Mary’s Rd and Prince 
Albert Road.  This was constructed by 
L Beveridge and donated to the city by 
Mayor John Hardie in 1884.

1411.
The other remaining Beveridge drinking 
fountain in Hyde Park.  This facility is 
still used by young boys on their way to 
the Australian Museum and Sydney Boys’ 
Grammar School in College Street.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   14 9/19/2016   11:05:23 AM



      15

1108.
Land Titles Offi ce. At the time of 
Federation, this was a mix of legal 
offi ces, including the 
Equity Court, Registrar of Pro-
bates and Intestate Estates Offi ce, 
and even the Master of Lunacy,   
H F Barton.

Sydney Celebrates: 
One Destiny, The Federation Story project.
Queen Victoria festooned with decorations 
for the Federation celebrations. This is surely 
indicative of the genuine warmth and affection 
with which the monarch was held at the time.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   15 9/19/2016   11:05:25 AM



      16

City of Sydney Libary: 
037/037156.
Queen’s Square in 1900 
looking west to St James’s 
Church.  Hyde Park is on 
the left and the Law Courts 
precinct to the right.

1114.
Queen’s Square and Queen Victoria today.  Having been moved to accommodate traffi c 
expansions during the 1960s, and the establishment of pedestrian precincts in the 1990s, 
Her Majesty seems to have found a level of permanence.  She has even turned to the 
left, if only to look back at St James, the hub of old Anglicanism, rather than previously 
glowering across at St Mary’s Cathedral.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   16 9/19/2016   11:05:25 AM



      17

1111.
Hyde Park Barracks today.  By Federation, the military had moved out to Victoria 
Barracks, and this building was being used as the Metropolitan District Court.

1116.
The local brickwork on the 
front of Francis Greenway’s 
Barracks facing Macquarie 
Street. This is now one of the 
prime tourist attractions of the 
city.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   17 9/19/2016   11:05:27 AM



      18

5.  MACQUARIE STREET AND THE OLD CITY

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   18 9/19/2016   11:05:28 AM



      19

Sydney Celebrates: One Destiny, The Federation Story project.
The view looking down Macquarie Street in 1901 with the fl ags and 
bunting for the parade. The original railings for the Mint are evident 
on the right of the photograph.

1117.
Macquarie Street looking north today.  Flags and fl ag poles remain, although the gentle-
men’s residences on the left hand side of the road have long been replaced with offi ces.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   19 9/19/2016   11:05:29 AM



      20

1120.
The Mint today. Little has changed with the conserved heritage building.

Sydney Celebrates: One Destiny, The Federation Story project. 
The parade, passing the Mint, evident by the stone gate supports and 
railings, and St Mary’s in the top left background.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   20 9/19/2016   11:05:30 AM



      21

1123.
St Stephen’s 
Presbyterian / 
Uniting Church, now 
occupying the site 
of Burdekin House, 
and directly oppo-
site State Parliament 
House.

State Library of NSW:  Home and Away 35178.
Burdekin House at the time of Federation. This gentlemen’s 
residence was replaced by St Stephen’s Church in 1933, at the 
time of the extension of Martin Place.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   21 9/19/2016   11:05:31 AM



      22

1132.
147 Macquarie Street. The former dental surgery and current Roy-
al Australian College of Physicians still remains.

State Library of NSW: Home and Away 35064.
Houses on Macquarie Street.  These fi ne residenc-
es fi lled the western side of the street between Bent 
Street and the Law Courts at Queens’ Square. They 
subsequently became medical offi ces before many 
were demolished in the 1950s and 1960s for the 
current offi ce buildings.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   22 9/19/2016   11:05:32 AM



      23

0033.
Sydney’s State Parliament House today, with a new “heritage” coat of paint.

1212.
Former McDonagh Medical Surgery and curent Horbury Heritage Terrace at 173 
Macquarie Street, now opposite the Mitchell Library.  The site of the original Aus-
tralia Club to the right is now just another tall city building.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   23 9/19/2016   11:05:33 AM



      24

1135.
The Mitchell Library and Shakespeare Place from the site of the old library.  
At the time of the Federation Parade, these expansive locations were only just 
becoming appreciated.

1206.
The Sydney Hospital was also a new institution at the time of the Fed-
eration Parade, although the copy of Pietro Tacca’s 1634 Il Porcellino 
only dates from 1967.  In an interesting example of the degree to which 
memory can play tricks, this statue has always seemed to have been in 
its place from much earlier.  It was donated by Clarissa, the Marchesa 
Torrigiani to commemorate her father, the surgeon, Th omas Fiaschi.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   24 9/19/2016   11:05:34 AM



      25

National Library of Australia: nla.pic 3084399 v.
The forecourt of the new Mitchell Library prior to the Second 
World War. This Shakespeare Place will soon be divided by the 
Cahill Expressway exiting at the far right.

Jeffrey Smart: The Tunnel 1962. 
Note the statue of Shakespeare above the new Cahill Expressway tunnel entrance. 
Jeffrey Smart’s artistic interpretation has been compressed with the relocated statue 
now in the forecourt of the Mitchell Library.  Interstingly, the yellow stylised building in 
the left  background would be one of the few remaining images of the original Mitchell 
Library.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   25 9/19/2016   11:05:35 AM



      26

Sydney Celebrates: One Destiny, The Federation Story project.
View of the corner of Macquarie Street and Bent Street from the 
balcony of the original Mitchell Library looking across to the origi-
nal Australia Club as the Federation March passes by in 1901.

1136.
The corner of Bent Street today, with Hambros House and the modern Australia Club 
still occupying the site.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   26 9/19/2016   11:05:37 AM



      27

6.  THE MODERN CITY

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   27 9/19/2016   11:05:38 AM



      28

1445.
The Governor Phillip Memorial today, with the later Michell Library now in the
background fi lling the previously vacant and under-appreciated space.

State Records Authority 
of NSW: 5010361286.
The magnifi cent 
International Exhibition 
Garden Palace after its 
opening in September 
1879.

National Library of Australia:
nla.pic-vn4278190.
The Governor Phillip Memorial 
that has occupied the site since 
1897. Note the new Sydney 
Hospital building in the 
distance,

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   28 9/19/2016   11:05:38 AM



      29

1138.
The former State Treasury Building, now the façade for the Intercontinental Hotel, on 
the northern corner of Bridge Street.

1139.
Th e Colonial Secretary’s Offi  ce, now 
Chief Secretary’s Offi  ce, today on 
the opposite corner is still a govern-
ment building and the sometime 
offi  ce of the State Governor.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   29 9/19/2016   11:05:40 AM



      30

Powerhouse Museum Collection: 28116_3004413242.
View from Government House Gates down Bridge Street prior to the 
1901 celebrations.  Th e Colonial Secretary’s Offi  ce stands on the left , 
and the Treasury Building on the right.

1448.
While Queen Victoria has been honoured with two large, and many smaller statues 
throughout the city, her son, King Edward VII’s imposing statue is now rather sidelined, 
aft er also been moved to accommodate modern traffi  c fl ow.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   30 9/19/2016   11:05:41 AM



      31

1435.
Th e entry to Government House today is little more than a busy convoluted roadway 
intersection with the main traffi  c fl ow going down into the Harbour Tunnel.  Th e entry 
gates were moved further down the road and now remain forlornly in the right back-
ground.

University of Melbourne:  UMA/I/4550.
Government House Gates exuberantly decorated for the arrival of 
the new Australian Governor General, Lord Hopetoun.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   31 9/19/2016   11:05:42 AM



      32

7.  INDUSTRY AND AGRICULTURE

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   32 9/19/2016   11:05:43 AM



      33

National Library of Australia: 
nla.pic-an11030057-404.
Th e march turned this same cor-
ner down into Bridge Street past 
the Colonial Secretary’s Building.  
Note the Floral Arch at the entry 
to Government House in the 
background.

1140.
Th e point where the march turned left  into Bridge Street today.  Th e preservation of the 
glorious Sydney sandstone buildings in Macquarie and Bridge Streets makes this eastern 
district still one of the most popular precincts of the city.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   33 9/19/2016   11:05:44 AM



      34

1219.
Th e site of the old Tramway Manager’s residence and tram terminus at No 60 
Bridge Street is now the rear entry for the Intercontinental Hotel.

1144.
36 to 42 Young Street.  As with the preserved terraces around the corner in 
Phillip Street, these are all that remain of original inner city living from the 
nineteenth century.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   34 9/19/2016   11:05:45 AM



      35

1142. 
Th e Museum of Sydney, formerly a small parking space between Phillip and 
Young Streets.  Th is was discoverd to be the site of the original Government 
House.  Note the back of the Young Street terraces on the right.

State Library of Victoria: H18534 a14748.
1900 view down Bridge Street, with the famous Fig Tree still occupying the side 
of the Department of Education site. Th is tree was one of the many landmarks lit 
up for the Federation festivities.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   35 9/19/2016   11:05:46 AM



      36

National Library of Australia: nla.pic an13143006-6.
Th e Wool Arch looking downhill from the corner of Bridge 
and Loft us Streets.  Th e Wheat Arch is in the background.

1141.
Th e view down Bridge Street today, past the Young Street terraces.  Note the 
steepness of the street, although the march would have been going down hill in 
1901.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   36 9/19/2016   11:05:48 AM



      37

Th e City of Sydney Image Library: 044\044118.
Th e procession down Bridge Street from Macquarie Place, passing 
the Department of Lands and under the Wheat Arch.

1148.
Th e Department of Lands from the same Macquarie Place location today.  Th is photo 
again embodies the classical heritage of the precinct, with the Department of Educa-
tion, formerly the Department of Public Instruction behind.  Th is latter building was still 
incomplete at the time of the march, with its current façade not yet constructed.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   37 9/19/2016   11:05:49 AM



      38

State Library of NSW: perier_34375. 
Th e view back from the rather bedraggled Wheat Arch to the Wool 
Arch.  Macquarie Place is on the left , with the imposing statue of 
Th omas Sutcliff e Mort just visible. 

1146.
Th e site of the two arches today.  Macquarie Place is on the right, and the white Ex-
change Building centre fi eld, marking  Pitt Street, and the point where the march turned 
left , rather than continuing on to George Street in the distance.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   38 9/19/2016   11:05:50 AM



      39

1222.
Th e later Exchange Building from Macquarie Place. Th ese harsh white offi  ces appear less 
attractive than the original Stock Exchange. 

National Library of Australia: nla.pic-an10834037-s11-v.
Th e original Sydney Stock Exchange in 1900 seems to blend sympa-
thetically into the streetscape.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   39 9/19/2016   11:05:51 AM



      40

1429.
Th e current Stock Exchange diagonally 
across from the Exchange Building.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   40 9/19/2016   11:05:52 AM



      41

1430.
Th e original marker in Macquarie Place 
from whence all distances in NSW were 
measured.  With the later  construction 
of the GPO, tradition dictated this new 
building to assume the role.

1147.
Th omas Sutcliff e Mort still 
dominates Macquarie Place.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   41 9/19/2016   11:05:53 AM



      42

8.  JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   42 9/19/2016   11:05:55 AM



      43

NSW Government Records Offi  ce: 12487 a021 a021000038.
Th e corner of Margaret and Clarence Streets in 1900 during the 
clean-up as a result of the plague.  St Philip’s Anglican Church is 
most notable in the background.

1473.
Th e corner of Margaret and Clarence Streets today, with the Australian Academy build-
ing, and other skyscrapers fi lling the block. In the background is the Western Distributor 
from the Sydney Harbour Bridge.  Th e original geographical marker of St Philip’s Angli-
can Church is still in existence, although now buried among the tall buildings.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   43 9/19/2016   11:05:56 AM



      44

1490.
Watch House terraces from 60-80 Erskine Street, between Kent and Clarence and Streets. 
Th ese heritage listed buildings, including the police watch house on the corner, were well 
established by the time of the plague, and would have provided support and accommo-
dation for those who lost their homes in the clean-up.  Kent Street on the left  now serves 
as little more than as an access road to the Harbour Bridge and the Rocks.

1478.
Slum clearance and redevelopment by the Port Authority soon aft er Federation resulted 
in Margaret Street being replaced by the more gradual sloped Napoleon Street, providing 
access for horse drawn vehicles to the developed dock areas.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   44 9/19/2016   11:05:57 AM



      45

NSW Government Records Offi  ce: 12487 a021 a021000035.
Sussex Street looking south from Margaret Street in 1900.  Again, 
rubbish is being cleared out from the residences as part of the plague 
clean-up.

1477.
Sussex Street looking south from Margaret and Napoleon Streets today. Th e residential 
district has long gone and the area is now part of the corporate city.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   45 9/19/2016   11:05:59 AM



      46

1475.
Th e location of 64 Sussex Street today.  Th e housing has 
been demolished to make way for expressways and pedes-
trian access.

NSW Government Records Offi  ce: 
12487 a021  a021000021.
Reconstruction of the house at 64 
Sussex Street aft er cleaning and disin-
fecting. An indication of how seri-
ously cleanliness was taken aft er the 
outbreak of plague.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   46 9/19/2016   11:06:00 AM



      47

1486.
While the heritage value of the site is now recognised, it sits as an isolated pocket be-
tween overpasses and modern glass towers .

1483.
Alignments such as Sussex 
Lane remain to give a glimpse 
of what the district must have 
been like.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   47 9/19/2016   11:06:01 AM



      48

1481. 
Barangaroo Redevelopment and palimpsest on a grand industrial scale.  Th e small 
wooden docks in Darling Harbour were rebuilt aft er Federation, to be replaced by 
concrete wharfi ng during the 1960s and 1970s. Now that port facilities have moved to 
Botany Bay, the area is being converted into corporate offi  ces and casinos.

1488.
Patches of the original dockside heritage structure still exist along Sussex Street.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   48 9/19/2016   11:06:03 AM



      49

9.  PITT STREET REPUBLICANS

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   49 9/19/2016   11:06:05 AM



      50

1150.
Th e Pitt Street corner from Bridge Street today, with the Exchange 
Building on the left .  It was at this point that the parade turned left  
from Bridge Street.

1426.
Th is location is now marked by the 1902 James 
White sculpture of Commerce.

1427.
On the opposite side of Pitt 
Street adjacent to the location of 
the French Arch now resides the 
aptly named Republic Restaurant 
in what was originally the Ex-
change Hotel: Herbert A Neich 
proprietor.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   50 9/19/2016   11:06:05 AM



      51

National Library of Australia: nla.
pic-an 13143006-9.
Th e French Arch at the point 
where the parade entered Pitt 
Street from Bridge Street.

Australian War Memorial: P00670.001.
Th e march passing under the French Arch demonstrates the claustro-
phobic narrowness of Pitt Street even in 1901.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   51 9/19/2016   11:06:07 AM



      52

1226.
Th e same Hunter Street, O’Connell Street intersection, with the 
1924 steel framed and stone clad Herald Building on the corner.

National Library of Australia: nla.pic-an 13143006-11.
Th e American Arch on the corner of Pitt Street, 
Hunter Street and O’Connell Street.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   52 9/19/2016   11:06:08 AM



      53

1152.
Th e claustrophobic eff ect of the old Pitt Street has actually been reduced with the open 
forecourt of Australia Square on the right.

University of Melbourne: UMA/I/4555.
Th e American Arch looking back down Pitt Street from Martin 
Place.  Th e New York chasm sensation is evident here.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   53 9/19/2016   11:06:09 AM



      54

1223.
Some of the original little lanes such as Bridge Lane still exist, here almost swallowed 
up by modernism.  Th e Tank Stream Way in the mid ground, running parallel with Pitt 
Street, sits virtually atop the old Tank Stream.

1227.
Some things never change. Here at 
125 Pitt Street, on the corner of Angel 
Place sits the Angel Hotel just as it 
did in 1901.  Th en the proprietor was 
Frank Wilson.  Th e alley way behind 
the hotel was full of small businesses, 
including at least three architects, 
Albert Bond, Harry Kent and an F 
Moorehouse.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   54 9/19/2016   11:06:10 AM



      55

10.  THE COMMERCIAL CITY

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   55 9/19/2016   11:06:11 AM



      56

City of Sydney Library: 
044\044132. 
Martin Place and the GPO in 
1901 from where Martin Place 
became Moore Street and its 
later extention to Castlereagh 
Street.

1159.
Martin Place from Castlereagh Street across the Pitt Street inter-
section today. Since this image was taken just prior to Christmas, 
the general seasonal feel would have been similar to 1901.  Note 
the light fashion of summer contrasting with the heavy woollen 
clothing of a century ago.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   56 9/19/2016   11:06:12 AM



      57

National Libary of Australia: nla.pic-an10834037-s28.
Martin Place festooned with banners for the Federation Parade. It 
was at this point that the march moved from Pitt Street to George 
Street. 

1155.
Martin Place from Pitt Street.  It is notable that there was no giant Christmas tree in 
1901. Th is decoration has been a most interesting point of contention between the athe-
istic Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, and the more populist State Government.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   57 9/19/2016   11:06:13 AM



      58

1422, 1424.
Architect James Barnet’s 
famous Pitt Street carvings 
on the keystones and 
spandrels of the GPO, 
representing everyday city 
trades and local dignitaries 
from Sydney.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   58 9/19/2016   11:06:14 AM



      59

State Library of Victoria: H82.43/72 b17817.
Looking south down George Street around 1900, from the location 
where it is joined by Martin Place.  Th e main point of diff erence appears 
in transport, with the new trams and wooden blocked street surface yet 
to be replaced by later cars and tarmac.

1191.
Looking down George Street from the same position. Th is intersection has remained 
much as it was in 1901, although modern buildings dominate further along the street.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   59 9/19/2016   11:06:16 AM



      60

State Library of Victoria: H20249 a14756.
Th e corner has thankfully had some heritage protection. In 1900, 
this building was the Equitable Building Mutual Life Insurance 
Company of New York, with the Safe Deposits Building further 
along George Street.  In keeping with the American fl avour, the 
basement held the Manhattan Luncheon and Tea Rooms.

1229.
Now the Australasia Chambers with the Societe Generale House in the background, 
both expressing the late Victorian mix of Classicism and American modernist Roman-
esque.  Note the additional vegetation in Martin Place and on George Street, and the 
presence of modern fl agpoles for the Martin Place cenotaph.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   60 9/19/2016   11:06:17 AM



      61

1230, 1231.
Some of the small original buildings along George Street remain.  Th e Darrell Lea Choc-
olate shop was originally the Union Bank of Australia, and then the Royal Exchange 
Hotel.  Th e current McDonald’s outlet at 357-377 George Street was originally the Pasto-
ral Chambers, containing Baker and Rouse, importers of photographic stock, and Heb-
blewhite and Co, importers of sewing machines and bicycles.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   61 9/19/2016   11:06:19 AM



      62

1190, 1193.
One of the few remaining arcades in Sydney, the Strand Arcade still exists between King 
and Market Streets, and has now been heritage listed.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   62 9/19/2016   11:06:20 AM



      63

State Library of Victoria: H21600 
b52455.
Th e Queen Victoria Building 
from the Market Street corner in 
1900.  Note the massive telegraph 
pole and cross bars attempting to 
cope with the up to date commu-
nication and power technology.

1189.
Th e Queen Victoria Building from Market Street today.  Th is has been known as Gow-
ings Corner, since before the Second World War, even though Supre now actually oc-
cupies the heritage building.  Imagine the sensation of the Federation Parade marching 
along this route past the freshly cut sandstone facade. 

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   63 9/19/2016   11:06:21 AM



      64

City of Sydney Library: 000322.
Th e Federation Parade passing the Queen Victoria Building on the 
left .  Health and safety regulations for spectators were obviously 
more lax than today.  Interesting to also note the number of women 
on the balconies. Obviously our notions regarding the physical re-
strictions on women a century ago did not necessarily apply.

1195.
Th e Queen Victoria Building today from the same point on George Street, with smaller 
awnings opening up the facade.  Th e soon to be demolished monorail is visible in the 
background.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   64 9/19/2016   11:06:22 AM



      65

University of Melbourne Archives: UMA/1/4552.
Th e Federation Parade turning left  at Park Street, taken from the 
parapet of the Queen Victoria Building. Note the crispness of the 
newly cut stone, and the same people packed on the awnings.

1185.
Aft er a century of weathering the top of the Queen Victoria Building is precarious to say 
the least.  Th e white Woolworths corner was the point where the march turned left  into 
Park Street.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   65 9/19/2016   11:06:24 AM



      66

1182.
Th e interior of the Queen Victoria Building in its restored glory.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   66 9/19/2016   11:06:25 AM



      67

1184.
Th e Park Street intersection 
from the Hobbyco shop in 
the QVB.  Just as Melbourne 
has the tradition of meet-
ing under the Flinders Street 
Railway clock, so Sydneysid-
ers oft en arrange to meet at 
Woollies’ corner.

1451.
Queen Victoria now dominates the forecourt of the QVB and the Town Hall, as she has 
always presided over St James.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   67 9/19/2016   11:06:26 AM



      68

11.  CELEBRATION AND COMMONWEALTH

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   68 9/19/2016   11:06:28 AM



      69

State Library of Victoria: H20259  a14764.
Sydney Town Hall in 1900.  Th is building would also have been only 18 
years old at this time, and even more dominant without the overpower-
ing infl uence of modern buildings and modern traffi  c requirements.

1179.
Th e close alignment between the Queen Victoria Building, Her Majesty, and the Sydney 
Town Hall. It was at this point that the parade turned left , thus failing to pass in front of 
the spectacular Town Hall.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   69 9/19/2016   11:06:28 AM



      70

1408.
Th e steepness of the route up 
Liverpool Street is evident with 
the steps at the front of Mark 
Foy’s, and the new anti-slip 
covering on the footpath.  Even 
electric trams found it a drag 
negotiating this hill.

NSW Department of Road and Tramways:  Liverpool Street Junction 1934.
By the 1930s and the peak era of the tram system in Sydney, this slope up Liverpool 
Street (at the top of this map) was only suitalbe for down trams on the left  hand line.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   70 9/19/2016   11:06:29 AM



      71

National Library of Australia: nla pic-an10834037-s39.
Th e Melbourne Arch in 1901 fl anked by two hotels.  Th e Lester’s 
Hotel on the left  will later become the Town Hall Hotel, before its 
recent demolition for Citicorp Tower.  Th e Swan with Two Necks on 
the right will make way for road widening and Woolworth’s in the 
early 1930s.

1176.
Park Street from George Street today, with the greater width of the roadway and the 
monorail yet again evident.  Th is was the location of the Melbourne Arch.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   71 9/19/2016   11:06:30 AM



      72

National Library of Australia: nla pic-an237880507.
Park Street in the early 1900s looking east to Hyde Park.  
Th e heritage row below commences with the chemist shop on the cor-
ner of Pitt Street.  Th e boot polishers present a rather strange New York 
sensation, and not something that one would now think of as being 
typically Australian.

1171.
What remains of heritage Park Street today, between Pitt and Castlereagh Streets. In 
1900, these same shops were occupied by H G Packman basket maker, G F Kelly fruit-
erer, and J Harris tailor. Whether this row has been consciously preserved, or merely 
overlooked, it makes a nice interlude in the centre of the city.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   72 9/19/2016   11:06:32 AM



      73

1472.
Th e site of the original Tank Stream suspended swamp from Hyde Park, with Elizabeth 
Street in the background.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   73 9/19/2016   11:06:33 AM



      74

Australia Post: Th e City’s Centrepiece  p. 20.
Maps indicating location of hanging swamp and the 
source of the Tank Stream around 1830.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   74 9/19/2016   11:06:34 AM



      75

1166.
Th e corner of Park Street and Elizabeth Street, where the parade would have emerged 
before passing under the Commonwealth Arch. Th e monument in the foreground is the 
Grand United Order of Oddfellows memorial to those lost in the First World War.

State library of Victoria:  H21628 b52480.
Th e corner of Hyde Park at Park and Elizabeth Streets in 1900.  Th e 
original offi  ce building in the centre of the photograph would be re-
placed by the T&G Building, the city’s tallest building during the 1930s, 
itself replaced by the current Pacifi c Power complex in the 1970s.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   75 9/19/2016   11:06:35 AM



      76

National Library of Australia: 
nla10834037-s43.
Th e Commonwealth Arch in 1901, 
looking back down Park Street to 
the Melbourne Arch in the back-
ground. Th e off set position would 
have been to accommodate through 
traffi  c before and aft er the march, as 
well as align with the old Park Street 
width.

1167.
Th e location of the Commonwealth Arch.  In the middle distance down Elizabeth Street 
is Sydney’s Central Synagogue, and in further down the road, the site of the original 
Tank Stream swamp.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   76 9/19/2016   11:06:37 AM



      77

12.  THE CLASSICAL EAST

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   77 9/19/2016   11:06:38 AM



      78

John Archer: Building a Nation, 1987, Collins Australia  p. 117.
Th is 1890 sketch from Garran’s Picturesque Atlas of Australia gives a no doubt biased, 
but also useful impression of why inner city life was so oft en dismissed as unsatisfactory 
for the newly Federated nation.  Th e Darlinghurst “valley of sin” still exists, although will 
no doubt soon follow nearby Paddington and Surry Hills in becoming gentrifi ed.  
Th is drawing was done looking from the east, Kings Cross and Butler’s Stairs back to-
wards the city.  Note the Town Hall and St Andrew’s Anglican Cathedral on the left  hand 
horizon, the new Queen Victoria Building in the centre and the yet to be completed St 
Mary’s Catholic Cathedral on the right.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   78 9/19/2016   11:06:38 AM



      79

1163.
Looking down Park Street today from the location of the Commonwealth Arch to the 
site of the German Arch.  Th e widened street then plunges down into William Street and 
a Darlinghurst also becoming dominated by modern towers.

Museum of Australian Democracy:  
Federation German Arch.  Th e German 
Arch in Park Street prior to the parade.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   79 9/19/2016   11:06:39 AM



      80

State Library of Victoria: H18521  a14752.
Th e corner of Park and College Streets in 1900, where the march 
turned right and proceeded up the rise to Oxford Street.  William 
Street on the left  is much narrower prior to its widening over the 
next decade.

1164.
Th e expanded Australian Museum still dominates the corner of Park and College Streets, 
with Sydney Grammar School architecturally complementing next door.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   80 9/19/2016   11:06:40 AM



      81

1162.
Th e Sydney Boys’ Grammar School, still the premier school for Sydney’s elite, in the 
centre of the aptly named College Street.

National Library of Australia: nla.pic-vn4704121-v.
College Street in 1900, looking along the roiute of the future march. 
The medical residences are visible in the background, and Sydney 
Grammar School is hidden by the Australian Museum.  The deserted 
streetscape would indicate a photograph taken on a Sunday afternoon.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   81 9/19/2016   11:06:41 AM



      82

1161.
Th e beginnig of Oxford Street today, with Hyde Park to the right.  Towers such as the 
State Bank building now dominate Whitlam Square. Th e smart terraces have long gone, 
replaced by the Hyde Park Plaza.  Wentworth Avenue drops down to the right in the 
middle distance.

City of Sydney Archives: 044123.
Th e classical Military Colonnade at the beginning of Oxford Street, 
with Hyde Park to the left . Th is was the last formal structure passed 
before the march proceeded out to Centennial Park.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   82 9/19/2016   11:06:42 AM



      83

13.  CITY REDEVELOPMENT

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   83 9/19/2016   11:06:43 AM



      84

NSW Government Records: series 0017.
Central Station soon aft er construction, and before the addtion of the clock tower.  Eddy 
Avenue goes under the  viaduct in the foreground, with the tram viaduct behind in the 
backgound.  Th ese roadway arches will later be mirrored in the arches shown below for 
the extended rail connection to the City Circle underground.

Private photograph from Flickr.
Eddy Avenue Central Railway today, with the re-instated tourist trams passing over the 
original tramway viaduct.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   84 9/19/2016   11:06:44 AM



      85

Sydney Streets: City of Sydney database.   
Th e old Wexford Street district prior to redevelopment.

City of Sydney Archives: 067713.
Urban redevelopment early twentieth century style.  Although demolished as part of the 
plague clean up, the area from Goulburn Street to Brisbane Street still looked like this in 
1929.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   85 9/19/2016   11:06:45 AM



      86

City of Sydney Archives: 004175.
Wexford Street from Elizabeth Street prior to the redevelopment. Th is 
was the point nearest to the Central Railway construction site.

1405.
Th e former Macquarie Street 
South from the edge of Hyde Park; 
aptly re-named Commonwealth 
Street when the district was rebuilt 
aft er Federation.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   86 9/19/2016   11:06:46 AM



      87

1397.
Some structures on the outskirts of the demolishing remained.  Th e Lutheran Church 
still stands in Goulburn Street, near the intersection with Elizabeth Street .

City of Sydney Archives: 51 3028 003.
Th e fate of public institutions varied. Th e Chinese Church of  England in 
Wexford Street was demolished as part of the redevelopment.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   87 9/19/2016   11:06:47 AM



      88

1394.
All that is left  of Wexford 
Street from Goulburn Street.  
Once the whole district was 
demolished and converted 
to commercial use, Foy 
Lane was constructed along 
the same alignment, run-
ning parallel to Wentworth 
Avenue.

NSW Govt Printing 
Offi  ce: 1-47703.
Th e original Wexford 
Street from 
Goulburn Street 
during the plague 
clean up in 1900.
From this 
photograph, it is 
obvious why local 
authorities wanted 
the district im-
proved.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   88 9/19/2016   11:06:48 AM



      89

City of Sydney Image Library: 004178.
Exeter Place from Foster Street.  Foster Street still remains but 
Exeter Street was swallowed up by Wentworth Avenue.

1392.
Th e broad expanse of Wentworth Avenue today, looking south towards Central Railway, 
through the previously demolished district. Ironically, many of these buildings and sites 
are now being converted back to residential, but for a very diff erent clientele.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   89 9/19/2016   11:06:50 AM



      90

14.  MARCH OUT TO CENTENNIAL PARK

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   90 9/19/2016   11:06:51 AM



      91

1196.
Oxford Street from Whitlam Square and the point outside the noted three storey builing 
on the far left  in the photograph above. Note the rebuilt Burdekin Hotel on the angled 
corner of Little Liverpool Street.

State Library of Victoria:  H21638  b52477.
Oxford Street looking east from the corner of Hyde Park around 
1900.  Th e whole left  hand side of the street, including the original 
Burdekin Hotel, centre mid-ground, will soon be demolished to 
make way for street widening as part of the Wexford Street
redevelopment. 

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   91 9/19/2016   11:06:52 AM



      92

1197.
Darlinghurst Court House at Taylor Square. Th is august institution, and the gaol behind, 
would have been a signifi cant site as the march progressed eastwards.  Th e goal became 
part of East Sydney Technical College and recently, the National Art School.

1199.
Looking from Taylor Square.to the recently named Th ree Saints Square and Saint Sophia 
Church.  Oxford Street to the east in the centre and Flinders Street to the south on the 
right, as it was in 1901, although the large intricate tram junction has long since gone.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   92 9/19/2016   11:06:53 AM



      93

1456.
Th e rise up to Paddington proper passes Victoria Barracks, and the headquarters for the 
military in Sydney for a century and a half.

NSW Government Records Offi  ce: 17420 a014 0001158.
Even in 1898, civic athorities had the foresight to construct the Rose Bay 
tramline through the scrub that will soon become the Eastern Suburbs.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   93 9/19/2016   11:06:54 AM



      94

1457.
Paddington Town Hall, at the 
crest of the hill from Victoria 
Barracks.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   94 9/19/2016   11:06:56 AM



      95

City of Sydney Archives: 032058.
Claimed to be Elizabeth Street, but possibly Oxford Street Padding-
ton, with the St Francis of Assisi church on the left . Th e march would 
now be approaching Centennial Square and Centennial Park.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   95 9/19/2016   11:06:57 AM



      96

State Library of Victoria: H20235 
b52393.
Th e original marble statue of Sir 
Henry Parkes.  Ironically, due to the 
parade entering by the side gate, the 
marchers would not have passed 
Parkes’ statue.

1461.
Th e current bronze statue of Sir Henry Parkes on the corner of Hamilton and Parkes 
Drives in Centennial Park.  Note the degree to which the greenery has fi lled out over the 
century.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   96 9/19/2016   11:06:58 AM



      97

1464.
Alex Tzannes’ 1988 Pavilion near the site of the original temporary inauguration struc-
ture. A sense of permanence at last.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   97 9/19/2016   11:06:59 AM



      98

National Library of Australia:  nla 
pic-an11030057-405.
Th e Federation Pavilion and
1 January 1901 celebrations from 
above Federation Valley.  Busby’s 
Pond in the background formed part 
of Sydney’s earlier water supply.

1467.
Th e Tzannes’ Federation Pavilion from the same location today.  Again, the growth of 
trees since the time of Federation covers the view to the still existant Busby’s Pond.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   98 9/19/2016   11:07:01 AM



      99

State Library of Victoria:  H18581  a14727.
Th e original celebrations from the slopes of the natural amphithea-
tre at the head of Federation Valley. Note the clothing worn on what 
would have been a muggy Sydney summer’s day.

1469.
Th e Belvedere Amphitheatre now takes advantage of the slope above Federation Valley 
and the close proximity to public transport at Bondi Junction.  At the time of  my foot-
stepping this was a construction site developing this signifi cant location.  It has since 
been completed with formal tiered viewing for outdoor performances.

Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   99 9/19/2016   11:07:02 AM



FOOTSTEPPING TO FEDERATION

An alternative approach to analysing Australian Society at the beginning of the 
Twentieth Century.

MELBOURNE FEDERATION PARADE
PHOTOGRAPH BOOKLET VOLUME 2

Eric Carpenter 

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   1 9/19/2016   11:07:37 AM



      1

MELBOURNE  MARCH

The Age: 6 May 1901  p. 8.
Route of the Melbourne 
Parade from St Kilda to the 
City.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   1 9/19/2016   11:07:44 AM



      2

1.  POINT OF COMPARISON

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   2 9/19/2016   11:07:45 AM



      3

The Argus: 6 May 1901 p. 6.
Route of the Melbourne 
Parade.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   3 9/19/2016   11:07:46 AM



      4

The Age:  9 May 1901  p. 7.
The later formal parade that accompanied the opening of Federal Parliament. Although 
the procession followed a slightly different route, the marchers would still have passed 
under almost all the arches.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   4 9/19/2016   11:07:47 AM



      5

The Age: 6 May 1901  p. 5.
One of the supplementary marches in Melbourne that accompanied the opening of Fed-
eral Parliament. Again, although the route differed, most of the arches would have been 
passed.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   5 9/19/2016   11:07:47 AM



      6

2.  ARRIVAL IN MELBOURNE

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   6 9/19/2016   11:07:48 AM



      7

1868.
The semi-abandoned remnant of an earlier era.  These silver rails indicate that the Can-
berra Railway Station is still used; however its role as the principle link with the outside 
world has long been superceded by air and road transport.

Patsy Adam Smith: Romance of Australian Railways  p. 127.
Th e Sydney Railway Terminus in September 1880. Sailors turned miners are being fare-
welled by shipmates from the Zealandia as they leave for the Temora Diggings.
Th is sketch would have been done at the old Sydney / Redfern Railway Station.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   7 9/19/2016   11:07:49 AM



      8

1621.
Flinders Lane today is a still hive 
of inner city activity, although now 
has as much to do with recreation 
and entertainment as industry and 
work.

WalkingMelbourne database.
Image No: P4XV14SF.
Th e entrance to Flinders Lane at 
the turn of the last century demon-
strates the bustle of the workaday 
world.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   8 9/19/2016   11:07:50 AM



      9

Melbourne Curious database.
Swanston Street and the old Flinder’s Street Railway Station around 1900, with the 
notably modern looking bicycle commanding the street. Th e Princes Bridge Hotel is 
yet to become Young and Jackson’s.

1340.
Modern cycling past the Ocean of Experi-
ence and the entry to Flinder’s Lane.  
Loretta Quinn’s 1993 whimsical spiritual 
work is described as a commemoration of 
Australia’s migrant experience.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   9 9/19/2016   11:07:52 AM



      10

3.  FIRES IN VICTORIA

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   10 9/19/2016   11:07:53 AM



      11

1288.
Flying across northern Victoria on the 16 February 2009.  Smoke was still evident from 
the Black Saturday fi res of a week earlier.

Jake Valance Image: 879335.
The devastation of the Victorian Black Saturday fi res in 2009.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   11 9/19/2016   11:07:53 AM



      12

John Longstaff: Gippsland Sunday Night 20 February 1898.
Th e fi res resulting from a heatwave in late 1897 and early 1898 burned through much of 
the country that would later be scorched by the 2009 fi res.

William Strutt: Black Thursday.
The famous and evocative painting of the Black Thursday fi res on the 6 
February 1851.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   12 9/19/2016   11:07:54 AM



      13

4.  ENTERING THE CITY

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   13 9/19/2016   11:07:55 AM



      14

1637.
View along St Kilda Road back from the Shrine of Remembrance to St Paul’s Cathedral 
and the southern entry into the City.

1638.
Victorian Governor Lord Linlithgow in 1895 at the State Government House entry.  In 
1901, as Lord Hopetoun, John Adrian Louis Hope would become Australia’s fi rst 
Governor General.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   14 9/19/2016   11:07:55 AM



      15

National Library of Australia: nla.pic-an3229944091.
The Municipal Arch and decorations on the Princes Bridge leading 
into the City.

National Gallery of Australia: nga IRN+47148.
Frederick McCubbin: Triumphal Arch at Prince’s Bridge, Mel-
bourne. 
As well as a quite accurate portrayl of the arch, this painting stands 
as a fi ne example of the Impressionism fashionable at the time.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   15 9/19/2016   11:07:57 AM



      16

1296.
The scene today across Princes Bridge, from the location of the Municipal Arch.

1300.
Even among the modernist strucu-
tres of South Bank, Victorian era 
decoration is appreciated and now 
restored to its former glory.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   16 9/19/2016   11:07:58 AM



      17

Paul Pickering Image.
The 2001 Centenary Arch looking back down St Kilda Road.  
Quickly labelled the Pick-up-sticks Arch, this edifi ce appeared to 
fail somewhat in embodying the gravitas of such an important 
commemoration. Note also the degree to which the trees alongside 
the road have grown over the intervening century.

National Libary of Australia: nla.pic-an13117280.
The Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York about to cross the 
Princes Bridge enroute from Government House.  This photograph 
was taken from the point of the later Pick-up-sticks Arch, as indi-
cated by the shadow of the Municipal Arch.  

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   17 9/19/2016   11:07:59 AM



      18

St Peters: Sydney and Suburbs database.
Remnants from the “Best Games Ever” are now fading away at the 
St Peters recycling depot.  At least they remain intact.

Paul Pickering Image.
The discarded Centenary Arch.  Even after a century, Australian 
society seems ambivalent about the long term recognition of such 
signifi cant events.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   18 9/19/2016   11:08:00 AM



      19

State Library of Victoria:  
H92.200/4717 b18309.
The two Railway Towers at the in-
tersection of Flinders and Swanston 
Streets.

National Library of Australia: nla pic-an13117280-9.
The Towers illuminated at night by the modern marvel of 
electricity.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   19 9/19/2016   11:08:01 AM



      20

Walking Melbourne website.
The original Flinders Street Railway Station from Swanston Street in 1901. The parade 
would have entered the city from the left. 

1311.
The location of the Railway Towers today, with the famous Flinders Street Railway Sta-
tion entry viewed from Federation Square.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   20 9/19/2016   11:08:01 AM



      21

1327.
St Paul’s Cathedral, with its 
orange Sydney sandstone spires, 
continues to dominate the inter-
section today.

State Library of Victoria: Rose Series image 201.
Princes Bridge in the late 1930s.  Flinder’s Street Station is well established 
on the right, and the future site of Federation Square contains the shops and 
entrance to Princes Bridge Railway Station at the lower left .  Federation Square 
will eventually cover over the open railway lines and yards on the left  hand side 
of the road.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   21 9/19/2016   11:08:02 AM



      22

1319.
A rapidly lost enthusiasm?  Trees planted in Federation Square in 2001, and apparently 
forgotten are now slowly dying of neglect.

1325.
The permanent Commemoration of Federation under foot in 
Federation Square.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   22 9/19/2016   11:08:03 AM



      23

5.  SETTLEMENT AND PLANNING

Illustrated Australia News: from the Univerity of Melbourne collection.
Samuel Calvert’s engraved panorama of Melbourne in 1880 looking across the Yarra 
River.  Princes Bridge is in the lower right hand corner, with the railway station above it 
already a dominant feature.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   23 9/19/2016   11:08:04 AM



      24

Victorian Depatment of Planning and Community Development: Heritage Victoria.
Nathaniel Whittock (1791-1860), City of Melbourne 1854,  drawn from offi  cial surveys 
and sketches.

Jill Eastwood: Melbourne the 
Growth of a Metropolis, 1983,
p. 15.
Th is 1840 map shows clearly the 
almost 5 chain blocks, with the 
‘little streets’ running east west.
Townend Stream and the source 
of future fl ooding is also evident  
down the alignment of Eliza-
beth Street.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   24 9/19/2016   11:08:05 AM



      25

1335.
Th e 99’ (30 m) main roads in 
Melbourne retain dual tram tracks 
while still allowing room for ve-
hicular traffi  c.  Th is was one of the 
reasons for Sydney abandoning 
trams half a century ago: that city’s 
streets were simply too narrow.

1568.
Filling in the corner of George Parade 
and Collins Street, the Kitchen Cat res-
taurant  takes full advantage of the close 
ambience off ered by Melbourne’s little 
streets and laneways.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   25 9/19/2016   11:08:07 AM



      26

6.  MARVELOUS MELBOURNE

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   26 9/19/2016   11:08:07 AM



      27

1594.
The Charles Summers’ statue of Burke and 
Wills, with City Square and the Westin 
complex behind.  Having been moved many 
times since its creation in 1865, the statue ar-
rived at its current location only in 1994.

1641.
Web Gilbert’s famoust statue of Matthew 
Flinders, with its apparently ever present sea 
gull, along the side of St Pauls Cathedral.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   27 9/19/2016   11:08:08 AM



      28

State Library of Victoria: 
H2006.188/67 pi005254.
Awaiting the procession to 
pass under the King’s Arch. 
The Cathedral Hotel site 
is now occupied by City 
Square, while the stunted 
tower of St Paul’s is just vis-
ible above the left hand fl ag 
on the arch.

1521.
The current location of the King’s Arch in Swanston Street, 
looking back to St Paul’s with the later addition of the spires.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   28 9/19/2016   11:08:09 AM



      29

1564.
The much reduced City Square today, adjacent to the location of the King’s Arch. 

1351.
As was the case with 
Sydney, Melbourne’s 
Town Hall was conspicu-
ously by-passed by the 
parade.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   29 9/19/2016   11:08:10 AM



      30

State Library of Victoria:  
H33608 pi000082.
The parade passed most of Mel-
bourne’s denominational churches, 
including the Collins Street Baptist 
Church. The Church as it was in 1901 
with a rather alienating iron gate 
entry.

1357.
The church today is more open to the public, but now with an even more 
incongruous jewelery shop attached.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   30 9/19/2016   11:08:12 AM



      31

1566.
The location of Web Gilbert’s 
original studio in George 
Parade, formerly La Trobe 
Parade.  The laneway has been 
totally altered beyond 
recognition.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   31 9/19/2016   11:08:13 AM



      32

1361.
St Michael’s Congre-
gational, now Uniting 
Church, on the corner 
of Collins and Russell 
Streets, the location of 
the Queen’s Arch.

State Library of Victoria:  
H2005.34/241  je000309.
Postcard presentation of the Queen’s 
Arch looking back down Collins 
Street. Note the steepness of the 
roadway down to Swanston Street.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   32 9/19/2016   11:08:14 AM



      33

1379.
Numbers 5 and 7 Collins Street were the residences of George Rolfe and surgeon 
W K Bolton. The building still houses medical offi ces today.

1572.
Alfred Place and the former location of 
Robert Berry’s Livery Stables, indicat-
ing the importance of horses until at 
least the First World War.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   33 9/19/2016   11:08:15 AM



      34

1574.
70 to 80 Collins Street; former site of medical offi ces (similar to the building in the im-
age below) turned into a vacant lot and public space as a result of concerns over the loss 
of heritage value!  Originally designated as a car park for the Nauru House behind. 

1370.
A fi ne example of the town-
house that would have origi-
nally occupied the space.

1369.
Plaque on the 
townhouse site.
Recognition of a lost 
heritage.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   34 9/19/2016   11:08:16 AM



      35

7.  SEATS OF POWER

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   35 9/19/2016   11:08:18 AM



      36

1383.
The former Treasury Building at the top of Collins Street today; now the Melbourne 
City Museum.

Public Record Offi  ce of Victoria.
Th e State Treasury Building and Gardens in 1897, festooned 
for the Diamond Jubilee.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   36 9/19/2016   11:08:19 AM



      37

National Libary of Australia: nla.pic-an3105317.
The Paris end of Collins Street from Spring Street at the time of 
Federation.  Note the signifi cant heritage residence on the left and 
the orginal tram on the original track.

1386.
Th e heritage residence at16 Spring Street was originally constructed for pastoralist 
William Campbell, but later became part of the accommodation for the new Common-
wealth Government.  Th e block behind is now dominated by the corporate world.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   37 9/19/2016   11:08:20 AM



      38

1399.
Gordon Reserve and the Stan-
ford Fountain today. One 
advantage of tough bluestone is 
that it is hard wearing and long 
lasting.

State Library of Victoria: H40267  b51791.
Th e Stanford Fountain at the time of the Federation Parade.  Th e palm trees are quite 
new and the skyline back towards the city is also more open.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   38 9/19/2016   11:08:21 AM



      39

1391, 1396.
The incongruity of the upright General 
Gordon and the rather fey Adam Lind-
say Gordon sharing Gordon Reserve.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   39 9/19/2016   11:08:22 AM



      40

1393.
The Hotel Windsor today, prior to its expected redevelopment.

1407.
State Parliament in Spring Street still dominates the scene, and provides an interesting 
contrast in civic wealth to the much more subdued equivalent Sydney institution.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   40 9/19/2016   11:08:23 AM



      41

State Library of Victoria:  H2006.188/65  pi005252.
State Parliament from a similar location illuminated for 
the Federation celebrations.

State Library of Victoria: H27418  
a53789.
The Parliament Building in 1901 dur-
ing daylight hours.

1428.    
Commemoration of the Centenary of Federation in 
the footpath outside Parliament House.  This 
building was of course reassigned the role of 
temporarily housing the new Federal Parliament 
prior to the establishment of Canberra.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   41 9/19/2016   11:08:24 AM



      42

Museum Victoria: MM004377.
St Patrick’s Cathedral in 1897, with the Gisbourne Street tram tracks in the foreground, 
and before the additon of the 1930 spires.

Ursula M De Jong: St Patrick’s Ca-
thedral - a guide, 2005.
Th e golden windows allow a glori-
ous light to enter Wardell’s build-
ing, but without the more expen-
sive stained glass.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   42 9/19/2016   11:08:25 AM



      43

1402.
The Princess Theatre today is still a centre of Melbourne’s culture.

National Library of Australia: nla.an7946263-8.
The original Princess Theatre across the road from the carriageway 
entry to Parliament House. Note the small terraced private residenc-
es next to the theatre, looking across at the seat of colonial and state 
government.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   43 9/19/2016   11:08:26 AM



      44

8.  BOURKE STREET AND CITY LIFE

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   44 9/19/2016   11:08:27 AM



      45

1427.
The intersection of Spring Street and Bourke Street today, again with the inevitable tram 
in the picture.  The Imperial Hotel, now resplendent in white and yellow, remains on the 
corner.  Again, note the tree lined streetscape replacing the awnings.

State Library of Victoria:  H24753  b19645.
The entry to Bourke Street between 1880 and 1900.  Mrs Eliza Fe-
lix’s Imperial Hotel stands on the right hand corner emphasising the 
prevalence of awnings to shelter pedestrians from the weather.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   45 9/19/2016   11:08:28 AM



      46

1413.
The location of the Citizens’ Arch today, at the Russell Street intersection of Bourke 
Street, with the view to the GPO tower now virtually obliterated by modern buildings.

State Library of Victoria:  H94.30/21  
mp012435.
The Citizens’ Arch in Bourke Street 
mirrored the Queen’s Arch on the Rus-
sell Street intersection.   Here the GPO is 
clearly visible through the arch.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   46 9/19/2016   11:08:29 AM



      47

1420.
69 Bourke Street and the 
Salvation Army 
headquarters today.

1421.
The Salvation Army headquarters then.
With socially depressed areas around Little Bourke 
and Lonsdale Streets, it is understandable that so 
many Protestant evangelical institutions were  estab-
lished in the district.

State Library of Victoria: 
jc019247.
The Salvation Army headquarters 
in 1981.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   47 9/19/2016   11:08:30 AM



      48

Sheridan Morris: Melbourne Past and Present  p. 114.
Melburnians “walking the block” in 1880.  Although twenty years before 
Federation, the restrictive clothing from Europe is evident.  Again, the safety 
bicycle is also beginning to dominate the streets.

C J Dennis: Selected Verse of C 
J Dennis  p. 42.
Hal Gye’s image of Ginger 
Mick at the Markets.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   48 9/19/2016   11:08:31 AM



      49

Walking Melbourne database.
The Eastern Markets as they were on the corner of Bourke and 
Exhibition Streets between 1879 and 1960.

1597.
The Southern Cross complex 
now occupies the same block 
within Bourke, Little Bourke 
and Exhibition Streets.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   49 9/19/2016   11:08:32 AM



      50

National Library of Australia: nla.pic-vn3355464.
The Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York driving past the 
intersection of Bourke Street and Exhibition Street.  Th e London 
Bank of Australia Ltd is on the far corner.

1416.
The same builiding at 90 Bourke Street. is now a trendy pub, although again no longer 
with the protective awning. 

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   50 9/19/2016   11:08:33 AM



      51

9.  LITTLE LON’

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   51 9/19/2016   11:08:34 AM



      52

1611.
Little Lon’ today.  Slum clearance, and 1960s industrialism has changed the distirct for 
good, but there are still some reminders of the earlier era.

Victorian Govt: History of Melbourne database.
Lonsdale Street precinct in 1947 was still a myriad of laneways and 
little streets. Casselden Place is at the right hand side between Little Lon-
sdale Street and Lonsdale Street.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   52 9/19/2016   11:08:35 AM



      53

1609.
Casselden Place is one of the few remaining lanes with the same remnant cobblestones 
that would have formed the foundation surface of all the streets in the district, including 
Spadgers Lane / Cumberland Place.

C J Dennis: Selected Verse 
of C J Dennis.  p. 70.  
Hal Gye’s drawing of the 
imagined community of 
Spadger’s Lane a century 
ago. Note the cobblestones 
across the laneway, the 
Chinese signage and the 
everpresent evangelical 
minister of religion.
Interstingly, if the dome in 
the background is that on 
the Victorian Public Library 
in Swanston Street, then this 
imaginative drawing further 
locates the imaginary Spadg-
er’s Lane in the reality of the 
district; possibly being based 
on Cumberland Place.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   53 9/19/2016   11:08:36 AM



      54

1602.
Some recognition of heritage. John Casselden’s cottage is mostly preserved, with 
Madam Brussel’s Arcade in the background.

1601.
Th e seamier side of Little Lonsdale Street is perpetuated in local signage.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   54 9/19/2016   11:08:37 AM



      55

1601. 
Madam Brussel’s brothel at 
32-34 Lonsdale Street has now 
been commemorated with an 
arcade.

1610.
The return of residential 
accommodation to Little Lon’.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   55 9/19/2016   11:08:38 AM



      56

1593.
Other reminders of the original Little Lon’, include the heritage listed number 104.  
Although with an oriental appearance, at the time of Federation this was the very Irish 
Munster Arms Hotel.

1591.
The next block down around Exploration Lane apparently still resembles the original 
Little Lonsdale Street of a century ago.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   56 9/19/2016   11:08:39 AM



      57

10.  RACE IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   57 9/19/2016   11:08:41 AM



      58

1436.
Swanston Street today, with Turner Alley present on the left. Virtually all the original 
shops have been replaced with modern buildings, although the chimney stack on the 
skyline hints that the brick building in the right hand midground may well be the 
structure next to the right hand Chinese tower.

National Library of Australia: nla.pic-an13117280-23.
The Chinese Arch on Swanston Street in1901. The entry to Turner Alley 
is just visible on the left.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   58 9/19/2016   11:08:41 AM



      59

State Library of Victoria:  H96.160/650 cc001002.
The Chinese procession in Collins Street the day after the main parade.

National Library of Australia: nla.pic-an13117280-12.
The Chinese dragon during the Federation celebrations.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   59 9/19/2016   11:08:42 AM



      60

1586.
Melbourne’s Chinatown in Little 
Bourke Street today.

1587.
Recognition of Chinese heritage with the Chinese Museum in the rather inaptly located 
Cohen Place – named after a local Jewish pawnbroker.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   60 9/19/2016   11:08:43 AM



      61

1614.
Cooper’s Inn on the corner at 282 Exhibition and Little Lonsdale Street later became a 
Chinese furniture factory before returning to its role as a hotel.

Culture Victoria: A W Purnell Colection, University of  Melbourne Archives,  Proposed 
furniture factory for Mr George Sue Gay at 22 Punch Lane, 10 August 1914.  Apparently 
the building still exists, fi rst as an inner city bar and now as the headquarters for Prosper 
Australia.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   61 9/19/2016   11:08:45 AM



      62

11.  VICE REGAL MELBOURNE 

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   62 9/19/2016   11:08:46 AM



      63

State Library of Victoria:  
H2002.130/2  mp012304.
The Ducal Arch in what is now 
the Bourke Street Mall, with 
the GPO Tower behind.  Note 
the steepness of the street in the 
distance.

1443.
Melbourne GPO and precinct today.  As was the case with Sydney, the new Melbourne 
GPO would have been a source of technological pride.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   63 9/19/2016   11:08:46 AM



      64

1434.
The Leviathan Clothing Company was standing on the corner of Bourke 
and Swanston Streets in 1901, and is still there today.  However, this 
later building was not constructed until 1913, and is now a warren of 
smaller offi ces and shops.

HWT Image Library: Herald Sun images of old Melbourne.
Th e crowd gathering for a sale at Buckley and Nunn’s in 1912.  Th is was at the original 
building, long since gone.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   64 9/19/2016   11:08:47 AM



      65

State Library of Victoria: b46904. 
Melbourne Synagogue at 472 Bourke St, with the larger St Patrick’s Hall to the 
right at the time of Federation.  Not much evidence of racism and sectarianism in 
this block.

1448.
Equity Chambers and the 
Melbourne Law School now 
occupies the site on the corner 
of Little Queen Street.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   65 9/19/2016   11:08:49 AM



      66

State Library of Victoria:  H96.160/691  cc001154.
The location of the Ducal Arch later in 1901 after a heavy hail storm, 
with the GPO again evident at the left.

1447.
The same location today, with the whole block redeveloped, interestingly, with the 
addion of awnings as well as trees.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   66 9/19/2016   11:08:50 AM



      67

State Library of Victoria:  H21040  b51945.
The Victoria Horse Bazaar at 396 Bourke Street, indicating both the impor-
tance of horses to the economy, and the steepness of the street.

1440.
The Royal Arcade, then and now also marked the location of the Ducal Arch.  The style 
and even colour mirrors Sydney’s Strand Arcade.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   67 9/19/2016   11:08:51 AM



      68

1461.
The GPO from the 
western end of Bourke 
Street. Foreshortening 
emphasises the steepness 
of the road with which 
the horses and marchers 
would have had to cope.

National Library of Australia: nla.pic-an3143346. 
Bourke Street around 1900 looking east. The GPO is in the centre 
of the left hand side of the street, and the Victoria Horse Bazaar on 
the far left.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   68 9/19/2016   11:08:52 AM



      69

12.  WOOL AND HERITAGE

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   69 9/19/2016   11:08:53 AM



      70

1644.
One reason why the march turned 
down William Street.  Note the degree 
to which the street runs down the ridge 
of Batman’s Hill, and falls away again 
to the west.

1450.
The Goldsborough Mort building still 
occupies the adjacent Bourke Street 
and William Street corner. Although 
apparently only half as large as the 
1862 original, this building stands as 
an example of the successful con-
version of a heritage structure into 
modern offi ces.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   70 9/19/2016   11:08:53 AM



      71

State Library of Victoria: H98.30/393  p100342.
The Menzies Hotel on the corner of Bourke and William Streets 
was still standing in 1957, as indicatecd by the brand new FE Hold-
en and Ford Customline.  By 1972 this grand old structure would be 
replaced by BHP House.

1642.
The very modern BHP House has 
occupied this corner site since 
1972.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   71 9/19/2016   11:08:54 AM



      72

State Library of Victoria:  H2000.195/68 pi003487.
Shell Corner opposite was occupied by a general merchant’s offi ce.

State Library of Victoria: 
H99.50/322 pi002157.
The current modern building, 
photographed in 1960.  Note that the 
Menzies Hotel corner tower and fl ag 
pole is still evident on the diagonally 
opposite corner.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   72 9/19/2016   11:08:55 AM



      73

1466.
The St James AMP Centre now fi lls the site with continued redevelopment 

State Library of Victoria:  H94.150/45  pi000295.
The John Sanderson & Co wool brokers covered the 
entire Little Collins Street to Bourke Street block on the 
western side of William Street. Note the electicity  supply 
box on the right hand side of this 1940 photograph.

1501.
The electricity supply box 
evident in the right hand 
side of the 1940 image 
still exists, and has been 
repainted heritage green.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   73 9/19/2016   11:08:56 AM



      74

1467.
This block from Little Collins down to Collins Street on the eastern side of 
William Street still retains its original heritage feel, with the Australian Widow’s 
fund building at 84 William Street displaying fi ne architectural detailing.

1452.
The Australia Club also still occupies the corner with Little Collins Street.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   74 9/19/2016   11:08:57 AM



      75

Melbourne’s Western Market1: Nostalgia Board database.
Looking across the location of the Butter Arch from the northern side of Collins Street 
to the Western Markets in 1900.  Market Street on the left runs down to Flinders Street, 
the suburban railway and the Yarra River.

1496.
The view back along Collins Street from the Market street intersection today, with 
little memory of the classical past.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   75 9/19/2016   11:08:59 AM



      76

1647.
TheAXA Centre now occupies the block 
on the southern corner of William and 
Collins Street. This modern structure has 
attempted to refl ect the history and 
heritage of Batman’s Hill by 
commemorating two of Melbourne’s 
original founders.

1649, 1650.
Melbourne’s founding fathers, John Pascoe Faulkner (left) and John Batman (right) on 
the forecourt of the AXA Centre.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   76 9/19/2016   11:09:00 AM



      77

1498.
The Butter Arch location today.  Again, note the greening of Melbourne’s streets over 
the last few decades.  One wonders what effect these trees are having on the water and 
drainage pipes beneath the city streets.

National Library of Australia: nla.
pic-an24441695-v.
The Butter Arch looking down 
Collins Street, with Market Street 
on the right.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   77 9/19/2016   11:09:01 AM



      78

13.  FINANCIAL MELBOURNE

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   78 9/19/2016   11:09:02 AM



      79

Collector’s Marvellous Melbourne 
database.
This building was orginally designed as 
the ES&A Bank in the Gothic Revival 
style by William Wardell, and constructed 
between 1883 and 1887.  William Pitt’s 
ornate Stock Exchange is on the right.

1492. 
The former ES&A, now 
ANZ Bank today, still 
functions as a fi nancial 
institution.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   79 9/19/2016   11:09:03 AM



      80

State Library of Victoria:  IAN01/08/91/13  mp007629. 
The interior of William Pitt’s 1890 Stock Exchange in all its late 
Victorian glory.

1488.
The Gothic interior of the 
Stock Exchange now serves 
as Melbourne’s Banking Mu-
seum.  Recognition of the
signifi cance of heritage, not 
only in preserving the façade 
of buildings, but their 
interiors as well.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   80 9/19/2016   11:09:04 AM



      81

Skyscraper City: T & G postcard.
At the turn of the century, the T and G was located up from the Town Hall on the corner 
of Little Collins Street.  It was only in the late 1920s and 1930s that the institution moved 
to its massive premises at the top of Collins Street.  Note also the original Leviathan 
Building on the corner.

1478.
Th e former National Mu-
tual Life Assocation Building, 
constructed between 1891 and 
1903.  Th is is one of the many 
symbols of an aspirational 
population that would have 
been passed by the Federation 
parade.  Ironically, this build-
ing at 389-395 Collins Street 
has since become the very 
privately owned Bank of New 
Zealand and A C House.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   81 9/19/2016   11:09:05 AM



      82

National Library of Australia: nla.pic-an3105291.
The view along Collins Street looking east, around 1900.  
The wealth of the city is evident in this image, even allowing for a 
decade of disastrous depression.

1507.
The slightly later 1904-08 Brunton Chambers now domintes the block today, with 
the heritage building resplendent in its original brick and stone facing.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   82 9/19/2016   11:09:06 AM



      83

1509.
The German Arch location today. Again, note the growth of vegetation along the 
tree lined streets, obscuring many landmarks.

National Library of Australia: nla.pic-an13117280-15.
The German Arch in 1901, between Elizabeth the Swanston Streets, 
with the Town Hall clock tower behind.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   83 9/19/2016   11:09:07 AM



      84

Walking Melbourne: Melbourne’s 
Lost Hotels.
The location of the German Arch 
in the 1940s, with the Town Hall 
clock tower still in the back-
ground.  The Hotel Australia and 
the other Art Deco era build-
ings have totally changed the 
streetscape.

1654.
The Block Arcade still 
exists much as it would have 
in 1901, joining Collins Street 
and Elizabeth Streets, with the 
newer Brunton Chambers later 
fi lling in the corner.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   84 9/19/2016   11:09:08 AM



      85

Victorian Government: Victorian Heritage database image 5961.
Henry Parkes’ 1890 Algerian Oak Tree has obviously been pruned at various times for 
preservation.

Sheridan Morris: Melbourne Past and Present 2008, Axiom Publishing  p. 92.
Aerial view over the MCG taken in 1935.  Th e many quite mature trees would have been 
planned and planted at around the time of Federation.  Susequently, many of these same 
trees have been lost with the redevelopment of the road and rail networks and the expan-
sion of the sporting facilities.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   85 9/19/2016   11:09:09 AM



      86

14.  AFTER THE PARADES

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   86 9/19/2016   11:09:11 AM



      87

1526.
Melbourne’s Exhibtion Building today.  Although some of the earlier rear additions 
have been removed, the building not only survives to this day, but is still in regular use 
for exhibitions and cultural activities.

National Library of Australia: nla.pic-an13118171-5.
Melbourne’s Exhibition Building in 1901.  This view emphasises 
the 1880 lake that was originally constructed from a disused quarry.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   87 9/19/2016   11:09:11 AM



      88

Tom Roberts: Opening of the First Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia by 
HRH The Duke of Cornwall and York (later King George) 9 May 1901.
Tom Roberts’ iconic 1903 painting of the same scene. Ironically, soon after completion, 
this work of art was presented to King Edward VII and hung in St James’s Palace.  It 
was not returned to Australia until 1957 and is currently on display in the New Federal 
Parliament House in Canberra, on permanent loan from the British Royal Collection.

National Library of Australia: nla.pic 
an-13118171-3.
Sketch of the Opening Ceremony with 
HRH the Duke of Cornwall and York 
addressing the Parliament 9 May 1901.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   88 9/19/2016   11:09:12 AM



      89

0996.
The half scale copy of Melbourne’s 
Citizens’ Arch on display in the 
new National Museum of Australia 
in Canberra.

0999.
Perhaps the most symbolic fea-
ture of the arch is the Union Flag 
proudly presiding over the smaller 
and as yet unoffi cial Australian  
Blue Ensigns.

Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16.indd   89 9/19/2016   11:09:13 AM


	ABSTRACT COMBINED FOR PRINTING
	INTRODUCTION FOR PRINTING
	SYDNEY MARCH FOR PRINTING
	MELBOURNE MARCH FOR PRINTING
	CONCLUSION FOR PRINTING
	BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR PRINTING
	Erics Thesis Syd_2_updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16
	Erics Thesis Melb2_Updated_Single Pages_1_PDF_19-09-16