City of Darebin Heritage Study Volume 1 Draft Thematic

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DAREBIN HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 2carrying or in hired labour, and to some who arrived here with moderate capital, to set thepattern of small individually-owned farms and gardens that was to be noticed in Preston in the1850s and 1860s … (Forster, 1968:32).Irishtown was an early name for Preston, indicating the origins of some of its early settlers, inparticular Samuel Jeffrey, a farm labourer and bounty immigrant from County Tyrone, whowas Preston’s first permanent farmer. The Gowerville area was also popular with Irishimmigrants (Forster, 1968: 20-1, 28-9).Another group of immigrants in Preston was a party of Particular Baptists from Sussex inEngland. Experiencing the difficult economic times of the 1840s, and probably thediscrimination suffered by nonconformists at the time, they migrated in 1849, with theintention of forming a little Particular Baptist colony. Two of them, James Tyler and EdwardWood, bought land in Preston, and several other families settled around them. In 1851 agroup of Preston Particular Baptists went to the Ballarat goldfields, where they experiencedmoderate success. They returned to Preston where they bought more land, set up small farmsand other enterprises and built a church which has not survived. Edward Wood opened a storeon the corner of High and Wood Streets. Michael Emery established St John’s pottery inWood Street (Forster, 1968:22-5).Anther early immigrant community was a group of German farmers who settled in SeparationStreet. They ran an annual New Year’s picnic and established a small cemetery in the areaknown as Cawdortown (Lemon, 1983:39-49, 50, 63).Figure 4William Rucker residence,‘Sunnyside’ 1855.[DHE, ID 576]Chinese market gardenersIn the 1880s some Cawdortown land previously farmed by the German settlers was taken overby Chinese market gardeners. W. Tong had several acres between Separation and MitchellStreets opposite the little cemetery. There were Chinese gardens on the Darebin Creek flatsnear the Darebin Road bridge at Thornbury (Watson, 1974:32). Large areas of the MerriCreek flats between Bell Street and Arthurton Road were also taken up with Chinese marketgardens into the 1920s and ‘30s, and some remained near Anderson Street in the 1950s. Theswampy land between Scotia and Etnam Streets Preston was also cultivated by Chinesegardeners prior to the 1920s, and Yon Foon owned a brick house in Etnam Street (Yong,2003:90-95).Although no information about the arrival of these early Chinese in the study area is available,they were very likely former miners who turned to growing vegetables after the gold ran out.Prevailing attitudes in both European and Chinese cultures at the time kept the Chinese apartfrom Australian society. They tended to live in separate communities and congregate in a fewindustries, such as market gardening. Moving from the goldfields they found suitable land22
VOLUME 2: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORYclose to city centres where they had markets for their produce (Jupp, 1988:304-5). The MerriCreek flats were ideal. Although the gold generation of immigrants were overwhelmingly male,some were able to bring wives to Australia and a few married European women and raisedfamilies (Yong, 2003:8). Northcote resident Gordon Murphy remembers that women as wellas men worked in the Merri Creek gardens. He remembers the Lee family, a second generationChinese Australian family, who also ran a greengrocer’s shop in Northcote (Yong, 2003:94).Mrs Harris, who grew up in Ivanhoe in the 1930s remembers that the Chinese working theDarebin Creek flats were single men (Watson, 1974:33). Lexie Luly remembers seeing thegardeners on the west bank of the Merri Creek watering their vegetables with watering canscarried on long poles across their shoulders (personal communication 2007)Much of the Merri Creek area formerly cultivated by Chinese gardeners is now public park,including Northcote Golf Links.Twentieth century Aboriginal communityFrom the 1920s onwards, an Aboriginal population began migrate to Melbourne in search ofopportunities, driven by closure and mismanagement of country reserves and also by the1930s Depression and the Second World War. Whilst Fitzroy, where rents were cheap, wasthe focus of this migration, Aboriginal people settled in many other suburbs. Migration toFitzroy generally originated in three areas, with an initial migration from the Cummeragungaarea in New South Wales followed by others from Framlingham and Gippsland. At the sametime, Wurundjeri people were migrating back to Melbourne from Coranderrk and settling inareas such as North Melbourne and the Western suburbs. (Broome, 2005:287).In 1927 a young Yorta Yorta man from Cummeragunja mission moved to Melbourne lookingfor opportunities as an Australian Rules footballer. The footballer, Doug Nicholls, was rejectedby the Carlton Football Club, but recruited by the Northcote Club, where he was animmediate success. He was employed as a labourer by the Northcote Council, and played forNorthcote for five years, before joining the Fitzroy team in 1932. Following a religiousconversion at the Northcote Church of Christ, Nicholls was ordained a Pastor, and ministeredto the Aboriginal community in Fitzroy.In 1947, Nicholls was appointed curator of Northcote Park, where he resided in a house thatcame with the job. Nicholls and his wife Gladys opened their home to young Aboriginesmoving to Melbourne. As the need for accommodation grew, the Nicholls were instrumentalin establishing a girls’ hostel in the former Anglican vicarage in Cunningham Street, opened1958, and a boys’ hostel in the same street in 1962. The Douglas Nicholls Centre was builtnext to the girls’ hostel in 1967.Nicholls received the support of the Northcote Council in his work amongst Aboriginalpeople (Lemon, 1983:271-2).Figure 5Pastor (Sir) Douglas Nicholls(right), 1976[DHE: ID 723]23
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CRITERION E:VOLUME 2: THEMATIC ENVI
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