City of Darebin Heritage Study Volume 1 Draft Thematic

VOLUME 2: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORYwas subsequently divided into three ridings - North, Epping and Preston. The Preston ridingincluded Northcote.Legislation in 1863 enabled rural road districts to become shires and those in more populatedareas to become boroughs. In 1870 the road districts of Epping, Merriang, Whittlesea,Woodstock and Morang were amalgamated to form the Shire of Darebin. This 320 squarekilometre area was too large to administer effectively by the Road Board, and the councillorsfrom Preston and Northcote petitioned to separate from it. On 8 November 1871, the Shireof Jika was proclaimed. Edwin Bastings, one of the Northcote councillors who had instigatedthe separation, became the first Shire President. Council meetings were held in the ForestersHall in High Street Preston, before they were moved to the Junction Hotel (Carroll, 1985:36-7; Lemon, 1983:58-9).Municipality of NorthcoteBy the 1880s, the southern end of the Shire was becoming more populated than the north andNorthcote residents were concerned about the effects on public health of the noxious industriesin the district - mainly boiling down works and meat works. It was then believed that badodours caused disease, and besides, the meat works were polluting the streams with blood andoffal. Approaches to the Jika Shire Council to ban the industries were unsuccessful, becauseNorthcote did not have sufficient representation on Council. The Northcote Health Leaguecampaigned for separation to form a new municipality that would represent the interests of themore urbanised part of the Shire, and were successful. On 25 May 1883, the Borough ofNorthcote was proclaimed. The Northcote Health League, with its mission accomplished,subsequently dissolved. Council banished the meat works from the settled parts of Northcote.King Smith and Kenihan moved their operations to the bottom of Bastings Street, and theothers left Northcote altogether.Council offices were set up in the Wesleyan Sunday School, and a group of Councillors formeda syndicate to buy a choice site on the top of Rucker’s Hill for a Town Hall. The foundationstone of the grand boom-style building was laid in 1888, and the Town Hall was completed in1890, in time for the proclamation of Northcote as a town on 9 September (VictorianMunicipal Directory; Lemon, 1983:104, 107).By 1914, Northcote had 20,000 people, the requisite population for city status, and the City ofNorthcote was proclaimed in March 1914. A feature of the celebrations at the Town Hall wasthe ceremony to switch on the electricity supply (Lemon, 1983:163).A Town Hall was not only the focal point of civic life and centre of municipal administration,it was also a centre of the community’s social, cultural and political life. During the FirstWorld War, Northcote Town Hall was both a recruiting centre and the venue for a peace rally.In 1915, a public meeting of the Australia Peace Alliance drew a crowd to hear the Englishpeace activist Adela Pankhurst oppose conscription and accuse the forces of capitalism ofbenefiting from the war. Her views were unpopular in Northcote, and there were no morePeace Alliance meetings in the Town Hall. However, there were a few people who spoke up forMiss Pankhurst’s right to express her views. One was the new Councillor John Cain, who wasgaining political experience for the bigger stage of Victoria parliament, one of severalprominent Labor politicians produced in Darebin. Three years later, in November 1918 acrowd gathered outside the Town Hall to await official news of the declaration of peace. Butthe message did not come through to the Mayor until after midnight, when the crowd hadgone home (Lemon, 1983:174-6,182).The traditional role of councils was the provision and maintenance of roads, streets, bridgesand drains, although many other responsibilities, such as community welfare were added overthe years. From 1925 to 1947, Northcote Council was fortunate in having an energetic andinnovative City Engineer, Victor Bradley, who set up the Frederick Street Council depot.Under Bradley, the Engineering Department ran a quarry, produced its own road-makingmaterials, constructed roads, serviced its own trucks and made street sweepers, and was able tomake and maintain Northcote’s roads economically. Bradley was seconded to the American89