City of Darebin Heritage Study Volume 1 Draft Thematic

VOLUME 2: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORYdepressions of the 1890s and 1930s local councils had the job of distributing relief and findingwork for their unemployed residents. One of the unemployment work shemes during the1930s was the beautification of the St Georges Road pipe track, funded jointly by Preston andNorthcote Councils and the MMBW. Unemployment relief work was also done on EdwardesLake. Most of the funds for unemployment relief was raised by the Mayor’s UnemploymentRelief Fund, gathered from donations from the community. People looked to Council for help.When a family was evicted from their home in 1932, a group of unemployed men took thefamily’s furniture and left it inside the front entrance of the Town Hall. The Mayor found ahouse for the family (Carroll, 1985:155-8).Figure 56Preston Town Hall,c1930s.[DHE, ID 90-252-2]The City of DarebinIn 1994, following the Kennett Government’s state-wide municipal restructure, the Cities ofNorthcote and Preston amalgamated to form the City of Darebin. The area south ofHeidelberg Road formerly in the City of Northcote became part of the City of Yarra. Darebinalso acquired a small strip of territory from the former City of Coburg and the Mont ParkBundoora Health precinct of the former City of Heidelberg and Shire of Diamond Valley.Forming political associationsAs Northcote’s industries developed, a strong working class identity and political awarenessemerged amongst working people. When the boom of the 1880s slid into the depression of the1890s, Northcote’s working people, like workers in many parts of Australia, began to look forrepresentation in parliament. In June 1891 the Northcote Workingmen’s DemocraticAssociation was formed in the Commercial Hotel in High Street. The Association became thefounding branch of the Melbourne Trades Hall’s Progressive Political League and forerunnerof the Australian Labor Party. During the 1890s, the Northcote branch supported labourcandidates in elections to the Victorian Parliament, including a Preston Councillor, J.McKenzie, but without success. Preston also had a branch of the League, which in 1904supported socialist Harry Baird. Baird won the state seat of Jika Jika, which includedNorthcote and Preston at that time (Lemon, 1983:112, 157; Carroll 1985:76).Before that, in 1902, the Labor Party’s Frank Anstey had won the State seat of East BourkeBoroughs, which covered northern suburbs such as Northcote, Brunswick and Coburg, but notPreston (the electorate was divided to form Jika Jika in 1904). Anstey went on to become oneof Victoria’s leading Labor politicians in Federal Parliament, representing the seat of Bourke,which included Northcote and Preston, but not Preston after 1922. According to Preston’sHistorian Harley Forster:91