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Complaints

One of the main reason Melbourne's citizens wrote to the City Council was to complain.

Some of the complaints were within the Council's powers or about its services. Some were not.

Our interactive interactive Subject Index reveals a litany of complaints, filed under a vast range of headings that captured the concerns of Melburnians in 1925. Although in many cases only the clerks'

Blasting

Blasting complaints &c at [cr] Wrights Lane & Lit Bourke St
3176

During 1925, the Victorian Hardware Club began to construct a new building for its social functions on the corner of Wrights Lane and Little Bourke Street.

Excavation of the foundations for the new building concerned the neighbours, who complained at the office of the City Engineer H.E. Morton on 23 June.

Their complaints were well-founded: the very next day, their building at 394-6 Little Bourke Street collapsed dramatically into the excavations. Fortunately, workers on the construction site had noticed cracking in the wall, and sixty construction workers and eighteen occupants of the building escaped just in time.

Police and onlookers after the building collapse. "Another Building Collapse," Sun, 25 June 1925, 1.

This was the third major collapse in the city for 1925, and one of the previous incidents had resulted in four fatalities. After the collapse, A.H. Enticott, the art engraver who had occupied the collapsed bulding, told newspaper reporters he had been the complainant to the City Council, fearing a repeat of recent events. City Engineer Morton promised a safe demolition and a thorough investigation.

References

Cattle

Cattle complaint, re wandering Oak & Poplar Sts. Royal Park
5866

Cattle complaint, re wandering in Kensington
3066

On 12 November, the Medical Superintendent of the Royal Park Mental Hospital wrote to complain of cattle and horses being grazed on the verges of Royal Park near Oak Street and Poplar Road.

Horses and cattle were a common sight in this part of the city, and they had a long history. Oak Street and Poplar Road was home to the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories, which maintained a model farm for production of its animal-based vaccines and medications. The Horse, Cow and Pig Market operated on the corner of Flemington Road and Royal Parade, just a mile away, and herds of stock could be droved from here to the City Council's abbatoirs along Racecourse Road.

D.R. Drape, "Royal Park North Paddock," 1871, 1 painting mounted on board : watercolour; 32.6 x 47.4 cm, State Library Victoria.

But times were changing. Motor vehicles were replacing horses as the city's delivery vehicle of choice, and the need to support them was gradually disappearing. Several newspapers, most recently the Herald had begun a campaign to push cattle out of the parks that they now saw as "Melbourne's Potential Playgrounds". By the 1930s, the markets would fall silent, and with them the problem of grazing cattle.

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