The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne by Graeme Davison

Author:Graeme Davison [Davison, Graeme]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History
ISBN: 9780522841916
Google: JdJHAAAAYAAJ
Goodreads: 4583275
Publisher: Melbourne University Press
Published: 1979-12-15T01:44:40+00:00

Why did the flourishing growth of suburban Melbourne come to such an abrupt and painful end? The tangled sequence of events began in October 1888 with the collapse of the land boom and the first signs of public unease. There had been such speculative fevers before and, like the others, this might easily have taken its course with only minor casualties. Residential expansion might even have continued, though at a more modest pace. Yet, by 1890, the whole stupendous enterprise was grinding to a standstill. After the event, of course, it all seemed inevitable.

Anyone with forethought must see that, allowing for the buoyancy of the colonial spirit, the resources of the colonies and the natural increase of the population, a time must arrive when the people must divert their attention, to some extent, from building houses. The influx of new colonists cannot always keep up, the arrival of new loan monies must come to a termination, and consequently the demand for houses cannot continue in so great a proportion as heretofore.110

By the late 1880s the ‘natural increase’ of young colonial newlyweds, whose home-seeking first primed the housing boom, had begun to abate. Some historians suggest that weakening demographic pressures largely explain the downturn in demand.111 The natural increase of ‘marriageable’ Victorians (aged 20–34) and the immigration of new settlers both reached a peak in 1888 and declined substantially thereafter. Yet the number of actual marriages was higher in 1889 and 1890 than in any previous year, and immigration—by this time the most volatile component in housing demand—seems to have slackened only after the end of the land boom.112 The withdrawal of overseas funds seems to have been a consequence rather than a cause of the first decisions of lending institutions to reduce their advances and raise interest rates. In short, demographic pressures and external financial constraints, such as the Baring crisis, may have helped to precipitate the downturn, but they scarcely suffice to account for the almost total cessation of suburban growth that actually followed. All these pressures acted on a suburban economy whose wide frontiers and over-extended lines of communication rendered it particularly vulnerable to strain.

The process of suburban development can be visualized as a series of moving frontiers extending from the city’s central core. Out on the farthest perimeter, amidst farms and orchards, were the advance parties of speculators, auctioneers and land touts who subdivided, promoted and sold open paddocks into ‘desirable allotments’. By the late 1880s land hunger had driven them far beyond the outskirts of suburban settlement—north to Moreland and Fawkner, south into Sandringham and Mordialloc, east beyond Box Hill and Glen Iris, west as far as Maribyrnong and Altona. Following eagerly in their tracks was the second wave of transport engineers and navvies who forged the vital connections between the city’s productive centre and its distant suburbs. As we have seen, railways and tramways operators happily embraced a pioneering role and extended their services far into the unsettled regions of outer suburbia. Then, at a distance, came the providers of such essential services as roads, gas, water and sanitation.

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