About Me Ms. Property
About Me & Ms Property, getting to Know the person behind the brand
About Me and the Things I love
Old buildings, history, the people behind the history, their stories.
We rarely question history, what’s done is done. Hopefully, we learn from it and we learn that although we can’t change the past, we can change our viewpoint.
I love the history of Melbourne and the history of my local area around Mt Dandenong and Olinda. The way we often gloss over the absolute struggle of living without the creature comforts we have today. Building a bark hut, cooking over an open fire, finding enough to eat and clothes to wear.
The gold rush brought us wealth, which is evidenced in our wonderful architecture. Early Melbourne, early Victoria, attracted the wealthy who built incredible mansions and stations (as in sheep not railway). On that note, our public buildings including our railway stations and Mechanics Institutes were quite fancy depending on the wealth in the area at the time.
The National Trust is a passion, the preservation of our buildings and the stopping of the tearing down of our architecture for another bland building with a limited life span. When we look at Melbourne pre “Whelan was here” and contrast it to now, it almost brings me to tears of frustration at our shortsightedness and anger that we allowed it to happen. New is not always good, nor is it always better.
The Royal Historical Society, the place of collation and research for our small, and some huge, historical societies in Victoria. It’s in a fascinating building in A’beckett St Melbourne, and well worth a look.
From the RHSV website, “The Australian Army Medical Corps Drill Hall was built at the southern corner of William Street and A’Beckett Street, Melbourne, between 1938 and 1939 by J Whitelaw, Richmond at a budget cost of 25,947 pounds.
The architect was George Hallandal of the Victorian section of the Department of the Interior, Works Branch.
The featured materials in this late 1930s building are brick and plaster. Visitors appreciate the strong vertical and horizontal lines, fluted pilasters, arches, keystones, coffered ceilings, built-in seats, Dutch or stable doors and the quality of the work of bricklayers, plasterers and carpenters.
The site was continuously occupied by the Army from 1866 to 1988. From 1866 the small weatherboard West Melbourne Orderly Room and the adjoining drill hall were used by Colonial Volunteer forces. In 1900 a contract was signed for the construction of new weatherboard quarters at the eastern end of the site. All were demolished for the Medical Corps buildings.
Post-war use of the building to 1988 included Medical Corps Reserve training, premises for the 3rd Psychology Unit, army publicity (with printing equipment), intermittent drill training (including rehearsals for Legacy shows) and garaging of vehicles. By 1990 the building had been added to the Historic Building register as being of state-wide architectural and historical significance. The western end of the building building became the premises of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria in August 1999.”
About Me Ms Property, My Love of History & Buildings
About Me Ms Property, research is fun, history is WOW and our architecture and architects of early Melbourne should be more appreciated. We should stop knocking these wonderful buildings down or at least if there is absolutely no choice, then we should at least build equally as beautiful, well-crafted buildings.
In my local area (Olinda in the beautiful Dandenong Ranges Victoria) we have restricted development. Things have certainly changed since I was a youngster and further change is inevitable however I hope we have learned from our history, from our destruction of much of early Melbourne, and build for suitability, sustainability, and just good-looking buildings (not the new Shire of Yarra Ranges building in Lilydale, I think it’s super ugly).
Now you know more About Me Ms. Property
If you would like to chat or have a real estate question then please reach out via a MEET-UP (your first one is free)
