Our long lost institutions that were part of life in Victoria
Remember the days of the ladies’ lounge at the pub, pokies tours to the border and the SEC? These were part of the Victorian way of life that are long gone.
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Australia boasts a huge number of great places to live, but Victoria has always had a character that sets in apart from the rest.
Down here, we revel in the changeable weather.
We live for great food, wine and coffee.
We’ll turn up to any sporting competition in droves.
Many aspects of life in the big V are uniquely Victorian.
Sadly, as time has passed, so to have some of the things that made Victoria the greatest state.
Here are some of the Victorian icons that some of us still miss today, presented so that those that don’t remember them can see some of the terrific things they missed.
THE LADIES’ LOUNGE AT THE PUB
There was once a time when women were not welcome as patrons in the public bar at Victorian hotels.
Unaccompanied women or couples were banished to another part of the hotel, the ladies’ lounge, where counter meals were often served and the women were sheltered from occasional foul language and coarse behaviour of male patrons.
Women who worked as bar staff or who were publicans did not enjoy such protection.
Publicans faced hefty fines if they served a drink to a woman in the public bar.
As liquor licensing laws were relaxed in the 1970s and ‘80s, it became possible for women to drink alongside men but the ladies lounge endured in many pubs into the ‘90s.
Many Victorian kids would remember sitting in the ladies lounge with mum with a raspberry and lemonade, wondering about the secret men’s business going on in the public bar.
POKIES TOURS
Before 1992, poker machines did not exist in Victoria, but that didn’t stop Victorians embracing what used to be known as one-armed bandits.
The lack of poker machines in Victoria created a lucrative and uniquely Victorian brand of tourism — the pokies tour.
Victorians keen to enjoy the giddy little thrill of legally pursuing a form of gambling that was highly illegal at home could take a bus on an organised poker machine tour.
Others planned getaways along the Murray so they could be within reach of the glittering gambling dens just over the river.
These clubs, which grew fat on pokies revenue, boasted facilities and entertainment that were the envy of many licensed venues here in Victoria, and those of us from south of the Murray were drawn like moths to a flame.
Poker machines were introduced to Victoria in the dying days of the Kirner government in 1992 but the NSW club culture was never fully replicated down here.
SATURDAY AFTERNOON FOOTY AT SUBURBAN GROUNDS
Once upon a time, if you wanted to see the big men fly, you could only do it on a Saturday afternoon.
These days, even the traditional Saturday afternoon grand final is under threat, with pressure building for a twilight or night match.
Outside the pre-season competitions such as the Escort Cup, night matches didn’t exist.
And Sunday footy? Forget it. That was the day for suburban and regional footy competitions.
An early break from tradition came in the years following the demise of South Melbourne and the Swans’ move to Sydney, when the team played its home games on a Sunday (presumably so rugby league fans otherwise engaged on a Saturday could try Aussie rules on a Sunday.
By the 1990s, Melbourne’s grand (and not so grand) old suburban grounds began disappearing.
Sure, the facilities were probably better at the MCG and Docklands, but some of the tribalism of footy was lost as Princes Park, the Western Oval, Victoria Park, the Junction Oval and St Kilda’s home ground at Moorabbin were progressively wiped from the fixtures.
Not so missed was The Artist Formerly Known As VFL Park.
Arctic Park, as some wags dubbed it, was the VFL’s bold scheme to embrace the exploding population in the eastern suburbs and bring footy to the people by building a modern colosseum for the game.
Putting a stadium with largely uncovered grandstands in one of thee wettest parts of the city wasn’t all that popular with the punters, though.
THE SEC
It was broken up and sold off by the state government in the 1990s, but from 1920 the State Electricity Commission was responsible for all power generation, transmission and distribution in Victoria.
The SEC had a huge job in supplying Melbourne’s growing population and sending electricity to all corners of the state — from Mallacoota to Corryong, Mildura, Portland and beyond.
The old “sunbeam” SEC logo was a familiar sight around the state, at least in part because of all the TV and radio advertising it did.
Yep. The SEC, a government-owned electricity provider with a monopoly, spent like a drunken election campaign manager on advertising to tell us all what a great job it was doing.
The advertisement presented above featured ELO at the height of its powers, with Molly Meldrum as host of an ELO concert.
The SEC’s brown coal mines and power stations provided Victoria with base load electricity capacity that turned the state into Australia’s industrial power house. Later, it developed hydro and gas power technology too.
It also provided stable employment in the Latrobe Valley for decades as it extended, then rebuilt its first power station at Yallourn and constructed others including Loy Yang A and B near Traralgon, Morwell’s Hazelwood plant and a series of gas-fired and hydro-electric stations around the state.
For decades, the SEC even owned and maintained its own factory town — Yallourn.
It was created on the edge of the vast Yallourn coal mine east of Moe as an ideal 20th century town by the SEC to house power workers and their families.
It featured some of the finest facilities and art deco architecture anywhere in Australia.
Time caught up with it, though.
The SEC announced in the late 1960s that the town would be demolished to extend the mine. By 1981, it was gone.
In these days of privatisation, it seems odd, but Victorians felt that the SEC was part of their stories, and they took a certain pride in its achievements.
Maybe that’s why the SEC was so prominent on TV.
THE STATE BANK
Anyone who attended primary school up to the 1980s will remember school banking day.
The idea was to teach us all the value of saving. At my school each Tuesday morning, we would all turn up to school with our State Bank pocket books and a 20 cent piece to give to our teachers.
Many of us had State Bank money boxes in the in the shape of its old city headquarters or a house so we could save our coins for a rainy day.
These marketing strategies worked.
Many kids went from school banking with the State Bank to having savings accounts and mortgages in their adult lives.
Like the SEC, the State Bank was a massive advertised although, in its defence, it had competition.
We watched as the State Bank built its massive new CBD headquarters at the corner of Bourke and Elizabeth streets and seemingly every country and suburban shopping strip had a State Bank branch.
It all came to an end in 1990, when the state government, reeling from financial scandals including the State Bank’s own Tricontinental merchant banking arm, was forced to sell the State bank to the then -government owned Commonwealth Bank.
It was a key reason for the victory of the Jeff Kennett-led Liberals in 1992. For many people, there was a sense that the people of Victoria lost something that belonged to them when the State Bank was sold off.
The sale sparked a series of branch closures and redundancies that rubbed salt into the wounds.
RESTRICTED SHOPPING HOURS
Once upon a time, there was no such thing as extended shopping hours in Victoria.
You could buy odds and ends at your local milk bar, sometimes at great expense, but you needed to stick more or less to business hours and Saturday mornings for many retail purchases.
From 1pm on a Saturday until 9am on Monday, you could shoot a cannon up the main street of most places in Victoria and not hit a thing.
Crazy nineteenth century specifically prevented the traders that were open to offer certain products or services. Legislation, for example, outlawed the sale of fresh meat on Sunday.
There were a few exceptions, apart from milk bars. Bakeries could open on a Sunday. Some service stations opened.
The first major relaxation of trading laws came in late 1971, when late-night shopping allowed some retailers to open until 9pm on a Friday. Similar arrangements followed on Thursday nights.
Caulfield hardware shop owner Frank Penhalluriack began defying trading laws in the 1980s, putting pressure on the Cain Labor government to act.
Mr Penhalluriack was repeatedly fined by the Department of Labor and Industry for opening on a Sunday, but refused to pay. Eventually, he did 20 days in jail for his crimes — 19 of those in Pentridge, with actual criminals.
Hearings and appeals in the case dragged through the 1980s, with public pressure increasingly on Mr Penhalluriack’s side.
He once even crashed a press conference to present Premier John Cain with a birthday cake.
Eventually, the government eased Sunday trading restrictions, but not completely. As late as 2005, Mr Penhalluriack was fined $10,000 for ignoring the law and opening on Easter Sunday.
Billiard table manufacturer George Grech, owner of Astra Billiards, was also jailed because of unpaid fines for Sunday trading, but he found a novel way of getting around the law.
Book shops were allowed to trade on a Sunday, so he opened George and Helen Grech Booksellers, offering very expensive books for sale and a free billiard table with every purchase.
By the 1990s, Coles Myer and Woolworths took on the Kennett government, opening many of their stores 24 hours a day in defiance of trading laws in a bid to win further reform, leading to the far less restrictive system we have today.
SHOW DAY
Until it was rubbed out by the Kennett government in the mid-’90s, the Show Day public holiday fell in metropolitan Melbourne on the last Thursday in September, which coincided with the September school holidays and the Royal Melbourne Show.
The day was known as “people’s day” at the show, one that allowed working people to bring their families in for a little taste of the country in the city.
It was usually the busiest day at the Royal Melbourne Show.
Many “show day” holidays still exist outside Melbourne, confined to certain councils or even certain towns, but Melbourne’s show day is long gone.
In 2015, the Andrews government created the grand final eve public holiday, effectively replacing Show Day holiday that fell around the same time of the year.
WORLD OF SPORT
The brainchild of broadcaster Ron Casey, World of Sport debuted on HSV 7 in 1959 and, by the time it ended in 1987, it was every Melbourne sports fan’s Sunday morning ritual.
Casey led a huge cast of broadcasters and sporting stars over the years that included footballers such as Lou Richards, Jack Dyer, Bob Davis, Bob Skilton, Peter McKenna, Doug Wade, Neil Roberts and Sam Newman; reporters including turf expert Jack Elliott and boxing writer Merv Williams; legendary racecaller Bill Collins; sports presenters including Sandy Roberts and Peter Landy; axeman Jack O’Toole and soccer expert Fred Villiers.
Broadcaster turned publican and politician “Uncle” Doug Elliott often presented live advertisements on the program, helping to turn products such as Patra orange juice, Huttons Footy Franks and Ballantyne Chocolates into household names.
World of Sport became famous for its sporting segments. Footballers competed in the weekly handball competition. Cycling stars rode sprint races on rollers and axemen ripped through log segments for the cameras.
The often anarchic live program had a loyal following in Melbourne.
It all ended in 1987 when the program was replaced by the slick, Sydney-based Sportsworld program.
CRAWFORD COP SHOWS
Crawford Productions was the leading television production house in Australia through the 1960s, and by the 1970s had established a mini television city in Box Hill that spawned all manner of TV shows.
The three biggest Crawfords shows were Homicide om Channel 7, Division 4 on Channel 9 and Matlock Police on Channel 0 (it became Channel 10 in 1980).
Although there had been a few Crawfords shows before it, Homicide was the foundation for Crawfords’ claimed that it was the first production company to develop and film Australian drama for television.
The concept of Australian stories, told in Australian voices in Australian settings was unheard of outside variety television, but it took off immediately and became an Aussie cultural icon that boasted more than 500 episodes in the end.
The advent of full colour film production by 1972 lifted production standards to match ever more daring stories that tackled social issues including drug abuse, gay bashings and domestic violence.
Division 4 debuted in 1969 but focused on the mythical Yarra Central police station in Melbourne’s inner suburbs and the work of both the uniform branch and CIB detectives.
Both Division 4 and Homicide used gritty Melbourne streetscapes for location shooting.
There were 300 episodes of Division 4.
Matlock Police followed in 1971. It followed the exploits of uniformed police and detectives in the fictional Victorian town of Matlock but it was more than Division 4 transplanted to the bush.
The show had its own style and character, with on-location scenes filmed mainly in Melbourne’s outer east (Matlock police station was, in fact, in Ringwood) and the Yarra Valley.
It lasted 228 episodes.
All three were heavily supported by Victoria Police, which often loaned vehicles and personnel to the shows and provided advice about police operations.
Recognising Australians’ appetite for local drama, Crawford Productions boss Hector Crawford began pressuring the federal government to set increased local content rules for commercial TV.
The networks favoured cheaper drama shows imported from Britain and the US.
Each of the big three cop shows was a ratings winner but ratings began to slip when they were pitted against each other on rival networks.
All were axed in quick succession in 1975 in what some sceptics believe was a deliberate ploy by the networks to teach Crawford who was boss.
It left Crawfords with only one show, a television industry spoof called The Box.
Others don’t believe three such competitive networks would conspire to sacrifice three popular television shows.
Other programs followed including the long-running Cop Shop and The Sullivans, but none could truly replace the big three.
MOOMBA ON TELEVISION
There was a time when Moomba parades were broadcast on all three commercial networks, the Moomba Masters waterskiing tournament dominated HSV 7 programming on the Labour Day long weekend and the Birdman Rally was compulsory viewing on Channel 10.
Sure, there was always the option of attending these events, but civic-minded TV networks offered hours of Moomba broadcasts for those who couldn’t make it.
Contestants built gliding contraptions that varied in complexity from a cheesy costume and a set of cardboard wings to homemade designs with proper aerodynamics and plastic and aluminium construction.
Then, in turn, the contestants would hurl themselves from a platform beside the Swan Street Bridge into the Yarra.
Whoever covered the most distance was the winner.
It was an afternoon of thrills and spills that drew huge crowds down by the river and a loyal TV audience, with the late Bruce Mansfield often providing the commentary.
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