What suburban milk bars were banned from selling

You could buy just about anything at the local milk bar back in their heyday. But there’s one everyday staple many milk bars were banned from selling.

Young men in a milk bar in 1955. Picture: Herald & Weekly Times

They sold cigarettes, groceries and lollies, but there’s one surprising staple many milk bars were banned from selling back in their heyday.

If you guessed milk, you’re spot on.

Just as Victoria once boasted a thriving illicit alcohol trade with bootleggers and sly grog shops, a lesser-known criminal activity was the flourishing illegal milk trade.

In a comical anomaly, milk bar owners could sell milkshakes, but were breaking the law if they dared to sell a customer so much as a pint of milk.

Jack Dyer giving children ice creams at his Richmond milk bar in the 1950s.

Leo Leonard pours a milkshake for his new cycling partner, Giuseppe Chiesa, at his milk bar in Bay St, Port Melbourne in 1958.

One of those dastardly illegal milk-selling milk bar owners was Bill Meaklim OAM, now the Richmond Football Club’s historian.

Bill tells us the odd regulation was enforced right up until the late 1950s, when he ran a milk bar in Gardenvale for a couple of years.

“They were called milk bars, but the majority couldn’t sell milk,” recalls Bill, from Hawthorn.

“It was quite incredible. In Gardenvale, there were 14 milk bars and a dairy, and the dairy decided who could have a milk licence to sell bottles of milk.”

Bill recalls only about two of the 14 had a milk licence, and his milk bar wasn’t one of them.

The problem was that opposite Bill was another milk bar, which did.

“I was losing customers. They’d buy bits and pieces in my shop, but had to go over the road to get a bottle of milk,” he says.

Bill Meaklim, OAM, historian for the Richmond Football Club, sold milk illegally from his Gardenvale milk bar. Picture: Mark Wilson

“This seemed dopey because we had refrigerators and we had bottled milk for milkshakes, but we couldn’t sell a bottle.”

“I had been selling milk illegally, and one night after hours a person came in and trapped me, I suppose. I sold him a bottle of milk and it was a milk inspector!”

No photos of Bill’s milk bar survive, so we’ve pulled out some other photos of milk bars of that era from the archives.

Bill copped a fine, and he and his father-in-law began agitating behind the scenes for the rule to be dropped, and common sense eventually prevailed.

“By the time I sold my milk bar, I was legitimately able to sell milk!” he says.

Do you have a great milk bar story or old photo? Let us know

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