After a shopkeeper established his own private
gas supply, the first in Melbourne,
in 1850, the City of Melbourne Gas
and Coke Company was established. But it took six years before gas first
illuminated buildings in Melbourne.
By 1873, it had two competitor companies, each with its own trenches for gas
lines. In 1878 they amalgamated to form the Melbourne Gas Company. In 1885,
sadly, the MGC saw fit to destroy all of its records.
By the peak of gas usage, in 1892, when
electricity began to replace gas lighting, 50 gas works had been constructed in
Victoria,
but many Victorian homes relied on gas lighting through the 1930s and 1940s.
Finally in 1950, the private gas industry was replaced by the Gas and Fuel
Corporation of Victoria.
Its objective was to replace reliance on New South Wales
black coal with a new brown coal plant at Morwell. This was achieved in 1956.
By then, other fuels were emerging. Two large
oil refineries opened near Melbourne.
Then, in 1965, natural gas was discovered off the Victorian coast near Sale.
By the end of 1970, over a million gas appliances had been converted to natural
gas and the four metropolitan gas production plants and their thousand employees
made redundant. Natural gas pipelines spread across the state.
In 1973, with the purchase of Colonial Gas,
the Gas & Fuel Corporation became the monopoly gas supplier in Victoria.
So, from 1970, the various giant gasholder cylinders around Melbourne:
at Tooronga, North Fitzroy,
Essendon, Sandringham,
Newport,
Preston,
Highett, Collingwood, Williamstown, Brighton,
Footscray, Dandenong, Mentone and Heidelberg
were all demolished. By the 1980s, the only physical evidence of the
Melbourne’s extensive coal gas industry was a Regulating House in
Macaulay Road, North Melbourne (still operating, but
to close soon), the South Melbourne Gasworks buildings, Pickles Street, Albert
Park (now Gasworks Arts Park and the Gasworks Theatre) and this former gas valve
house (1877), in St Kilda Road.
In July 1857, E.G. Fitzgibbon, Town Clerk of
Melbourne wrote to the City of St Kilda, offering to sell gas lamps and
‘pillars’, previously used in Melbourne. By June 1858, the City of
Melbourne Gas
and Coke Company was asking St Kilda Council to nominate which streets had been
permanently levelled, so they could lay their gas
pipes.
In August 1858, the company advised the City
of St Kilda Council
that it was preparing to lay mains for supplying gas to the inhabitants of St
Kilda and asking for the Council’s approval.
In 1858 a local gas company was formed to
light the municipalities of St Kilda and Prahran. A line would be taken up over
Punt Road Hill to Prahran, Windsor and on to St Kilda. Albert Park was
suggested as the site for gasworks. Shares were issued, but fortunately for
Albert Park this time, nothing came of the project.
From 1858 to 1871, there were a series of
requests to council and negotiations with Prahran Council, for street gas lamps
in Wellington Street,
and at the corners of Wellington
and Milton Streets, Fitzroy and Barkly Streets and Barkly and
Gurner Streets.
In September 1859 the City of Melbourne Gas
and Coke Co agreed to light 28 street lamps by gas, ‘and (provide) such
additional lamps as may be erected from time to time’. This was the first street
lighting in St Kilda. In 1860, the City of Melbourne Gas
and Coke Company laid a main over PrincesBridge
to St Kilda Railway Station, so houses on the new blocks in St Kilda Road,
first subdivided in 1859, could be lit by gas.
From 1858 to 1871, there were a series of
requests and negotiations with Prahran Council for gas lamps in Wellington Street,
at the corner of Wellington
and Chapel Streets, Wellington
and Dandenong Roads as well as Tennyson, Dickens and Milton Streets, Fitzroy and
Barkly Streets and Barkly and Gurner Streets. The
company was fined whenever the supply failed, even when due to floods.
In October 1875, St Kilda Council received a
Report of Committees appointed by Prahran and St Kilda Councils ‘to consider the
advisability of establishing a joint municipal gas works. In November, Council
received a legal opinion from the famous George Higginbotham, whose statue
stands outside the Treasury in Spring Street, which Council had the power to:
‘make and sell gas for supply to public lamps and places and to the general
public’. By August 1876, Council was dissatisfied with the C of MG & CC’s gas
supply for street lighting. Yet, in October, a poll of ratepayers rejected a
proposal for Council to take over the supply.
In 1876, the councils of Prahran,
South
Melbourne and St
Kilda resolved to join to erect gasworks, but a poll of ratepayers under
pressure from the C of MG & CC rejected the idea.
In 1886, the company paid £15,000 to remove
another proposed competitor, the South Suburban Gas Company. Local attempts to
produce and reticulate gas had been quashed and despite dissatisfaction with the
C of MG & CC’s supply, it managed to neutralise all its potential competitors.
This site at 617 St Kilda Road
was granted by the Crown in 1865. In 1876, Thomas Mowbray acquired the land as
Trustee of the City of Melbourne Gas
and Coke Company. No gas was ever produced there; it was always used as a
holding or regulating out-station for gas distribution. Over the next year, a
gasholder and valving equipment were installed. In 1878, another gasholder,
engine house and a seven-roomed brick house were added. Gas came from South Melbourne
and there were problems with the flow, until a large (600-900mm diameter) main
was installed. It adjoined Jewish Almshouses (now demolished, but designed by
George Johnson, (43)), which were on the corner of Union Road,
from 1870.
Former Gas Valve House, 2002
By 1912, the gasholders were removed; gas for
St Kilda being both made and stored at the South Melbourne Gasworks. When
natural gas was introduced, the valve equipment was replaced to suit.
With the recent redevelopment of the site as a
major office building, all of the gas industry buildings have been demolished,
except the valve house. This was probably built in 1881 (although it possibly
began as the 1878 engine house). The architect is not known. It is a
well-proportioned and finely detailed red brick and stucco Classical pavilion,
worthy architecturally of its place amongst the great houses and public
buildings of St Kilda Road.
The Metropolitan Gas Company’s relief insignia on the
pediments, is particularly delicate. It is possibly the first of its
type of valve house as well as the last to survive in Melbourne.
Its designer is not known.
Gas was the first form of reticulated power
supply in St Kilda, preceding electricity by some 40 years. So this modest,
prim, classical building is the only surviving physical evidence of the first
reticulated power in St Kilda and Prahran.
References
Buckrich,
Judith Raphael. Melbourne’s
Grand Boulevard.The Story of St Kilda Road.State Library
of Victoria.
Melbourne
1996. pp 41, 46, 47 & 48.
Heritage Victoria.Victorian Heritage Register. No: H 675.
Keating, John D,.TheLambent Flame.MelbourneUniversity
Press.
Melbourne
1974.
National Trust
of Australia
(Victoria).
File No: 4602.
Proudle,
Ray y.Circle of Influence. A History of the Gas Industry in
Victoria.Margren
Publishing with the Gas and Fuel Corporation of Victoria.
Melbourne
1987. pp 4-8, 44, 47, 48 & 359.
