Waking up in Geelong

Each morning on William Street in the CBD, there are a handful of route 55 trams that display a destination of ‘Moonee Vale’. There are a number of Melbourne suburbs with similar sounding names, along with a racecourse and local government area called ‘Moonee Valley’ – but is Moonee Vale a real place, or just a typo?

Time to go digging

The suburbs of Moonee Ponds and Ascot Vale are located next door to each other, but are located on the route 59 tram so an amalgam of those two place names can be set aside. The same applies for Moonee Valley, so a truncated name can’t explain it either. Pascoe Vale is a suburb closer to the route 55 tram, but is too far north to be served by it.

My next port of call was the Victorian Register of Geographic Names – it contains more than 200,000 place names including cities, towns, suburbs, regions, roads, landscape features, recreational reserves, transport stations, schools, hospitals, national parks, forests, reserves and tracks!

Unfortunately it came up blank.

Going back to the destination board of the tram, there is a further clue: “Daly & Dawson Streets”.

That intersection is located in Brunswick West, with Daly Street being a residential street that parallels the much better known Melville Road.

As for the Moonee Vale name, a check of the locality listing at the back of the Melways brings it up – Map 29 B8, see Brunswick West.

It also gets namechecked in The Age as an example of ‘secret suburbs’ in Melbourne.

If you’re coming from Tally Ho you travel west – likewise from Bennettswood – and go via Willison, vaguely in the Macaulay or Batmans Hill direction. Pass through Rushall then Sumner and Anstey.

Westbreen is too far. Look just north of Moonee Vale and you’re there: Coonans Hill.

Directions from Burwood to Pascoe Vale South via Fitzroy have never sounded so confusing. But touring via Melbourne’s secret suburbs gives the route a quaint, village feel. Little-known place names have gained favour in recent years, according to those who make it their business to know where Westgarth is.

The early years

Beyond that, I had to start digging through the Trove archives from the National Library of Australia.

Back in 1891 the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Railways conditionally recommended the construction of a railway from Flemington Bridge to Pascoe Vale, via Moonee Vale:

The Committee have decided that the proposed line should be constructed at a cost not exceeding £30,000, and that the whole of the land required for railway purposes should be given to the Government free of cost, and without compensation for damage by severance.

In 1907 The Argus writes of a new ‘Moonee Vale Settlement’ in Brunswick West.

In 1910 development must not have taken off as the developers wanted, as The Argus reported that Brunswick Council had removed 70 kerosene lanterns from the streets in a cost cutting exercise.

With the proposed railway also getting kiboshed by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Railways.

The Committee is of opinion that it is inexpedient to construct either a steam or electric railway to connect Moonee Vale and West Brunswick with the existing railway system, because of the large annual loss which would be involved.

However local residents weren’t happy – in 1914 the Brunswick and Coburg Leader led local agitation for the construction of a railway to Moonee Vale, via Royal Park.

Instead, in 1923 the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Railways examined a proposal for an electric tramway to West Coburg, recommending the construction.

Now known as route 55, the tramway was progressively opened between 1925 and 1927 to the current terminus at Bell Street, West Coburg.

And today

These days the only organisation beside Yarra Trams still using the ‘Moonee Vale’ name is a licensed post office on the corner of Albion Street and Melville Road.

Which I eventually got around the visiting.

It looks the worse for wear.

With faded signs.

And rather interestingly, one of the signs spelling Moonee Vale as ‘Mooneevale’.

Public transport should be clear and concise wherever possibly, and not rely on layers of historical anachronism – for this reason I reckon Yarra Trams should get with the times and drop the misleading name of ‘Moonee Vale’, and use the accepted name for where their route 55 shortworkings terminate – ‘Brunswick West’.

Footnote: the Moonee Vale shortworking

A check of the public timetable reveals there are two route 55 trams that terminate at Daly and Dawson Streets each weekday – both at the tail end of morning peak.

Timetables at tram stops also have a note drawing attention to these short terminating services.

When I paid a visit to Daly Street when the terminating services are due, I found the tram driver stopped in the middle of the road, dodging traffic to change the tracks that allow trams to cross between the tracks.

Traffic in both directions then comes to a halt, as the tram trundles over the crossover and onto the citybound track.

The logic behind these two shortworking services is that it provides much needed capacity on route 55 for passengers boarding closer to the city, as the trams in question can race back into the CBD on the tail end of morning peak. If the trams continued all the way to the end of the line, by the time they made it back to the inner suburbs, the passengers would have already crammed onboard other trams.

With tram patronage increasing at a rate faster than new trams are being acquired, there isn’t much else Yarra Trams can do.

Further reading

• Proposed railway from Flemington Bridge to Pascoe Vale – report from the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Railways dated 1891.
• Railway communication with Moonee Vale and West Brunswick – report from the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Railways dated 1910.
• Proposed West Coburg Electric Tramway – report from the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Railways dated 1923.

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