Collective City

“Fans are seen celebrating after Australia scored against Argentina taking the score to 1-2 during the FIFA World Cup. A capacity filled Federation Square had supporters of the Socceroos gather for a 6am match on the 4th of December 2022 to witness history as Australia took on Argentina during their first knockout appearance since 2006.” Nathan Coote

“This is a candid shot taken as I saw it unfold. It was summer and there was an outdoor event on the forecourt of the State Library of Victoria, a popular public space where people congregate. It was a warm balmy afternoon.

Local queer artists The Huxleys, were performing as part of the annual Midsumma celebrations. Not knowing much about them, I stayed to watch. Their outrageous and glamorous costumes compel attention. They were parading around, dancing to loud disco music, think Donna Summer, wordlessly inviting interaction and engagement.

A group of skater boys were hanging about the forecourt too. I saw one of them come head-to-head with this provocative, tall, sequinned, androgynous apparition. I wonder what they were both thinking when the skater puffed up his bare chest and they confronted each other for a moment. The boy appears to be saying ‘look at me’, although he is uncertain enough to reach for a lucky card in his hip pocket.

Their appearances are so different, yet it’s a friendly and accepting interaction, confronting our own ideas of image and belonging to a tribe.” Jane Hinwood

"This photograph was taken in the middle of Melbourne’s winter, late in the evening on a busy city tram. I’d been working on a project documenting city life after the sun had gone down. I wasn’t on the tram to go anywhere, it was a loop, like life.

There is no better place to observe our togetherness, our weariness and strangeness as on a tram. Families chat about dinner, city workers stare blankly at the walls, young people ignore it all with Spotify in their ears. I have made quiet pictures of many of them.

Invariably when a collective comes together, the boundaries of that collective come into view, as in this image. The passenger’s head barely moved from his hands save to stare out the window for a moment. The passenger seemed so tired, surrounded by us and yet somehow on the fringes of us. I took this photo to notice them. For us to notice them. To recognise that we were all there, and alive, all at the same time." Adam Sinclair

“This photograph was captured in between two lockdowns as crowds of people slowly began to filter back onto the streets. It was a curious and disorientating time to be a Melburnian, and there was a strange mixture of joy and nervousness in the air. I took this photograph as commuters made their way over Princes Bridge, with the evening sun going down over the city behind.” Mark Davidson

“Local resident and professional stilt-walker Vivienne Halat as The Siren at the Festival of Women.

This event at North Richmond Housing Estate provides opportunities for residents of an inner-city Melbourne suburb to celebrate solidarity in support of women’s empowerment. Built in the 1950s and suffering from neglect, North Richmond Housing Estate is one of Melbourne’s most densely populated public housing facilities. Some six thousand residents from diverse cultural backgrounds and circumstances are housed in five tower blocks. 

The Festival of Women features staged and roving performing arts, workshops, artisan market stalls and multicultural cuisines in a welcoming atmosphere of sisterhood. Volunteer organisers say the event also helps Estate residents engage with the wider community.” Ilana Rose

"Pride in Fitzroy, where anything goes. Melbourne’s kings, queens, and queer community are on stage and on the street, regardless of age everyone is welcome. Perhaps one of the greatest street parties Melbourne has more recently hosted. The street is a flood of colour, music, conversations, and a lot of dancing.

Here, a side show in the window for the famous Rose Chong costumes shop, where the windows come to life and if you’re lucky enough to get the headphones you will get your own private one-on-one show." Sally Coogle

"As commuters speed by to catch their trams, this mother holds her daughter close. A pillar of strength; An immovable force of safety in the frenetic heart of the city." Francesca Donnoli

“During the infamous Melbourne pandemic, we banded together to stay apart. Unthinkable distances separated our loved ones and those dear to us, friends, and colleagues. Remote yet together. Thoughts and minds braved this maelstrom in the world over. Social media, wall spaces and government health agencies commanded us to wear masks, test, and keep distance from each other.

This fabulous wall in Coventry Street, South Melbourne was a very creative adaptation of the famous work of Michelangelo The Creation of Adam to amplify the government’s message.” Mike Reed

“Melbourne’s diverse culture and its shared spaces are full of expressions of friendship as a seal of coexistence. In the park of State Library Victoria two friends converse, laugh and relish a moment on a public seat as proof of the core value of connection in our collective city”. Gonzzalo Palta

"A connection and a smile between two strangers on a city street." Andrew Wilson

"That feeling was gratitude as Melbourne started to look more like it used to. This photo was taken at St Kilda Beach, a place for all walks of life where everyone is welcomed." Shiang Liew

“At first glance this image shows rowdy protesters contrasted with a serene ballerina busker and depicts a competing and contested use of public space. Superficially it marks where two separate realms with different activities and desired outcomes collide, with police supervising the point at which they intersect.

However, on reflection it is also true that protest can be art, and that various artforms can be protest. Art has a long history of functioning as a subversive or disruptive force, so these are not such incompatible worlds.” Cathrin Plunkett

This 1950s photograph is part of a series called Dietetics as a career, which showed dietitians training and working at Royal Melbourne Hospital. However, in portraying the daily life of Melbourne’s main hospital, these images also give us a glimpse into the norms of the era. Whether intentional or not, the composition draws your eye to the man on crutches making his way along the road up to the hospital.

This is a time well before accessibility parking (it was not until 1981 that municipalities across Victoria started introducing the Disabled Person’s Parking Scheme) and the fact he is on the road also suggests that the hospital lacked a footpath with the features required for accessibility, such as kerb cuts or ramps.

Australia’s Disability Rights Movement began the following decade, but it was only when the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 came into effect that architects and planners actually began designing public spaces with people of all abilities in mind.

Building societies and credit unions are financial institutions that are collectively owned by the members of that organisation. They are seen as alternatives to commercial banks as they offer similar products but are run under non-profit rules. Credit unions, first seen in Europe in the 1840s, traditionally promoted thrift and good money management. Building societies have been around since the 1770s, providing mortgage services to their members.

These early building societies stemmed from social groups formed in places like taverns, coffee houses and clubs. Members paid a monthly subscription to a pool of funds that were then made available to finance the building of homes and businesses of those members. In Australia, these institutions surged after WWII with the burgeoning need to fund housing development for returned service personnel. The Hotham Permanent Building Society pictured operated until 1987.

Melbourne’s Chinatown is the second-longest continuous Chinese settlement in the Western world, dating back to 1851. The pictured Federation procession was held in May 1901 to honour the opening of the first Federal Parliament with over 300 participants. The procession included two ceremonial Chinese dragons (one from Bendigo and one from the See Yup Society in Melbourne), a Chinese lion, musicians and figures on white horseback.

Processions and parades are an important part of street life in Australia, with the first processions occurring in Melbourne in the 1830s. The Chinese community were involved in processions in Castlemaine and Ballarat as early as 1867. The pictured procession is turning in front of Parliament House on the corner of Spring and Bourke Streets and heading towards the Treasury Building which is visible in the distance.

In October 1960, the first shopping mall in Australia was opened on 30 acres of former grazing land in Chadstone in Melbourne’s east. Owner Ken Myer, of Myer department store, was convinced the shopping precinct of the future was not the CBD or local shopping strips, but American-style drive-in shopping malls in the suburbs. Increasing post-war development of pastoral areas was creating Melbourne’s suburbs, and a need for new suburban community gathering places.

One originator of the ‘mall’ concept, architect Victor Gruen, saw malls as a third space for both adults and youth, that could ‘provide the needed place and opportunity for participation in modern community life that the ancient Greek Agora, the Medieval Market Place and our own Town Squares provided in the past’ (Victor Gruen and Larry Smith, Shopping Towns USA: The planning of shopping centers).

The original Chadstone layout included 72 stores, a radio station, child-minding facilities, and an exhibition hall. In this photo you can see the emerging community feel of the new mall, with women walking and talking together as they socialise and shop, the crowds showing the instant popularity of this future staple of suburban life.

In 1983, Parliament Station was nearing completion and these escalators were in the process of being installed. Pre-Covid, these escalators were carrying around 35,000 passengers daily to and from the platforms below. At 30 metres in length, they are the longest escalators in the southern hemisphere. Their length is partly due to Parliament Station being the deepest of the three City Loop stations, with its lower-level platforms bottoming out at 40 metres underground.

In 1958, Lindsay M. Edward’s glass tile work was chosen from an Australia-wide competition for a mural to adorn the walls of the State Library of Queensland, celebrating the state’s upcoming centennial year.

At the time, the Victorian artist was the head of the painting section of the Royal Melbourne Technical College (now RMIT) and had only recently begun experimenting with mosaic. This photograph, taken at the Royal Melbourne Technical College, shows the many hands needed to create the large-scale piece.

Constructed as part of the Hotham Estate in the 1960s by the Housing Commission of Victoria, these shops provided a local shopping strip for both the people living in the new estate and all the other residents of the Hotham Hill precinct of North Melbourne.

The 20-storey tower which can be seen rising behind the shops was opened in June 1963 by the Governor of Victoria. The entire development, which in addition to shops and the high-rise tower, included four-storey walk-up flats, as well as open space and playgrounds, and a hobby centre where tenants could perform a range of ‘hobby work’ that normally would have been carried out in a private backyard or garage.

The estate was part of the progressive housing program of the Housing Commission of Victoria, and was one of the earliest high-rise developments in the Melbourne metropolitan area, soon to be replicated at other sites in Flemington, Carlton, Richmond, Prahran and South Melbourne.

This photograph was taken during the first public engagement of Queen Elizabeth II following a period of court mourning prior to her coronation. It depicts Her Majesty meeting a scout who is in a wheelchair during the fourteenth annual National Scout Service celebrations.

The Queen had a close relationship with the Scouts movement including their participation at her coronation in 1953. Each year, young people who earned their Queen’s Scout Award would celebrate their achievements in the Quadrangle of Windsor Castle.

This is an early example of fostering belonging and inclusion for people with disabilities through creating equitable access to traditionally inaccessible spaces. This moment comes approximately four decades prior to the passing of disability discrimination legislation in the United Kingdom and Australia during early 1990s.

One of the oldest and most effective forms of collective protest is a public demonstration. They are a show of collective disagreement by a group or groups against government policies; or to provide support for societal change at a local or global level. Melbourne has a long history of public demonstrations beginning with protests against the transportation of convicts to Port Phillip in the 1840s.

The Eureka Stockade began as a protest by gold miners against the miners’ licencing system and for political reform. There were protests against conscription of eligible men into the armed forces during WWI. In 1970 there were massive demonstrations in Melbourne concerning Western involvement in the Vietnam conflict. The local protests were in support of moratoria held across the United States in 1969.

More recently, demonstrations have occurred for such issues as climate change, marriage equality and gender identity. The protest shown here was against cuts by the Cain Victorian Government in 1989 to Workcare benefits and the introduction of administrative changes, including the introduction of an Appeals Board and Medical panels against disputes.

The FoodWorks on nearby Queensberry Street was once part of an independent supermarket chain owned and operated by local Footscray family, the Sims. In their heyday, SSW Supermarkets (later Sims Supermarkets) could be found right across Melbourne’s Western suburbs. This photograph of the North Melbourne store, with its full trolley and overflowing shelves, speaks of abundance and Australia’s reputation as the ‘lucky country’.

In our ‘collective city’ surely everyone should have equal access to affordable healthy food? However, the reality is that food insecurity is a major issue for many Melbournians, especially in times of economic turmoil, such as when this photograph was taken, during Melbourne’s manufacturing collapse of the mid-seventies.

Even in recent years, the Covid pandemic and rising cost of living have seen 21% of Australian households experience severe food insecurity (2022 Foodbank Hunger Report).

This photo was taken in about 1963 in the assembly hall of a typical technical school of the time in Melbourne’s western suburbs. Sunshine Technical School (which has since amalgamated with five other schools to form Sunshine College as it is known today), played an important role in preparing students for work in local industry.

Accessing education is important for future development. The photograph shows the uniform approach to education, both in the student’s appearance and presumably behavioural standards. School communities can convey a sense of belonging for many whilst also providing routine and discipline.

The Olympic Village built in Heidelberg for the athletes from around the world who competed in the Games of the XVI Olympiad arguably provided Australia with its first taste of the multi-cultural society into which its cities were to develop.

Its entrance, lined with flags from the participant countries, is echoed today in numerous locations around Melbourne, such as the former Sandridge Railway Bridge over the Yarra River or Nicholson Street Footscray, where flags or other symbols are used to represent the diversity of the population.