Reading Resource: Reimagining homeland–Little Lon

We all do it at one time or another – give voice to a sense of homeliness to the area where we grew up. When asked ‘Where do you live?’ we answer ‘Brissie’, or ‘Dandy’, or ‘the Island’. Naming a place colloquially is a way of determining our sense of territory, our sense of belonging.

Originally Little Lon was such a place, an idiom naming the people who lived in the Melbourne block of laneways and alleys bordered by Spring, Exhibition, La Trobe and Lonsdale Streets. Little Lon plainly described where these residents came from, their place. By the 1890s the locality had already been settled for nearly 50 years, moving from weatherboard dwellings of two rooms, to stone and brick houses and shops, to a multicultural community of Italians and Syrians, Chinese, Germans, Indians and Irish―who were building their new life together as a community.

Two roomed houses served as home for large and extended families. Some started their own business as cabinet makers or ice cream makers. They lived alongside musicians and working girls.

17 Casselden Place is
Heritage listed. ©CM2010

However Little Lon, this homeland, this place for workers and families who settled here from all parts of the globe, became notorious. The living conditions were regarded by many Melbournians as primitive, unsanitary, poverty stricken and, we can only imagine at times, barbaric.

This was in part because of much sensationalised coverage from the media, but there is no doubt some observations were grounded in truth. Subsequently, the tag ‘Little Lon’ settled into the public consciousness as the place of Melbourne’s underbelly, a core of slumdom. By the time CJ Dennis centred his sentimental bloke there, it was regarded merely as a place for ‘low degraded broots’ where roughs ‘deals it out wiv bricks and boots’1

The old Governor
Bourke Hotel. ©CM2010

As an orchestrated construct, Little Lon became the dividing line between the mainstream homeland and the foreign, shadowy badland where thugs ran rampant. The glass and bottle gang existed, as did the local push. The view of Little Lon became fixed. It became the unofficial name for Melbourne’s depraved slums. It is not surprising that mission workers penetrated the place with zeal in order to rescue the neglected and fallen.

Mother Mary McKillop, canonised as a saint by the Roman Catholic church set up a mission there in 1891. The Salvation Army ran Hope Hall. Selina Sutherland, who was secretary of the Scots Church Neglected Children’s Aid Society did extraordinary work to help local children.

By the 1950s the workplaces had shut down and the immigrant communities had moved onwards (and upwards). Little Lon vanished as a community, the slums cleared in parts, built over in others. They were well-nigh erased from existence. Only a few buildings remain from the period.

Cumberland Place, home to Carlo’s Ice Cream factory, was demolished in 1978 to make way for a multistorey construction which has since been demolished and rebuilt over. Little Lon, as Lonnie and his friends may have known it, has sunk into the recesses of our imagination.

I wonder if we can ever really understand how the Little Lon locals felt about their community. Most certainly our modern view of Little Lon has shifted from the earlier perceptions and labelling. A series of archaeological digs over the last 30 years and a vast collection of artefacts held at Museum Victoria and Heritage Victoria have helped us to better understand the diversity of Little Lon inhabitants. We know from the items uncovered that this was a place where parents carved dolls out of wood for their children and boiled down goat bones so the children could play a game of Knucklebone or Jacks.

In the 21st century we may remember Little Lon as a place where the conditions were harsh, but we cannot forget–nor should we–that Little Lon was indeed ‘home’ to the people who lived there. They raised families, worked, ran businesses, partied, had dreams, made plans for the future. We can only imagine that this place of shadows in the heart of Marvellous Melbourne had its share of sunlight as well.

ENDNOTE

1. Dennis CJ, The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke, 1915
©Chrissie Michaels is the author of the YA novel, In Lonnie’s Shadow published by Ford Street Publishing.

Further Research

After your reading of In Lonnie’s Shadow, link the setting with an event:

What circumstances caused Daisy to live at the Leitrim hotel?
What was the significance of the Governor Bourke hotel to Pearl?
Several scenes in the novel take place in buildings which once existed in Marvellous

Melbourne. Find out what happens between:

Lonnie and Rose at the Eastern Market
Lonnie, Rose and Billy at the Australian Building
Lonnie and Rose at the Federal Coffee Palace.