The Newmarket Saleyards were situated in the suburbs of Kensington and Flemington, about 5km from the Melbourne CBD. It had been in existence since the year 1858, eventually the Saleyards and the City Abattoirs were officially built by the year 1861 on 57 acres of land. Which cost 98,000 pounds. The Saleyards had been the livestock trading market for 130 years, at one time described as the largest supply of sheep and cattle in the world. The area of the Saleyards was approximately 10 hectares and the City Abattoirs was approximately 23 hectares. The Saleyards were officially closed on the 26th, March 1987. Today the site has been transformed into a medium density residential estate, known as the Kensington Banks, where building is still in developing stages.
These pictures were taken from the display panel at entrance gate to today's preserved Stock Route, they reflect what were the Newmarket Saleyards.
Some of the people you would find at the Saleyards were drovers, auctioneers, agents and buyers. Some of the big buyers were the export firms, like Angliss, Simms Coopers, Flemington Reynolds, Bothwicks, Colonial Meat, Gilbertsons and Smorgans. In a season they would account for three quarters of sales at the Saleyards, taking tens of thousands of heads at a time. On any busy trading days there would be 200 to 300 buyers at the Saleyards, in its time many were wholesale butchers and master butchers. Buyers and other people associated with the sale had to make their judgement very quickly, as there was only short time for each pen auction. A pen of lambs had to be sold in about half a minute. On one day it was known that one firm of stock agents alone had accounts with over 80 individual buyers.
The sales at Newmarket Saleyards were always at particular days as follows: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Later on Fridays' sales were brought forward to Thursdays.
The drovers that worked at the Saleyards generally started at around 6:30am or 7:30am and would finish between 3pm and 5pm, working five days a week. Drovers were usually responsible for unloading animals from trucks and into their sale pens, most of these drovers were employed by the stock and station agents who worked from the market offices. Some drovers did most of the work during the night. Drovers would work on their own with 2-4 dogs, drovers got on with each other well and they drank together in their preferred local pubs, they also got on well with master butchers, truck drivers and others who worked at the Saleyards.
Drovers were hardy men who worked in all conditions; heat, rain, frost and their horses and dogs were as hardy as they were. In the late 1940's to early 1960's drovers were seen at the rail yards at very early hours in the mornings waiting for their stock assigned to them by the stock agents. They had a room with an open fireplace in which to wait and their dogs and horses were never far away from them.
Photographs courtesy of The
Melbourne Times.
The railway line linked to the Saleyards in those days, the railway to the truck yards at Newmarket were used everyday of the week when the Saleyards were busy. The trains would run down almost to Kensington station and have to back up into the siding where they would be unloaded one at the time, as soon as one was unloaded another would be arriving. The mode of stock transport has changed considerably since the early days of the Newmarket Saleyards; in the early 1900's the greater majority of stock transported to Newmarket were by rail, by 1950's approximately 60% of stock transported to Newmarket came by road. In the 1980's virtually all stock (99.5%) were transported to Newmarket by road.
The Newmarket Saleyards had always been the principal livestock centre of the state, at its peak period in the 1940's the highest annual sheep and lamb yardings year ending September 1944, as were 6,206,550 heads. At the time it was claimed to be the best and most stable market in Australia, and once described as the largest supply of sheep and cattle in the world.
In 1897 the people of Flemington wanted the Saleyards and The City of Abattoirs to be removed because they were deemed unsightly in their fast growing municipality. But it survived until ninety years later in 1987 the Melbourne City Council authorised the closure of the Saleyards because state government policy was that all yards had to be self-sufficient, the MCC and the government had subsidised the Saleyards for years. Another reason for the closure of the Saleyards was that the residents had been complaining about the smell of manure in the area and the dilapidated state of the yards.
The City of Melbourne Employment
Trust Ltd was appointed the job of dismantling the yards in 1987 and employed
100 people from surrounding suburbs. Most were long term unemployed locals as
part of an employment initiative program. The idea of recycling old materials
was welcomed, old timber, furniture, hand made hinges, nails, nuts and bolts
were removed and will be reused or sold. It is estimated that there were 1.6
million bluestone pitchers on the Saleyards, most of these were carefully taken
out of the ground: 480,000 to council depots, another 480,000 for reuse on
the project site and the remaining 700,000 were sold to the public at $2.50
each.
This old timber post formed the entrance to the stock route at Racecourse Road.
After 130 years of cattle trading, the Newmarket Saleyards were handed back to the state government to be redeveloped into a private and public housing estate under the Lynch's Bridge Project. The reconstruction of 80 hectares of land cost $100 million over 10 years, some old office buildings have been retained and have been extensively renovated like the administration offices, which now house the Kensington Community High School. The original stock-route now provides a pleasant walk from Racecourse Rd to the edge of the Maribyrnong River and across Lynches Bridge into Footscray. About 40% of the estate will be public housing which includes 60 units for elderly people, a nursing home and a hostel for the elderly. Also bike tracks, and park areas, will be included in the site. Today the site known as Kensington Banks it is described as Australia largest city living project which consists of 1000 homes to be built, the development of the site will be released in seven stages. According to the Kensington Banks Newsletter March 1995 issue 2, the project was total value is approximately $200 million. And is the partnership between leading home builder Pioneer Homes Australia, the Federal Government and the Victorian Government with the close cooperation with the City of Melbourne.
Mr. Howe (the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Housing and Regional Development) said the Kensington Banks project embodied the key goals of the Building Better Cities program. It was also making a significant contribution to the ongoing revitalisation of Melbourne's inner suburbs, he went on to praise the support of the Federal Government, Pioneer Homes Australia, the Victorian Government and a wide range of other public and private sector organizations for their involvement in the project. He also said that this project will set an example for other inner urban redevelopment projects in Australia.
The housing development of the Kensington Banks will be achieved with the help of latest planning techniques, innovative housing solutions will includes terrace houses, mews, studio apartments and town houses on individual titles linked by the historic bluestones paved Stock Route and complementary open space corridors. It has been planned to ensure optimum house orientation to maximise the benefits of sunlight and energy efficiency, while the design of homes will emphasis on the privacy and appearance as well.
Artist Ms Elizabeth McKinnon was commissioned to create the mosaic mural to line the walls of what is now a pedestrian underpass beneath Epsom Rd. The portraits of people and the depictions of animals tell much about the day-to-day life at the Newmarket Saleyards over its 130 years history.
A brief summary of an interview conducted by Bryan Macnamara with Roy North on 3rd July 1984.
Roy was a drover at Angliss for 27 years at the Newmarket trucking yards, he started working for them in 1946. When asked: to get a job as a drover what do you need to have?, Roy replied: to get a job as a drover you must have a dog (dog which would work with sheep or cattle). There would be 40 drovers worked together as a team, at anytime among the team there would be 8 stock horses to handle the cattle when they shift the cattle. Anyone who was handling stock, plus butchers and labourers would be in the union (the meat industry), other unions were for other workers as well. The company that Roy worked for supplied everything except for his dog and it's collar and chain. Roy recalled one time he and the team were handled 6,000 sheep, unloaded at Newmarket railyard siding going down the stock route in Epsom Rd and they would spread between Ascot Vale Rd down to Epsom Rd. Stock that broke away from the mob were common, they would go through Newmarket shopping centre, Newmarket railway station. One day the railway station was closed for three hours because of this. The council then decided to do something about this, construction of the overhead bridge began so that we (drovers) would not come out onto Ascot Vale Rd or Epsom Rd at all with their stocks. Roy thought it was the best decision.
(the print format of this interview was several pages in length, the above brief covered only a portion of it).
click here for more pictures PHOTO GALLERY
References: Melbourne City Libraries, MCC, Living Museum of the West, Essendon Gazette 1989, Kensington Banks Newsletter 1995 issue 2, The Melbourne Times 1987, The Age 1972, 1985, 1986, 1987, The Herald 1987, 1989.