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Whelan the Wrecker

For nearly a century, ‘Whelan the Wrecker’ was a Melbourne institution. No other company could lay claim to demolishing more of Melbourne than Whelan’s, which operated from 1892 to 1991*. And it all started with Jim Whelan who carted goods for a living. During the 1880’s, credit was easily available. And a Scotsman named Alexander […]

For nearly a century, ‘Whelan the Wrecker’ was a Melbourne institution. No other company could lay claim to demolishing more of Melbourne than Whelan’s, which operated from 1892 to 1991*. And it all started with Jim Whelan who carted goods for a living.

During the 1880’s, credit was easily available. And a Scotsman named Alexander Sturrock decided to make some money out of the boom by purchasing a block of land in Brunswick and having it subdivided to accommodate 19 weatherboard cottages. The trouble was that owing to the boom, there was a gross over-supply of housing. By 1892, Sturrock’s houses were still largely unoccupied and were the target of vandals and vagrants. So he decided to cut his losses, and accepted £10 each from Jim Whelan who demolished them and sold the wood for scrap, which was in short supply at the time.

And that is how Jim Whelan started his ‘timber business’. To keep his yard stocked, he demolished buildings. The business simply grew from there.

In A City Lost and Found: Whelan the Wrecker’s Melbourne, Robyn Annear traces the history of the business of ‘Whelan the Wrecker’, the buildings that they demolished and the people who occupied them.

We learn of the early projects and the unique way that Whelan had his men demolish a building – buy removing the roof, ceilings and floors and then knocking down the brick walls manually. It was dangerous and hard work, with plenty of risks. Later, more advanced and safer methods of demolition were employed.

One of the most fascinating tales in A City Lost and Found relates to the demolition of the Colonial Mutual Life (CML) Building on the corner of Elizabeth and Collins Streets. This was the grandest of all buildings, literally built to last forever. When Whelan’s received the demolition job in 1960, they grossly underestimated the quality of construction. CML took a lot longer than anyone ever expected to bring to the ground and the company lost a lot of money in the process. In fact the whole saga makes for such a fascinating story that one almost feels sorry for the demolishers, rather than a sense of sadness at losing one of the city’s finest buildings.

One of the most bizarre stories relates to a City of Melbourne bi-law, enacted in 1951 to ban the cast-iron verandah (in favour of the cantilever type). In fact, the law required that all buildings in the city centre had to have them demolished, despite their cultural significance. Whelan’s received the majority of verandah-pulling jobs, but it was a controversial and extreme response to the ‘danger’ that someone may injure themselves on a pole. Sadly, Melbourne has still not recovered from the vandalism of 1951, with cast-iron verandahs remaining a rarity in the centre of Melbourne.

Whelan’s tore down many of Melbourne’s finest buildings. People still feel anger when they consider what was destroyed in the name of ‘progress’. The book does chart the rise of the ‘heritage movement’ in the 1960’s and 1970’s, but is perhaps kinder to the demolishers than most people would consider appropriate. And the controversy of midnight demolitions (designed to wreck just enough of a building to prevent the granting of a last-minute heritage order) was hardly touched upon. This despite Whelan’s active role in the practice.

The final chapters of the book chart the advent of heritage legislation in the 1980’s, which is both seen as a positive development and a decision that was made way too late.
The odd formatting of chapters in this book still defy logic, and the author’s sudden change to a colloquial style of writing (as if it were a spoken conversation) is confusing at points, but overall I enjoyed the book. A City Lost and Found makes for a fascinating read and is a must-have for anyone interested in Melbourne’s heritage.

Annear, R. (2005) A City Lost and Found: Whelan the Wrecker’s Melbourne. Black Inc. Books, Melbourne.
ISBN 1 86395 389 2

Image credits: 1. CML Building in 1890. 2. Elizabeth Street in 1919 with cast-iron verandahs. State Library of Victoria collection.

*Delta Demolitions purchased the name Whelan the Wrecker for $50,000 when the original business went into liquidation.

   

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