On the weekend Perry and I did a little wander down Moonee Ponds Creek almost to Docklands to check out whether there's any material evidence left of the loading dock for coal from the Railway Canal to the Spencer St railyards. We found this. I mean, really I just don't know. It seems weird to imagine that no-one had ever taken away this jumble of stone from what seems likely to have been the site of the dock, in the century plus since it was decreed redundant. But on the other hand, did they have any reason to take it away, and did anyone really need or want this little bit of the creek bank for anything else?
The Railway Canal was a big project of the late 19th century which doesn't really seem to have been used at all much after about 1910. It's essentially one of the few canal projects in Melbourne to aid industry/infrastructure, curious that it was implemented to assist railways which had essentially supplanted canals long before this time. But the logistics made a certain amount of sense. But clearly it was pretty quickly revealed as a folly, and contributed to the ruination of the creek.
To reiterate - I understand this amateur urban archaeology could well be way off. Way off.
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