yarraville to tottenham along stony creek

Perry and I decided to take a walk from Yarraville to Tottenham today. Actually, we decided we would walk to Sunshine but my foot hurt too much (don't ask) and I abbreviated the operation. Perry didn't mind. He was at the stop and sniff everything stage of the walk anyway. 

As so often happens when I uploaded the photos here they all came out in the reverse order I took them, but whatever, doesn't matter does it. Here are a few pictures from the Tott end, a bunch of houses I like to imagine are Anders Hansen homes from the late 20s-early 30s but I don't really know that, except he was the main builder in that area and these houses are all more or less the same dimensions and same age. This boarded-up one is interesting...

I love this brick 'n' weatherboard creation it's rad as:

This 'is what it is'... 

I'm in a guessing mood (after about 3/4 hour of fruitless research) so I'm going to say this could once have been the premises of Riverside Manufacturers. It was apparently a big concern in Paramount Rd, Tottenham, in the middle of last century. 

I like to document Pam the Bird wherever/whenever. 

I have a very soft spot (as Rowena Wallace's character on Cop Shop, Pamela, said to George Mallaby as Glenn in an episode I just watched - 'in the head' - for late period Housing Commission homes, which is what I think these might be, in a dead end street in Yarraville. They're nice.

A-a-a-a-anyway, it was a decent enough walk, Perry was extremely well-behaved, it was too hot and glary, which is just life going forward I suppose, I mentioned the bit about the sore foot, fuck that, 

the area formerly known as tottenham: 3 - sredna st

I'm trying to find details on Anders M. Hansen, the builder - timberyard owner - Mayor of Footscray who built a lot of homes in Footscray. There's not a lot on him. I know he died in the 50s. I am not even going to bore us both with the meagre information I do know. Anyway, he obviously subdivided and built Sredna St. For some weird reason I thought the area was known as Tottenham until recently but I was apparently wrong in this assumption and Tottenham - the name of the nearby railway station - is only applicable to the industrial area that starts just west of Sredna st and according to Wikipedia has a population of 0. 

This is the factory at the end of Sredna St. 

 Here are a few of the houses which are presumably Hansen originals.

In a moment of fancy I thought maybe the emblem below meant 'AH' for Anders Hansen but since it's only on one of the houses, it probably doesn't mean that. 

Surely that's enough West Footscray, the area not actually formerly known as Tottenham except by me, for today. 

the area formerly known as tottenham: 2 - stony creek

So for a creek that has apparently a history of extreme flooding...  

Stony Creek has a lot of properties very close to its edge, far closer than most urban creeks I am familiar with. I would have liked to traverse more of SC (so I probably should've - oh well, some other day). 

The part of the creek west of Paramount Rd which has no path or anything just thick undergrowth and a lot of blackberries.  

the area formerly known as tottenham - 1: hex st

I wish I knew where to find this now (there is an odd disjunct between when the Age runs out in newspapers.com - 2000 - and when the Age starts being searchable on its own website - I guess around 2006-7 but it's a terrible search function) but I know that once there was an article in the Age about Hex St, Tottenham (as it was then known) which apparently contained the cheapest houses in Melbourne. I believe I drove there so it must have been around 2001-3 or 4 (because I didn't get my license till around then). I just wanted to see how terrible a really cheap street could be, and I am sure I was not the only one. I see in the Age listings for 2000 that homes in Hex St sold for around $170 000.  

Anyway it looked fine to me. I think the weirdest thing about it overall was that it was called Hex St. I mean, is that the word for anything other than a curse? There are a few other Hex Streets in the world - there's a couple in the US and one in South Africa - I still say it's a super weird name for a street. 

But, Hex St in 2024 is an extremely nice ordinary suburban street. 

This house below surprised me, it suggests Hex St is a lot older than I thought. I assumed 1920s at earliest but unless this house predates the street, you'd have to guess pre-WWI. 

I don't know whether the individual below is a hex maker or hex recipient

'Can't wait for part 2 of this series'