hotham hill neighbourhood association

 

I am not entirely sure of the date of this map (is it a map?) but it was in amongst the early North Melbourne Association materials in the State Library (these, perhaps counterintuitively, are in the Richmond Association files - because Anthea and David Eyres, who were formative in the NMA, moved to Richmond in the late 60s and clearly took the early stuff with them, for reasons unclear). Anyway, what intrigues me is this Hotham Hill Neighbourhood Association stuff, established 1963, so three years before the North Melbourne one. I can't find any information on them anywhere, to the extent that this is the only mention I have ever seen of them. There must be something!

The NMA was initiated by people who massed, largely, around the intersection of Abbotsford and Haines St; Haines is north of Arden, so, these NMA people were right on the boundary of their 'terrain', which is interesting in itself given that a lot of what has been asked about the NMA and similar residents activist groups of the 1960s-early 70s (by me and others) is the extent to which they believed and/or could justify their claim to be a representative voice for the whole community, given that the majority of the community was low-waged, unheard, unused to making demands about their rights or their environment; and the residents activist organisers were generally middle-class, used to being taken notice of and so on. 

It's also interesting that these two groups, according to whoever drew this diagram, were represented as having a line of communication with the major organisations controlling planning and services in the area. Are those pink arrows aspirational?