Was Royal Park once one of Melbourne's roughest areas?

Updated

You only get one shot at a first impression.

Somebody should have told that to the bus driver who picked up new migrants in the 1950s and drove them through Royal Park, in the Melbourne suburb of Parkville, on their way to central Victoria.

"I have distinct memories of seeing shacks and humpies in what looked like an overcrowded dilapidated slum," says Sonya, our Curious Melburnian who arrived as a child from a high density post-war urban area in the Netherlands.

"Some older people told me the area was a notorious hiding place for those outside the law."

That image is at odds with the rolling green fields and bike paths you see today in Royal Park.

So what's the story? Was Royal Park once a slum?

A park for the people

Originally a camping ground of the Wurundjeri people, the 188 hectares of Royal Park is the largest of Melbourne's inner city parks.

On his final day in the colony in 1854, after 14 years of petitioning, then-governor Charles La Trobe's last order of business was to personally identify the boundaries of the park and set the space aside as a "recreational area".

His vision mostly holds true: before the construction of the golf course, netball and hockey centres, Royal Park had been home to an experimental farm, and a temporary grazing area for animals.

In 1861, it was the departure point of the ill-fated Burke and Wills trek to the Gulf of Carpentaria, and thousands of commuters now drive past the pair's memorial in the northern end of the park each day.

Camp Pell

During both world wars, Royal Park was used as a temporary army camp.

Following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour and the entry of the United States into World War II, the camp was used to house some of the 250,000 Americans stationed in Australia.

In February 1942, the first American airman killed on active service in Australia was Major Floyd J. Pell, who died helping to defend Darwin against a Japanese air attack.

Named in his honour, Parkville's 'Camp Pell' soon became notorious.

To better make Camp Pell home, the Americans named roads in Royal Park Bronx, Frisco and MacArthur, after five-star general Douglas MacArthur, who commanded the south-west Pacific.

General MacArthur famously said at the end of the war that "a great tragedy has ended and a great victory has been won" — words which may strike a chord with anyone who's taken on MacArthur Road at peak hour.

The landscape of Camp Pell was strewn with pyramid tents and prefabricated Nissen huts — tunnel-like structures made from half-cylinders of corrugated steel.

Aerial photos from the time gave a indication of the scale of the camp.

The Brownout murders

Among those who resided at Camp Pell during the WWII was a 24-year old from New Jersey, Private Edward Joseph Leonski, who — at the height of the war — became one of Melbourne's most-feared serial killers.

Leonski was dubbed the 'Brownout Strangler' because he carried out his murders under the cover of darkness.

In a harrowing two weeks in May 1942, he took the lives of three women: Ivy McLeod, Pauline Thompson, and Gladys Hosking, whose body was found just 350 metres from her boarding house in Royal Park.

Leonski was finally captured in Camp Pell, court-martialled and hanged, making him the only citizen of another country to be sentenced and executed on Australian soil under the laws of his own country.

After the war

When foreign control of Camp Pell ended with the war, the temporary army huts remained.

Under a policy of the housing commission, slums were cleared across Melbourne and the families who were evicted in the process required emergency accommodation.

Camp Pell was the stopgap solution, and what was supposed to be a one-year interim measure ultimately lasted for 10.

Conditions at Camp Pell may have been suitable for soldiers, but not so much for big, complex families down on their luck.

Upward of 3,000 people, thrown together in numbered areas, and who often referred to themselves as inmates, struggled with limited facilities.

The settlement came to be known as 'Camp Hell' and was known as one of Melbourne's roughest slums — maybe the roughest.

The minister for health and housing at the time defended the area, saying accommodation at Camp Pell was "better than slum dwellings".

One letter writer to The Age newspaper disagreed, pledging to donate 10 pounds to the children's hospital if the minister could identify a slum area with worse conditions.

Regular police visits

The public record is awash with stories of assault, infanticide, fire, stabbings, robbery and murder at Camp Pell.

In one instance, the state government had drawn up special legislation to deal with standover methods of one of the residents, Kelham Young.

Young was a notorious crook and thug whose criminal record was, to use the favoured parlance of the day, as long as his arm.

Young himself would be found dead outside one of the camp's huts in 1953.

The end of Camp Pell

In 1953, an editorial in The Argus newspaper pushed for the camp's closure.

"You don't need to mince words about Camp Pell," it read.

"Its survival is a disgrace to Melbourne and a measure of the failure of government in Victoria.

"Six hundred and twenty-nine family groups, a total of 3,000 people, live (if you can call it living!) in this squalid sink-hole."

As Parkville residents and the state at large looked on, Liberal Party leader Henry Bolte ensured the abolition of Camp Pell was a central election issue.

Following his 1955 victory, all residents were evicted within a year, but the "slum psychology" and stigma of having lived there remained.

It wasn't the rubbernecking of passers-by or Sonya, our Curious Melburnian, that expedited the camp's closure.

Instead, it was the possible disapproval of some more high-profile visitors that threatened to embarrass the state — Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip.

The royal couple visited in 1954 to inspect the city's preparations for the 1956 Olympics, which Prince Philip would attend.

Having a lawless slum that international — and royal! — visitors would pass perilously close to en route to the city's Olympic venues was something that simply would not do.

Royal Park today

With Camp Pell now a faded chapter in history, the area around Parkville is probably as close to lieutenant-governor La Trobe's original vision as it's ever been.

It's an area of green spaces and open grassland nestled amongst high-density housing, medical facilities and high-rises.

Some elements remain from the days of Camp Pell remain. As you travel along Brens Drive towards the State Netball and Hockey Centre, you pass through some old guardhouses that date back to those times.

These days, the sounds of bicycles and trams have replaced the shouting of drill sergeants and the stomping of marching boots.

There's little left that identifies the area as criminal hotspot either, but in a place like Melbourne there's always somebody with a long memory.

Daniel Burt is senior writer for the ABC's Hard Quiz.

Who asked this question? Sonya has clear memories of what looked like a slum when she first saw the area around Royal Park as a child migrant in the 1950s. She wanted to know the history of the area and whether it was true it was a no-go zone for police.

Topics: community-and-society, history, states-and-territories, parkville-3052, vic, melbourne-3000

First posted