Ardeer Australia (April 2000)

[Archivist]

From: "hewmac" <hewmac@xxx.au>
To: <threetowners@topica.com>
Sent: Wednesday, April 05, 2000
Subject: [3T] Ardeer

We past through Ardeer recently and noticed those tell-tale earth mounds that explosives manufacturers put round each individual building so that if there is an explosion it all goes upwards. The ARDEER I refer to is a suburb of Melbourne where ICI, now named 'ORICA'.

Consider this :
There is a Stevenston Street in the Melbourne suburb of Deer Park which adjoins the suburb of Ardeer. Could the suburb of Deer Park have got its name from the Deer Park Avenue in Stevenston, Scotland?

In addition there is a Trelawny Place in St. Albans also a nearby suburb to Ardeer in Melbourne. Could Trelawny Place be named after Trelawney Terrace in Stevenston, Scotland?

The names "Stevenston" and "Trelawny" occur once only in street names in Melbourne - and all in this area.

Does anyone know anything about a connection between the two Nobel explosive
plants. Did employees of ICI Stevenston come to Australia to set up the Australian factory?

Hugh McCallum


Forwarded by <hewmac@xxxx.com.au>
To: <threetowners@topica.com>
Sent: Monday, September 18, 2000

Hugh,

As a co-subsciber to GSV-L at rootsweb.com I hope the following will be of additional interest re your note of 5 April, 2000, and Chrisy Dennis's of 6 April, 2000.

1.The manufacture of explosives (nitroglycerine based) by Messrs Jones & Scott commenced on the site you saw at what is now Deer Park in 1874 - only one or two years after Alfred Nobel commenced at Ardeer, Ayrshire.By 1899 the factory was owned by Nobel Australasia which became part of ICI Australia when it was formed in 1928.

2.The Melbourne Hunt Club, which kept deer for hunting in the area, at one time(1880's) used The Hunt Club Hotel as its headquarters. The hotel building, still called the Hunt Club, is in an excellent state of preservation and is used by Brimbank City Council as a Community Arts Centre. It is located on the South side of Ballararat Road, 300m east of Station Street.

3.Ardeer Railway Station was built in 1935, but paid for by ICI, as essentially its only use was to bring workers to the ICI Site. I believe ICI therefore had "naming rights" and nominated the name as "Ardeer" after the parent Company's major explosives manufacturing site in Ardeer , Ayrshire, and the name of the suburb followed. The Station was then situated on ICI property on what is now Tilburn Road, immediately west of Fitzgerald Road. It was later (when?) moved to its current site in Forrest Road.

4.With regard to English and Scottish names, an interesting sample is the housing estate on the north west corner of Ballarat Road and Station Street, Deer Park - north of Kororoit Creek. This estate was developed and the houses built by ICI in order to entice workers to the area to work at the ICI Site. A building society was set up to enable employees to purchase the houses. The streets were all named after ICI towns in England and Scotland eg Billingham,Earlsfield, Widnes, Dumfries, Runcorn, Huddersfield, Slough, Welwyn, Irvine, Wandsworth, Blackley, Stoke, Crosslee, Winnington, Stevenston etc.The most desirable location- along the Kororoit Creek- is Millbank Drive, named after Millbank, along the Thames in the West End of London where ICI's world headquarters was, and still is!

5. Approximately three years ago, ICI PLC sold off the whole of its Australian subsidiary which was then renamed Orica.

6. More information is available at Melbourne's Living Museum of the West (Gary Vines, and others, as Chrisy Dennis advised), and in the Orica historic archives, via the Orica Information & Library Services Centre, Newsom Street, Ascot Vale.

All the best...............David Meale