Internal Reserves: St Phillack Reserve, Rawson, Victoria

The internal reserve is most definitely a feature derived from early 20^th century town planning. Our hypothesis, broadly speaking, is that the planners of that era were of the opinion that internal reserves gave residents of planned environments agency to shape not only their local public space but also the character and purpose of their community. However, changes in both western society (from communal ideal to individual, inward-focused family) and planning practice (little was built or designed during the 1930s and 40s, meaning that many estates designed in the 1920s or earlier were still being populated in the 1950s) left residents at best uncertain about the internal reserves they had inherited, and at worst antipathetic towards them.

It is always surprising, then, when late 20^th century designs which are not directly related to new urbanism include internal reserves. The small town of Rawson – 120 homes in less than 20 streets in the west Gippsland area of Victoria, close to the well-known gold mining ‘ghost town’ of Walhalla – was designed by Don Hendry Fulton and commenced in the late 1970s by the Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works, a long standing and for much of its existence very powerful semi-autonomous state government body. Though this was almost certainly not obvious at the time, the MMBW was at this point in its last decade of existence.

Rawson was built to house those working on the nearby Thomson Dam, with dormitories constructed for labourers and relatively grand homes for professional staff. Rawson, at its peak, housed 1500 people, an article in the Melbourne Age by Barbara Fih (‘The town that is too good to stay alive, Age 15 May 1985 p. 3) tells us. Fih also recounts that the MMBW ‘built a 25-metre swimming pool, squash courts, three tennis courts, a shopping centre, oval, recreation hall with a basketball court in it, a primary school and reserve.’ The town ran at capacity for two years until May 1983, when the dam was opened after which the population quickly dwindled and the houses were sold off. Public services were opened to tender with the MMBW: the local petrol station, as one example, was advertised as available for lease with the option to purchase (The Age, Wednesday 20 June 1984, p. 28).

The ‘reserve’ Fih mentions is probably not the internal reserve of interest to this blog, but a sports and recreation reserve on Tyers-Walhalla Road. Even Google Maps seems resistant to recognizing the St Phillack Reserve, which is however featured on Baw Baw Shire’s website and noted for featuring a ‘playground’ and ‘walking trails unpaved’. Which is all true! However, confusingly, the reserve is not zoned as open space (though clearly used and, as mentioned, labeled as such).

The space is best described as an off-street children’s playground and dog park (though in truth the streets of Rawson seem to be rarely troubled by traffic). The play equipment, though not new, is in good condition. What is perhaps most interesting about the site in terms of its design is that it features a large number of old and tall trees, and while no doubt the entire Rawson area was until quite recently covered in similar vegetation, in this instance it is clear that the decision was made that an interior park space would be an opportunity to retain trees on site.

Many of the local homes feature transparent (usually, chicken wire) back fences and many also have gates into the reserve, which has three entrances. Cooper’s Creek ‘begins’ immediately south of the St Phillack Reserve but does not appear to have ever run through the land the reserve is currently located on.

A note about names: The name St Phillack is apparently that of a mountain. The nearby street Von Meuller Drive commemorates noted landscape gardener and botanist Ferdinand von Mueller (note – the commemoration misspells his name!) who climbed Mount Baw Baw. Another nearby mountain, Mt. Selma, is the inspiration for Selma Drive. Other streets recall the area’s gold mining history: Morning Star Crescent is named for the Morning Star Gold Battery site, a significant heritage location proximate to Walhalla, and Little Boy Crescent the goldfields tramway of that name. Stander Drive is after a creek. The town itself is named for a local landowning family; it was a source of some controversy at the time of creation, as the MMBW favoured the name Robertson after chief engineer A. G. Robertson (some locals are reported in a 1979 Age article to have favoured Parker Corner, apparently an extant local place name - though MMBW advertising from the late 1970s renders this as Barker's Corner) (Steve Harris and Kerry Wakefield, ‘Town hits problems’, Melbourne Age 26 April 1979 p. 13).

View it here. More pictures below.