History
With the establishment of Melbourne in 1835, the first deaths in the colony were buried on high ground between William and King Streets, in what was colloquially called Burial Hill. The hill had panoramic views of the small colony, the Yarra River and Port Phillip.
- 1838 - Melbourne cemetery was marked out in what is now the Queen Victoria market, and burials continued at that location.
- 1839 - Superintendent Charles La Trobe first included the site as part of the green belt encircling Melbourne which included Batman's Hill, Carlton Gardens, Fitzroy Gardens, Treasury Gardens and the Kings Domain.
- 1840 - a flagstaff was erected on the hill as part of a signalling system between the town and ships in the Port of Melbourne. The flagstaff proved too small and the following year a fifty foot (15 m) flagstaff was erected.
- 11 November 1850: site of announcement of Victoria’s Separation from the Colony of New South Wales, resulting in celebrations with a huge bonfire with about 5,000 townspeople in attendance.
- 1853- establishment of the Melbourne cemetery
- 1857 - cutting excavated to ease the gradient of King Street. This created the bluestone retaining wall of the high bank along the western boundary.
- 1857-1863 - A Magnetic Observatory and Weather Station was established by Georg von Neumayer on the hilltop. William John Wills worked here as an assistant before being appointed to the Burke and Wills expedition. The observatory moved to the Kings Domain when the Melbourne Observatory was established, as iron in the buildings surrounding Flagstaff Hill were affecting Neumayer's magnetic observations.
- 1860s - the telegraph supersedes signalling by flags.
- 1862 - West Melbourne residents petition the government to turn the hill into public gardens or recreation reserve. Clement Hodgkinson, the Deputy Surveyor-General in charge of city parks, prepared a plan for the gardens and directed its implementation.The Fitzroy and Treasury Gardens were also designed by him.
- 1871 - Memorial to Melbourne’s pioneers erected.
- 1873 - Gardens permanently reserved
- 1880 - establishment of path network, lawns, trees and flowerbeds.
- October 9, 1917 - the City of Melbourne was appointed responsible for the Flagstaff Gardens.
- 1918 - children’s playground established, one of the first in Melbourne.
- 23 March 2004 - gardens formally added to the Victorian Heritage Register.
Read more about this topic: Flagstaff Gardens
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“... in America ... children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“The history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations ... all of which have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)