Frances has borrowed "Walk into History 1" published by the Malvern Historical Society in 2009. I think there are later titles in a series. This one covers 6 walks in Toorak, Malvern and Glen Iris. Our first foray was the first walk, in Toorak, which was described as 'hilly' and taking 1.5 hours. We took almost exactly 90 minutes and did notice a slope in a couple of places, but nothing extreme like (eg) Fitzroy Street, St Kilda.
The start was easy to reach as it was simply a matter of hopping on a 72 tram outside the front door and getting off at the corner of Glenferrie and Malvern Rds - one left turn onto Commercial Rd and then straight!
Here is a map downloaded from eBird of our route. I had walked ~100m before starting eBird: the start and finish were in the same place. (Birds were barely evident, but they were not the objective of the outing. Perhaps this miserable list is a baseline?) On the subject of things not seen, Toorak Tractors - ie Range Rovers - were absent.
Overall I think the book did a pretty good job, A couple of nitpicks - possibly just traps for senile players - will appear below.
I didn't start taking photographs until we were on the main part of Hopetoun Rd. This is described (in a real estate placard - see below) as the most desirable street in the area. My suspicion is that might be realtor-speak for humungous old houses that cost a fortune both to buy and maintain. There was certainly a lot of (paid) garden maintenance happening while we were there. This is an example of ostentation not covered in the book.
Back to Olde England?
As we went along Hopetoun Rd there was a small amount of confusion as the book only had one entry for about 1 km of street. That was a long paragraph and when peered at closely included comments on 5 -6 of the dwellings. They could improve the presentation in this regard (but possibly might make the structure of book as whole a ;little complicated.
A interesting sculpture in a front yard. Looks more like a quarterback than an Australian Rules player.
We have returned the book to the Stonnington Library so I am not sure which place this was. Trying to keep track of what was where is difficult. Big!
I tried clicking on the QR codes on a few agents signs. This place - 5 beds, 4 baths and 5 car spaces - had an indicative price range of $56-64m! We'll have 2 - 1 for a holiday home!
This was nearly at Toorak Rd and the book entry reckoned the original letter box was notable. As far as wee could see is was gone, rather than notable.
An interesting wall.
In about 1989 we went to Quebec City and Montreal and did historic walks in both cities. In the former the stops on the walk were at historic buildings that had been preserved. In the latter everything was the "
site of a magnificent ..." replaced by a car park or department store. A few of the places in this walk were redolent of the Montreal model including 3 Benson Ave.
This is what the book talked about and here is the current situation .
One of the bigger places on Glenferry Rd.
An interesting walk and an insight to how the top end of town live. We shall do more of the walks in the future.
Just for interest, as we started I saw a well formed con-trail going in a strange direction - basically straight West. Looking it up on Flight Radar it turned to be from Sydney, heading for Johannesburg on a rather southerly option. The passengers might get to see some icebergs! The aircraft was about 30km West of us at the time - at times at Mallacoota we can see trails of aircraft at Bonang, over 100kms away.
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