Historical information

Several boathouses were built in Kew and Fairfield in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They included Chipperfield’s ‘Moorings’ and floating pontoon. The substantial two-storey house was named the Moorings, and incorporated an upper storey residence. The Moorings was almost washed away in the 1916 floods, and in 1934 almost totally submerged when the Yarra River rose 26 feet in 14 hours. Following the 1934 flood, the house was restored. The floating pontoon, sometimes referred to as a ‘kiosk’ or ‘canteen’, was used to store canoes. Both were removed in 1972 for the construction of the Eastern Freeway.

Significance

This work forms part of the collection assembled by the historian Dorothy Rogers, that was donated to the Kew Historical Society by her son John Rogers in 2015. The manuscripts, photographs, maps, and documents were sourced by her from both family and local collections or produced as references for her print publications. Many were directly used by Rogers in writing ‘Lovely Old Homes of Kew’ (1961) and 'A History of Kew' (1973), or the numerous articles on local history that she produced for suburban newspapers. Most of the photographs in the collection include detailed annotations in her hand. The Rogers Collection provides a comprehensive insight into the working habits of a historian in the 1960s and 1970s. Together it forms the largest privately-donated collection within the archives of the Kew Historical Society.

Physical description

A view of flooded areas in North Kew in the flood of 1934.

Inscriptions & markings

Willsmere Bridge. Chipperfields. 1934 flood