Historical information
Dr Michele Matthews has been a local and social historian for nearly three decades since she first used correspondence held by the then Bendigo City Council for her Honours thesis. She is an ardent advocate for the use of local history records to tell Victorian and Australian history from a grassroots perspective. Michele’s MA thesis, ‘A forgotten “Father” of Federation: Sir John Quick 1852‑1911’ (2003), and her PhD thesis, ‘Survivors, schemes, Samaritans and shareholders: the impact of the Great Depression on Bendigo and District 1925‑1935’ (2007), both drew heavily on Bendigo and district records.
Physical description
Michele Matthews Collection: PHD Research - Relief during the great depression
This item includes the following documents:
8672.43a The document is a letter dated 22 November 1932 from the Town Clerk to the Secretary of the Public Works Department in Melbourne. It confirms that the Council accepts the conditions of the Victorian Government's Christmas Relief Work Scheme, under which £1,500 had been allocated to the municipality to provide employment for registered unemployed people before Christmas.
The Council explains that it will supplement the government grant with an additional £574 of its own funds. The proposed program is intended to employ approximately 200 workers, including labourers, painters, carpenters and concreters, on projects that are described as being of a permanent nature and outside the normal municipal works program. The letter emphasises that these projects will provide meaningful employment while also improving local infrastructure.
The schedule of works includes a range of road construction and improvement projects. These include extending Hargreaves Street into Panton Street with a flood crossing and pipe culvert, constructing Murphy Street and repairing a large culvert, cutting down Comet Hill on Holmes Road to improve traffic visibility, constructing Hodgkinson Street, widening the intersection of Howard, Reginald and Harkness Streets, and removing stone outcrops and cutting back the embankment on Mackenzie Street.
In addition to road works, the proposal includes municipal maintenance projects such as demolishing the old lock-up and sheds, screening material for top dressing and trimming paths in Rosalind Park, removing grass and vegetation from residential roads, and cleaning and repainting the exterior woodwork of the Town Hall. These works combined infrastructure improvements with general civic maintenance, allowing a wide variety of unemployed workers to be engaged.
The accompanying budget allocates separate amounts for materials and labour for each project. The total expenditure is £500 for materials and £1,574 for labour, matching the Council's contribution and demonstrating that the majority of funding would be directed towards wages to maximise employment opportunities. The letter concludes with the Town Clerk's formal endorsement of the proposal.
