Citizens build Bendigo in the 1870s

^{2021 update: while the new BRAC website is in production, the digitised petitions are not available online and so links below will not work. View the index here and order records for viewing in the BRAC reading room.} 

You may think of gravel on roads, kerbs, and the establishment of footpaths as menial tasks and not exciting to research as historical subject matter. However, examining petitions on such issues can take your research far beyond the construction of a simple footbridge. You can map the establishment of a town, question the path of its citizens, and even find you ancestor's name among the petitioners to learn what they saw as important issues in their community.

The Bendigo Regional Archives Centre’s (BRAC) petitions which are online, from residents between 1870 and 1874 provide fascinating insight into infrastructure concerns of the people and the impacts on local life.

September 1871

To his Worship the Mayor and Councillors of the City of Sandhurst

Gentlemen,

The undersigned residents of Golden Gully beg to draw your attention to the great want of a crossing for foot passengers between the Royal Oak Hotel on the West and the Eastern Side of the Gully. There is a private track which with a small foot bridge might be available at a small cost. There is no crossing between the road which leads to the Belle Vue Hotel and Mr Murcotts, which is a distance of about a mile, many miners who go to work on night shifts are most seriously inconvenienced by the present state of things. Trusting you will give the subject your earliest attention.

We are Gentlemen
Your obedient Servants

To the Mayor and Councillors of the City of Sandhurst

We the undersigned ratepayers residing in and about Harrison Street, petition, that the breadth of that Street be altered from one chain and a half to one chain in breadth. We beg to submit, that should you deem it expedient to grant the alteration the public would be benefitted by the additional land that would thereby be utilised for residences on the south side of the street, and that no injury would be done to owners of property nor vested interests interfered with in any way.

To the Worshipful the Mayor and Councilors of the City of Sandhurst

Gentlemen

We are quite surprised to find that their is a movement being made by four residents, of Harrisen

Stt., to try and get the said Stt, reduced in width; Lomasney and Rouse do not live in Harrison Stt, theirfore they have no interest in the same, these four residents knew when they built that the Stt was 99 feet in width, the residents on the north side of said stt having lived their most of them for 9 years and some having spent from one to over two thousand pounds in improvements strongly object to said st being made a lane, and we the undersigned hope, should your Honourable Council be inclined to assist these four, in gaining their wish, that you will give us time to lay our case before the Minister of lands, and we beg to be allowed to draw your attention, that should you accede to or in any way assist in reducing the width of said st, that it will be taken as a precedent, by any that feel inclined to suit their own ends, we feel assured that you will not act unjustly, to the first residents and property owners, neither will your [Hon?] Council destroy the Harmony of the laying off, of the different st and we the undersigned will ever pray

Your obedient servants,

Signed by the residents in Harrisson St proper.

John F. H. Cartwright
Francis M. Cartwright
John Watson
Thomas Watson
John T. Burns
John Burns
Hy. Hubbard
John Hampel
James Liddel
Joseph Hawkins
Wm. Gilbert
Henry Norwood

To discover more petitions related to Infrastructure visit the BRAC website.

Written by Jason Smeaton.