Where is this mystery boathouse, or more importantly, where is the giant FCC pennant now?

Unknown boathouse?  Showcasing FCC Pennant ... Photo credit: CH De La Rue FCC Archive

During the course of information gathering for the FCC Centenary publication, Hamish Ewing had the honour of interviewing an ex-member, Peter De La Rue.

It just so happens that Peter is the son of one of our founding club members, C.H (Harry) De La Rue. During the interview Peter indicated that Harry was the photographer of several of our early club photos which have been widely attributed to others. The proof was in the form of a number of glass plates Peter has in his possession.

One of the images on view was of a magnificent large FCC pennant draped across an unfamiliar boathouse. This boathouse was quite different to any others that we had come across during our research. Given the age of the glass plates, this image must have been taken in the 1920’s sometime. The pennant seen looks the same as that seen in our iconic club photo of 1923 taken at Fairfield Park Boathouse that now hangs above the kitchen sink in our clubhouse today.

Several articles and reports written in the 1920’s, as well as more recently, indicated that there was/were another local boathouse(s) just upstream of the Chandler Highway bridge - variously recorded as Wilshire’s Lugton Street Boathouse/ Café and the RyverBrynk Café with jazz music and dancing too.

The challenge remains to be resolved. Were these two possibilities actually one and the same venue? Was there a boathouse located at Lugton Street, Alphington and did it match our photo?

Peter enlisted the help of another former club member, Peter Ohman and his partner Jill Dunn. Their brilliant investigations led to several photos relating to the Australian Paper Mills being found in the State Library of Victoria which clearly show a boathouse matching the photo, together with a matching substantial residence on the same block.

Our further research at the Heidelberg Historical Society led to the discovery of a confirmatory letter written by an elderly resident, Mr Les Fry, stating: "Reading your article on the Heidelberg Road by Rex Harcourt in the February 1998 edition of the Historian, it mentioned ‘Rudder Grange’. Now in the late 1930’s, approximately, they used to have a canoe club with the same name. The article triggered my memory of it.

One of my employers, Mr Bill Wiltshire (Ed: Land title research reveals correct spelling as ‘Wilshire’) at this time owned a property which backed on to the river at the river end of the paper mills, now known as Amcor Ltd, a property known as ’River Brink’. There was a deal of talk at this time that the paper mills wanted to acquire his property and another next door to it to extend their works. I do not know if they eventually were purchased by APM.

Mr Wilstshire built a concrete swimming pool on the bank of the river. This was regularly pumped out and refilled when needed with the help of an old Stutz car engine mounted on a stand and fitted with a Day’s centrifugal pump. He also had a canoe club. There were two or three lock-up sheds on the river bank for the canoes and chains were used to fasten the sheds to nearby trees in case of flooding. Canoes had been lost in previous floods.”

Article reproduced with permission of Heidelberg Historical Society Inc.

Thus, it seems, there really was a boathouse sited on Lugton Street, Alphington which was owned by a Mr Wilshire who resided at this address in a house named “RiverBrink”. We believe the site of the ‘mystery boathouse’ is solved, but sadly, the whereabouts of our magnificent FCC club pennant is not known. It has been spotted in a 1930’s photograph outside our old clubhouse.

Question: Do we want a replacement pennant to celebrate our 100 years?!

Late news!!

Peter De La Rue has just found a detailed written index for his father’s glass plates, written inside the lid of the box they were in. There was the inscription for our mystery photo: “Canoe Group at Wiltshires 10/2/22” (Ed:1922)

We are still to resolve the Wilshire/Wiltshire and River Brink/RyverBrynk spellings, as variously recorded in historical documents.