Yarra Campaign for Action on Transport

Picture: A teacher playing the bagpipes and small dancing children from the Fitzroy Community School join in the anti-freeway protest on the median strip of Alexandra Parade.

Several houses in the background have been demolished since this photo was taken. Content of image: Alexandra Parade ; F19 Freeway ; Eastern Freeway Address: Alexandra Parade resident action. Image copyright Yarra Libraries

Freeway War Map: October 1977 Chapter 8: Serpent in the Garden, Car Wars: How the Car Won Our Hearts. by Graeme Davison.

The Melbourne Times cover: ‘The Freeways Are Coming!’ - 29 October 1975 (pdf, 467kb)

The Melbourne Times cover: ‘Here Come The Cars’ - 7 December 1977 (pdf, 664kb )

The proposed East West road tunnel is not the first time the inner northern communities have faced the onslaught of massive development.

In mid 1970’s the Eastern Freeway extension, then known as F19, was the catalyst for long running protests and barricades as local communities fought against the State Government to stop their suburbs being torn apart. Read on for interviews and social histories.

New Internationalist: The Battle of Alexandra Parade by Bob Hawkins (October 1980)

The State - Victoria by name. The capital Melbourne - Victorian by transport. It really is a public mobility nightmare. But for the privately mobile, the going is great until those last thousand or so metres into the city heart. It’s little wonder the ‘private’ way of travel is the popular way. Melbourne is a monument to freeway mania and how not to organise a public transport system.

Picture: 1978 Eastern (F19) Freeway protest with Bill Peterson, Mayor of Fitzroy. Image copyright Yarra Libraries

Interview with Julie New - Stop the F19 Freeway Campaign Melbourne
I moved to Carlton when I was at University in the early 1970s and lived in Carlton at Roden Street, then Faraday Street before moving to Fitzroy.

I went overseas for a couple of years and returned when the F-19 was just gearing up. The barricades hadn’t gone up, but the campaign had been happening for quite some time. There had been diplomatic, quieter attempts to try and stop it. There were articles in the paper about lead in the air and what that volume of traffic was going to do to Carlton, Fitzroy, Clifton Hill and Collingwood.

I got involved in the campaign because of my desire for social justice. I was disgusted with the lack of government concern for locals and was also worried about the environment. Some of this awareness had come from what had happened around the Commission flats battles. The F-19 was going to knock down housing and cause pollution for those living nearby as well as increase traffic congestion in the area. I was shocked at the disempowerment.

Picture: A group of residents on the Alexandra Parade median strip, near the intersection with Gold Street, on a warm summer’s day.

A front end loader is parked on the grass, incongruously juxtaposed with a baby’s pushchair. In the distance various road-building machines and piles of dirt mark the progress of freeway building.

At this stage resident protest against what was then called the F19 Freeway (now the Eastern Freeway) was taking a peaceful form. Content of image: Alexandra Parade ; F19 Freeway ; Eastern Freeway Address: Alexandra Parade. Image copyright Yarra Libraries.

Lee Street - Interview with Trevor Huggard - University of Melbourne
Then of course the F19 Freeway brought a new freeway threat to our door. I remember spending a night in the City Watch House. (Had it not been for John Howie bailing me out that night I would never have been allowed, because of the law, to become Lord Mayor of the City of Melbourne.) We were just down there defending our rights, living in tents and doing what we could at the time.

There were some 4,000 people camped on the nature strip that night. The police came down and started, without any warning, laying into all the students with batons and really beating them up. We put up the expected resistance and finished up in Russell Street for the night.

That’s pretty frightening. It was probably much more frightening to me than any of the other battles because I really didn’t believe until then that the police would use that kind of show of force and, without provocation, such violent action. That was the mid-seventies, not long ago.

Picture: Residents and other anti-freeway protesters surround earth-moving plant on the Alexandra Parade median strip. In the foreground are Councillor Marion Miller (in dark glasses), Janet Taylor of the Collingwood Historical Society, and her son Sam in the pushchair between them.

The freeway protest was of long duration and at this stage residents were taking it in turns to maintain a vigil at the site. Content of image: F19 Freeway ; Eastern Freeway ; Taylor, Janet ; Miller, Marion Address: Alexandra Parade resident action Image copyright Yarra Libraries.

Friends of the Earth - Chain Reaction 1977
In the 1977 barricades were thrown up on Alexandra Parade in the inner suburb of Collingwood (Melbourne) to oppose the construction of the F19 (later renamed the Eastern Freeway). With strong community support, this campaign was a key activity. In the same year, FoE Victoria was for FoEM.

When Fitzroy and Collingwood Councils, which strongly opposed the freeway extension, brought the issue to a head by narrowing the intended approach road to the end of the freeway, the State Government reacted “furiously, by taking the road out of the councils’ control and calling in 400 police. The ensuing guerrilla war raged for six weeks, with residents making a significant impact on the Government and the police making 58 arrests and causing several very serious injuries to demonstrators.