A Brief History of the Beaumaris Conservation Society

Original Land Grants: All the land in what is now Beaumaris was Crown land until the first Crown grants of freehold land were made soon after the Colony of Victoria was established on 1st July 1851 by its separation from the Colony of New South Wales. The first grants, for the 1,117 acres (447 ha) of all Beaumaris land, except for the Government roads and the coast reserve between Beach Road and the sea, were:

Grantee	Approximate General Road Boundaries	Area (Acres, roods and perches)
T B Darling	Weatherall, Marlo, Balcombe, Reserve	156a, 0r, 0p
Stephen Charman	Weatherall, Charman, Balcombe, Marlo	160a, 0r, 0p
James Atkinson	Balcombe, Haydens, Beach, Keating/Surf	103a, 2r, 0p
J McDonald	Balcombe, Reserve, Beach, Haydens	137a, 0r, 0p
Frederick Dalgety	Balcombe, Dalgetty, Beach, Reserve	289a, 1r, 0p
William Rusk	Balcombe, Cromer, Cloris, Dalgetty	51a, 2r, 20p
James Moysey	Cloris, Cromer, Beach, Dalgetty	80a, 0r, 25p
Alexander Balcombe	Balcombe, Deauville/Hastings, Beach, Cromer	54a, 3r, 24p
R G Luscombe	Balcombe, Wells, Beach, Deauville/Hastings	47a, 1r, 0p
Henry Wells	Balcombe, Charman, Beach, Wells	37a, 2r, 0p

NOTE: Some hyperlinks in the table above are to the Kingston Historical Website, a resource that Bayside City Council regrettably lacks.

Before BCS: Beaumaris was seen, until the rapid and widespread expansion of car ownership in the 1950s, as being remote from a railway station. Most people thought it to be impractical for residential use. The Dunlop Perdriau Rubber Company owned most of the 180 hectares of the central Beaumaris uncleared or agricultural land that had been prematurely subdivided into residential blocks by earlier speculators, and its plans to consolidate that into one parcel to relocate its Port Melbourne factory there, to build a wharf on the coast at Black Rock, and to build a new suburb for its workers, was announced on the front page of The Herald newspaper on 2nd August 1939. When, in the next month, Australia, with Britain, declared war on Germany, on 3rd September 1939, the company’s plans proceeded no further.

World War II led to the company’s abandoning its plans, and selling its land for housing. Much of its land was burnt in the major bushfire that devastated Beaumaris on 14th January 1944. Beaumaris changed in the 1950s from being mostly a sandy area of indigenous trees with extensive heathlands, as can be seen in the Lands Department Aerial Photograph of 28th January 1951, to quickly become a suburb of Melbourne. It was inaccurately considered to be just 'tea tree scrub' by many, including the writer of The Herald article in the link above, but it had many more other tree and heathland species and plant communities than that pejorative description suggested.

Formation of BTPS: The Beaumaris Tree Preservation Society (BTPS), which changed its name to the Beaumaris Conservation Society (BCS) in 1970, was formed at its Inaugural General Meeting on 28th February 1953 with the late Mrs Bea Hosking, of “Coronet Hill”, 10 Coronet Grove, Beaumaris, who died in 1997, as its first President. The BTPS successfully strove to help alter the accepted pattern of Australian suburban development in which all indigenous vegetation was removed before any land was developed. Its brochure Beau-maris or Bare-maris? subtly pointed out that allotments with trees standing fetched higher prices than those without. The conscious retention of indigenous trees in Beaumaris gardens is mentioned in Robin Boyd's important 1960 book The Australian Ugliness (P.164), and helps account for the distinctive indigenous vegetation still there. The BTPS also produced publications, mounted informative displays and forums and sold indigenous plants for replanting. It successfully encouraged planting of native trees in streets.

Gramatan Avenue Heathland Sanctuary: In 1953 BTPS began its campaign to get the then Sandringham City Council to buy and reserve a Heathland Sanctuary, assisted by persuasive support from Professor John Turner, Professor of Botany at the University of Melbourne, and Dr Jim Willis, Assistant Government Botanist. Mr Robert Blackwood (later Sir Robert, and the foundation Chancellor of Monash University), then the General Manager of the Dunlop Company, which still owned the land after its plan above to build an industrial suburb and port facilities was abandoned, facilitated its sale to the Council. The BTPS raised the £463 (about $7000 in 1996 dollars) for the fencing, and leased from the Council and managed the 0.27 hectare piece of original heathland reserve that was established by 1960 as the Gramatan Avenue Heathland Sanctuary, until Sandringham Council resumed managing it in 1990. It is now managed by Sandringham Council's successor, the Bayside City Council. BCS proposed to Sandringham Council in 1991 that it should alter its Planning Scheme to give the Sanctuary a Conservation zoning instead of its Residential zoning, as this would help avert any precipitate sale of it, leading to its destruction. Even in 1991 there were still some councillors that said it should be sold. Fortunately Victoria's Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act 1988 helps protect the Sanctuary from official proposals because of the important indigenous plants among the fifty-odd species present.

1961-1990: Various large scale coastal development proposals have been successfully opposed by BCS. These included a large commercial "Oceanarium" building for Ricketts Point in 1964 (this area is now the Ricketts Point Marine Sanctuary), a very large marina for Beaumaris Bay in the early 1970s, and a building to replace, and enlarge the commercial scope of, the burnt-out Keefer's Boat Shed in the 1980s. Many of these issues can be found reported in archival copies of local journals such as the Beaumaris Newsletter and the Sandringham and Brighton Advertiser (later to become the Bayside Leader). BCS was a foundation member, in 1970, of Port Phillip Conservation Council Inc, a federation of bayside conservation groups, and has been a member ever since. BCS also initiated the formation of the neighbouring Black Rock and Sandringham Conservation Association about that time.

1991-2000: In 1991 BCS successfully encouraged the former Sandringham Council to adopt a policy on the choice of trees to be planted in Beaumaris streets that set a goal of at least 80% of street trees to be trees that are indigenous to Beaumaris - that is local native trees rather than exotic trees or trees that might be indigenous to other parts of Australia, but not to Beaumaris. BCS supported Bayside City Council’s improvement of its street tree policy, which has led to its present Bayside Street Tree Management Strategy 2008. That strategy is a move closer to following that important lead set by its predecessor.

The Society became an incorporated body in 1997, and adopted its present Constitution then. Because of a spate of intensive overdevelopment of building blocks and rapid and rampant removal of existing indigenous and other vegetation from residential blocks, and the land then being covered with buildings or paving, facilitated by new planning regulations, some with Orwellian names and rationales such as the Good Design Guide and Melbourne 2030, that had recently become excessively loose and permissive, the Society gained a large number of new members.

2001-2010: BCS Inc. celebrated its Golden Jubilee in 2003, with the last surviving member of the original 1953 Committee, Mrs Catherine Carroll, as its Guest of Honour. BCS Inc. has, in 2010, a total of 348 members, 40 of whom are Life Members, and 3 of whom are Honorary Life Members. The Society maintains the BCS Inc. Indigenous Flora Register, which lists the numbers and species of indigenous plants our members report having on their land and their nature strips. A summary of the numbers of 12 particular indigenous plants in that Register appears on the BCS Inc. Web site. More details appear on our RECORDS page.

The Society succeeded in persuading Bayside City Council that the Concourse Green should not be intruded upon for either a car park or concrete skateboard ramp, and that the ramp should not be placed in either Balcombe Park or Beaumaris Reserve. A significant advance occurred in 2010 when the suggestion by BCS Inc. that the Concourse Bushland should be rezoned from Business 1 to Public Park and Recreation was agreed to by Bayside City Council and Victoria’s Planning Minister, with the result that its rezoning was gazetted in February 2010.

BCS Inc. began two major campaigns in this decade. The first was to protect the foreshore reserve from incursion into it by a bicycle road, which it believes should be built on the Beach Road road reserve. The second, against a proposed large Beaumaris Motor Yacht Squadron marina in Beaumaris Bay, was marked by the Planning Minister’s welcome decision to require the production of an Environment Effects Statement for that proposal.

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