Voting to Stay Dry
When I was a boy growing up in Box Hill, my old home town in Melbourne, there was a running battle with people who wanted to build hotels in our area.
The main road running through Box Hill was named after the White Horse Hotel which was named after a White Horse Hotel I once stayed in, in Box Hill, England. A White Horse that stood above the White Horse Hotel built on the corner of Whitehorse Road and Elgar Road in the very early days of our community more than a hundred years ago. The beautifully carved life size white horse was added over the porch of the hotel in 1888. In this hotel all of the community meetings were held; the Shire Council, the Roads Board, the Water and Draining Board and the like. It was here that the famous Cobb & Co. used to stop on their runs carrying passengers and the mail through to eastern Victoria and the Dandenong Mountains.
The White Horse is the symbol of Box Hill and is included on our coat of arms.
The White Horse Hotel burnt down in 1895 and everything except the front door, the white horse and the bar was burnt to ruins. The next morning the ruins of the two storey hotel lay in smoking rubble with the bar, the portico and the white horse still standing proudly. That white horse was to become a symbol of the battles that went on in our city between those who supported hotels and those who wanted them closed.
In 1890 our forebears in Box Hill had voted in a local option poll to refuse permission for any more hotels to be built. Instead our citizens decided to give young men places to go instead of hotels. They built, under the leadership of men from the churches in the area, a Mechanics Institute and a Free Library. Dr. H.G. Judkins and Edmond Greenwood were valiant fighters for the temperance cause. They were often attacked and vilified in the press and by drunken louts. Mr. Greenwood had to sleep with a loaded pistol beside his bed after several attempts were made on his life by people who wanted to stop his powerful opposition to the hotels.
In 1920 Box Hill, along with the rest of Victoria, voted in an important referendum for Prohibition, Continuation of the Sale of Alcohol, or Abolition of All Hotels. Any change required more than 60% of the votes registered in favour of a change and consequently it was almost impossible to obtain a dry area. However, more than 38 municipalities in Victoria came within 200 votes of abolishing all hotels in their communities. Box Hill and nearby Camberwell voted overwhelmingly to close their hotels. And 1921 the White Horse Hotel closed its doors for the last time. So did the Railway Hotel and the Royal Hotel.
Never again to my childhood had Box Hill a hotel or a licensed bar, grocers or club in the community.
There was great rejoicing within the Methodist Church which had led the campaign, along with the Box Hill Temperance Society, the Rechabites, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the Blue Ribbon Mission, the Band of Hope and all the other Protestant churches.
After World War II when I was growing up as a boy, the battle was recommenced. Box Hill had now become a desired possession in the eyes of hoteliers, the breweries and the beer barons. There were determined efforts almost every single year to overthrow the will of the people and to commence new hotels.
I remember in 1947 as a young boy joining with others from our church, in a march of 500 church members in a procession up Whitehorse Road behind the Salvation Army band to hear Lionel Fletcher preaching against the liquor industry in the Box Hill Town Hall. Proudly our community boasted it was a drunk free area, although I guess they did not count my father. He certainly spoilt our average. It used to be said that people came to live in Box Hill simply because it was a dry area and free from the influence of hotels and public drunkenness.
In 1950 Hotel Chaucer Pty Ltd started a huge petition and spent an enormous amount of money on publicity to gain a licence in our area. The Dry Area Defence League sprang into action. Various councillors, public figures and ministers spoke out publicly against the proposed hotel. On the day the Dry Area Defence League organised a huge public rally in Surrey Park it teemed with rain. The area was anything but dry. Cars parked all round the edge of the oval and throughout the park. Over the huge loud speakers Councillor McIntyre spoke out strongly against the proposed hotel. Every time he made a good point the area was deafened with all the car horns tooting in agreement.
When the matter came before the Box Hill Council, the Council Chambers were packed out. There was not even standing space in the public gallery. A crowd of 300 church members outside the Town Hall could not get in, but they made sure their voices were heard.
The churches were united in the campaign against the hotel. The Court, the Council and the Government all agreed and the hotel application was thrown out. It was victory of The Dries.
The next year, 1951, another attempt was made when “White Horse Holdings” attempted to get a hotel licence for the corner of Whitehorse Road and Elgar Road, just opposite where the original White Horse Hotel used to stand. It was a two year battle in which the breweries and others spent vast amounts of money in publicity and promotion of their cause but once again the temperance cause held strong and won a victory. The Dries were once more victorious.
Almost immediately afterwards one of our scandals in the community came to light as reported in “The Box Hill Reporter”. Apparently the RSL had been illegally selling liquor within Box Hill for some time. That brought the wrath of the community down upon the head of the RSL. They returned fire claiming the community had no right to deprive poor old diggers from a drink inside their own club rooms. So as the situation could be treated properly the RSL applied for a liquor licence and once more the community rose up in opposition. Three of our councillors from the local churches were coming up for re election and the RSL decided to run some of its most popular members and office bearers against our councillors.
Councillors McCreddin and McIntyre and Hogan took the challenge and made the right for an RSL licence the primary ground of their re election. The churches and community organisations came out in huge numbers to support them and they were easily re elected and the RSL was put to flight. Once more The Dries tasted victory.
The campaign with which I became most personally involved was in 1956 when the State Government tried to introduce 10 p.m. closing instead of 6 p.m. closing. All the reasons why late trading should be introduced were trotted out and enormous amounts of money were spent by the liquor industry and the breweries in order to gain longer trading hours. A big point in their argument was that thousands of Olympic Games tourists would think we were country bumpkins and uncivilized without sophisticated drinking hours.
Under the leadership of a Church of Christ minister, Mr. W.W. Saunders, the churches and temperance forces worked hard under the slogan of
“Stick To Six In ‘56’”.
I remember Rev. Bernard Judd coming down from Sydney to lend a hand in the fight. Public meetings were held and debates were conducted on street corners. I can remember as a schoolboy standing in the centre of the school yard, surrounded by several hundred other boys while I gave a long and impassioned address on “Stick To Six In ‘56”. Even though none of the students were eligible to vote I reckoned there would be a large number of our school masters who would listen.
When the day of voting came our community had reached a point of tremendous confidence and when the votes were counted all over Victoria there was a resounding decision to retain 6 p.m. closing. Victory once more was with The Dries. The Olympic tourists would have to take us as we were.
Today Box Hill is the only city in Australia which is completely free from hotels.
When the old White Horse Hotel was eventually closed and then pulled down in 1934 a public minded citizen by the name of J.H. Connell purchased the magnificent portico which stood in front the hotel with its four large white columns, its Grecian entablature and on top, the magnificent white horse with its tail uplifted. The Council accepted the gift and the Professor of Architecture at Melbourne University designed a magnificent monument in the centre of the wide plantations up Whitehorse Road. There on the entry to Box Hill stands the old hotel portico with the noble columns and above it the white horse with its uplifted tail.
In once sense the white horse monument was looked upon as a token of victory by the temperance forces. I grew up hearing that that white horse which once graced the hotel front, was now a trophy of the temperance forces. It was no longer on a hotel, but given a place of prominence on the highway pointing out to all the triumph of temperance and those had fought to keep our area dry.
It had been a long and a hard fight and one which is not over yet.
But on that Saturday night in 1956 when we knew we had won the victory, and Victoria had decided to “Stick To Six In ‘56” and Box Hill had decided overwhelmingly once more that we would stay dry, a group of us decided that we would celebrate by giving the white horse a coat of paint.
In the early hours of the morning several of us went there, only to find that some others celebrating the victory had reached there before us and the white horse was now painted brown and gold, the colours of our Box Hill temperance groups. The paint was still wet. The job had been complete. The victory had been recognised. However, one thing remained to be done. We had brought with us a pile of horse manure, which we piled up underneath the white horse’s uplifted tail. The Dries had won.
With an alcoholic father, it may seem strange, but it was temperance blood that flowed in my veins as I walked up Devon Street, opposite the cow paddock, to No.55 Birdwood Street, Box Hill, a great city which was then only a village, where the adults were kind and where the children grew up responsibly.
GORDON MOYES
