482 Victoria Street

484 Victoria Street 

The George Hotel [19] 1854 to mid-1970s, renamed several times as Carnaby lnn, Therapy, The Restaurant Hotel, later The Cafe Hotel, at the time of publication closed for redevelopment.

When the present Cafe Hotel was licensed as The George in May 1854, it had 12 rooms, cellar and stables.

An early owner

One of the early Licensees was John Marks, a Scotsman who came to the colony to try his luck on the goldfields and was prominent in the local community. He took on the licence in 1864 and became owner in 1871. He was a Hotham councillor from 1866-1870 and mayor in 1868-1869. John Marks made The George welcoming for meetings and established its reputation for comfort, accommodation and meals. In 1888, his daughter Miss Nellie Marks, who was a teacher at Dookie near Benalla, died of sunstroke. She had been a talented violinist and a singer in the Union Memorial Choir and was widely mourned.

ALONG THE WAY

Opposite The George is the Eades Place car park. It is on the site of the former West Melbourne Coffee Palace, which was gutted by fire in the 1970s. Subsequently the site became a Melbourne City Council car park to serve the increasing number of car users coming to Errol Street.

The Clarkes were a famous family whose lives were variously linked to the old coffee palace. ‘Bill’ Clarke, founder of the Clarke fortunes apparently had a reputation as a womaniser. One story has it that he kidnapped a woman in Sydney, brought her by train to Melbourne and hid her in a room in the Coffee Palace.

‘Big’ Clarke had three children by his wife’s sister and housed them in Roden Street. One of these children, Doctor William Maloney known affectionately as ‘The Little Doctor’, was born in West Melbourne in 1854. He practised as a doctor in the district and set up a clinic that played a similar role to the later community health centres. He was elected to the Victor1an Parliament in 1891, joined the Australian Labor Party as soon as it was formed and immediately stood for election to the new Federal Parliament. He represented West Melbourne until 1939. When he died, Arthur Calwell, who succeeded him as the local member, paid tribute to the man and his values in these words:

His funeral was a most remarkable one in that those who lined the whole 7 miles of the route from State Parliament House to the Fawkner Cemetery to pay tribute to him were for the most part women and children, not of the privileged classes, but drawn from the ranks of the very humble, the sustenance workers. the invalid, and old-age pensioners, and many others who had cause to remember him during his lifetime not merely because he was a good friend, but also because he was a devoted servant to all of them.

Historic Pubs of North Melbourne by Hotham History Project.