Military depot / Site of protest / Community hub
“So, on February 1, commencing at 8.30 a.m. and continuing until 1.30 p.m., we will be conducting our usual silent vigil at Marrickville.
Will you make a special effort to attend – and bring others?
The Depot is in Addison Road, Marrickville. Those travelling from the city can get bus 448, destination Canterbury Station, which runs from Circular Quay along Pitt Street and passes the Army Barracks.”
S.O.S Newsletter No. 8, January 1967
The mothers of ‘Save Our Sons’, the anti-conscription group active during the period of the Vietnam War, protested at the gates of Addison Road Army Depot at every intake of soldiers for Vietnam between the years of 1965 and 1972.
This site at Addison Road (now Addison Road Community Centre) had been an army barracks since the beginning of World War One. 21 timber framed huts were constructed to accommodate for the hundreds of recruits processed, kitted out, and housed at the depot.[1] In the 1890s, prior to being resumed by the Commonwealth for military use, it was owned by a Mr. John Neville and run as a dairy named “Norwood Park”.[2]
The site is situated on the land of the Gadigal people, of the Eora Nation, who inhabited the region prior to European settlement.
Looking into the history of this piece of land on Addison Road, its multiplicity of uses and meanings for different groups is striking. So too is the way the community has gravitated towards the site over the decades: to protest, to celebrate, perform, muster troops.
Click on the images below, and have a scroll through to read into the various facets of Addison Road Community Centre’s history, and the recollections of some who had a connection to the site.
Keying in “Addison Road Army Depot” into Trove (a free database of Australian newspapers dating back to the 1800s), the overwhelming number of entries that crop up mention community events taking place at the depot. For, during the years of the army occupying the site, gymkhanas and boxing tournaments were a frequent event, with soldiers demonstrating their horsemanship (as illustrated in this photo) to popular appeal. The horses were integral to the fabric of Addison Road Army Barracks, with stables, a corral and harness rooms situated on the site. Ron Garland, (cited in Meader, Cashman and Carolan, ‘Marickville People and Places’, p. 145) recalled that the “saddest memory at Addison Road Barracks was the departure of the horses in June 1939.” The army was to be mechanised, with trucks replacing horsepower. Garland, whose recollections stem from his father’s involvement in the Barracks as a keen horseman and attached Regimental Sergeant Major, remembered that the band played “Empty Saddles” when the horses left the site. “Acrobatic riding by the 14th Field Brigade”, 1938, photo attributed to Norman Denovan, PHA NSW,
http://www.phansw.org.au/tails-from-the-past/.
Addison Road Military Depot was also a site of scrutiny. Soldiers’ bodies have historically been subjected to rigorous measurements, perhaps most notably in America, with Civil War measurements of recruits enduring in clothes manufacturing and equipment standardisation for several decades. A personal recollection of Michael Skennar, which comes from the Marrickville Heritage Society’s oral and written history project, ‘Marrickville Remembers’, captures this sense of scrutiny at the Addison Army Camp. Skennar’s father was an assistant to the medical officer, and painted an image of the inspection routine: “people were told to come in the door and strip off their clothes and then they had to stand beside the MO and he would run his eye up and down them…test their muscles and tap their knees and he’d yell out ‘A1’ or B2’ or something like that. There’d be a clerk there writing this all down you know…” (Michael Skenner, cited in Phippen and Welsh, Marrickville Remembers, (Marrickville: Marrickville Heritage Society, 1997), p. 2. Photo: “Soldier at Addison Road Military Depot”, 1936, City of Botany Bay Library and Museum Search,
http://swft.cobb.ent.sirsidynix.net.au/client/en_AU/search/asset/175026.
A site of protest. “Mothers from Save our Sons protesting conscription at the gates of the Addison Road Community Centre”, photo from Addison Road Community Centre Blog, unattributed.
In March 1975, Addison Road Barracks became available for community use, with the end of national service and the withdrawal from Vietnam rendering the military barracks useless. Out of 60 submissions received by the federal government in conjunction with Marrickville Council, the Addison Road Community Services Group was successful. It now thrives as a cultural, community hub, hosting various events, markets, artists and performances. Remnants of its military history are dotted around the site, such as a stone ammunition storage shed, and the conversion of the stables into an art gallery. Photo: “Addison Road Community Centre”, Eventfinda,
http://www.eventfinda.com.au/venue/addison-road-community-centre-marrickville.
Notes:
[1] Chrys Meader, Richard Cashman and Anne Carolan, Marrickville, People and Places, (Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1994), p. 144.
[2] Sands Directory 1897, p. 317, http://cdn.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/learn/history/archives/sands/1890-1899/1897-part4.pdf.
patternsofkeeping 