The Melbourne Club was first mooted in that eventful month of November,
1838, when the first cricket match was played in the colony, at the foot
of Batman's Hill. This happened on the 12th, when the necessity for
organizing a club was first formally talked over. There was a fair
muster of the Melbourne "respectabilities" of the time, and in the
course of some casual conversation the Club question cropped up. Of all
the gay young fellows sunning themselves on the green grass that day,
there are only two of them, Messrs. Benjamin Baxter and
Robert Russell,
now [1888] alive in Melbourne. Before the next evening a Prospectus was
prepared by Mr. Baxter, who succeeded in obtaining several eligible
signatures in approval of the project. On the 17th November, 1838, a
meeting of all taking an interest in the then hazardous venture was
held at the quarters of the military officers at the south side of West
Bourke Street, when the formation of a Club was ratified, and the
following names were announced as the original members: -
Captain
Lonsdale, P.M., Dr. Cussen (Colonial Surgeon), Colonel White, Captain
Bacchus, Lieutenant Smyth, Messrs. Munday, Powlett, Yaldwyn, Murdoch,
Meek, McFarlane, Darke, Bacchus, Jun., White, Arden, Baxter, Russell,
Scott, Hamilton, Smythe, and the Ryries (three).
The new-born Club went
on slowly but surely, and ere the first week of 1839 passed over, the
Port Phillip Gazette, 5th January, thus reports progress: - "On the
first day of the year a general meeting of the members of the Melbourne
Club was held for the purpose of appointing a committee, and to take
into consideration the building of a house suited to the convenience of
the service it is intended to be applied to." The list showed nearly
fifty names, amongst whom we may mention Mr. Hawdon, to whose enterprise
the district is indebted for having opened a communication by land to
South Australia. About twenty of the members subsequently sat down to a
dinner at the Lamb Inn, laid out on a most splendid scale, comprising
all the varieties this infant settlement could afford, Mr. William Meek (Melbourne's first
Solicitor) was appointed Honorary Secretary, and the next meeting was
held at the residence of Dr. Barry Cotter (Melbourne's first practising
physician), north-east corner of Queen and Collins Streets. This was on
the 21st February, when the first ballot came off, and Messrs. Arthur
Hogue, J. Browne, H. N. Carrington, and Peter Snodgrass were enrolled.
The Club had been three months in existence; the members were
increasing; a committee was appointed, and premises were being looked
up to do duty until such time as funds would be available sufficient for
the erection of a permanent Club-house. But many years were to roll by
ere this could come to pass. In June the Club had a house rented, viz.,
a rough, rakish-looking building at the corner of Collins and Market
Streets, where now this old friend, with a very new face, and so much
improved internally and externally as to be unrecognizable, appears
before the public as the Union Club Hotel. In its original condition it
was erected by Mr. J. P. Fawkner, as a third and revised edition of
Fawkner's Hotel; but "Johnny" had grown tired of dram-selling, and
retired to rusticate and grow grapes at Pascoe Vale, some eight miles
from town, on the Moonee Ponds Road, where he had purchased a section of
country land. A Club steward was next retained, and two advertisements
appeared in the papers, viz., (1) Inviting tenders for Club supplies ;
and (2) Wanted a laundress, properly recommended.
And so the Melbourne
Club was now fairly started, and its beginning was quiet enough until
September, when a row occurred, for the Port Phillip Gazette, of the
21st, announces that two gentlemen staying there (Messrs. Thomas and
Cobb) "had fought with their fists over a card-table." In Kerr's Port
Phillip Directory, 1841, amongst the local Institutions appears this
announcement: - "Melbourne Club, established 1839. President, James
Simpson, Esq. ; Secretary, Redmond Barry, Esq.; Club House, Collins
Street."
The Club remained at Fawkner's corner for some years, and
throughout all its eventful career it never went out of Collins Street
from those days to this. Where the Bank of Victoria is now built, Mr.
Michael Carr, one of Melbourne' s earliest publicans, purchased a
half-acre allotment for �40; but it and its buyer soon obtained a
divorce, the freehold passed into other hands, and a large brick house
had been erected on the Collins Street frontage. This was occupied by
the Port Phillip Bank during its short and troubled life, and when the
Bank shut up shop there the Club moved down from the western hill to the
flat - then a swampy, uncomfortable place. But the house was more
commodious than the one vacated, and it was soon turned into comfortable
quarters. Hence again, after a sojourn for years, the Club migrated away
far over the crown of the Eastern Hill, at a time when the place was no
longer in the bush, but becoming one of the most flourishing and
fashionable centres in the city.
How it has fared since, how fat it has
grown, and how respectable it has become, it is not for me to chronicle,
for I have nothing to do with those modern developments which have been
accomplished by the great changes, wrought during the last thirty years,
beyond stating that in 1882 there were 465 members on the books, and the
premises are now the property of the fraternity, the capital value of
the land and buildings being about �5o,ooo.
The Melbourne Club of 1882
is as the staid, comfortable, middle-aged, padded gentleman when
contrasted with its boyhood of '42, when it was the rendezvous of the
young rakes in town and the harum-scarum, full-blooded, full-pocketed,
light-headed scamps from the bush, whose frolics kept it, if not in hot
water, in a state of almost continuous effervescence both day and night.
If the biography of the old, or rather the young Club could be written,
it would unfold a "strange eventful history" - the duels initiated; the
practical jokes perpetrated, the nocturnal "wild oats" scattered about
the town, in which no mad freak seemed impossible, from the mobbing of a
parson to pummelling a policeman, besieging a theatre or unbelling a
church, demolishing a corporation bridge, or a wholesale abduction of
signboards. Of such eccentricities a more detailed account will be given
in [another chapter of The Chronicles
of Early Melbourne]. The Old Melbourne Club had many a hard struggle for
existence; it had more than once run to the very end of its tether, yet
it was always able to pull up just in time to avoid a smash. It seemed
to have a charmed life, and so it lived, and struggled, and is now doing
well and prospering.
Most events at The Melbourne Club are for members only and their guests,
but just occasionally there is an event that is open to the general public.
Those are the ones we list below