Projects

Through interviewing senior residents and gleaning information from old issues of the Mortlake Dispatch, MDHS is recording the uses to which all sites and buildings in the commercial precinct of Mortlake have been put over the decades. Our photographic collection includes many photos of businesses and buildings from the 1860s onwards which adds to the profile we have of Mortlake in the past. It is hoped that eventually we will be able to publish a book on 'Old Dunlop Street'.

An ongoing project has been putting the Mortlake Cemetery records onto a database. The records indicate that some 1,604 interments have taken place at Mortlake since 1855 although we have confirmed that at least 250 burials were not recorded in the registers. In addition, member Tania Shalders has transcribed all monuments in the cemetery in order to record as much information as possible before monuments deteriorate further. It is hoped that we will be able to publish a book telling the stories of many of the local residents who contributed in a variety of ways to the district's devleopment.

MDHS is collecting and recording information on district men and women who served in the armed forces in the Boer War and the First and Second World Wars. A future project will be to conduct a tour of the Avenue of Honour, recalling those who lost their lives while serving in the forces. Pictured is an early view of the Boer War Monument in the Mortlake Botanic Gardens. The monument was unveiled on March 13, 1903. One of those who attended the ceremony was Australian novelist Rolf Bolderwood (1826-1915) who was staying with relatives at Mortlake at the time.

On Anzac Day 2005 members of MDHS invited the community to take part in a tour of Mortlake's Avenue of Honour commemorating some of the local men who lost their lives during World War 1. Of the 30 local men killed during the war, seven died at Gallipoli. The tour profiled 17 local men, most of whom died in their early 20s and without descendants. Thus, 90 years after 'Gallipoli', the tour was intended to recall the brief lives of young men who had probably ceased to be remembered.