My husband Greg was born in the Ballarat Base Hospital in Drummond Street, one of the main north-south streets in the west part of the city.

The hospital is not far from where we live now in Mair Street; Greg likes to joke that for seventy-one years he’s moved himself an average of only three metres a year from his place of birth.

Ballarat Hospital on the corner of Sturt and Drummond streets

When he was born the Young family lived at 505 Drummond Street, five blocks south of the hospital.

505 Drummond Street in the 1990s
505 Drummond Street in 2017

In those days Ballarat had a network of trams. One ran along Drummond Street. This was very useful to a family without a car. The Ballarat trams were replaced by buses in 1971.

From a map of the Ballarat tramways in the collection of the Ballarat Tramways museum and used with permission. 505 Drummond Street, the hospital (H), and the SEC depot are marked in red.
A tram on Sturt Street Ballarat in 1945. Photograph from the National Archives of Australia, A1200, L2579, id 6816240


After the War, Greg’s father Peter was employed as an S.E.C. (State Electricity Commission) linesman. His gang had its base at an electricity power station, now gone, on the corner of Ripon Street and Wendouree Parade, a block north of where we live.

Peter travelled to work by bicycle. The S.E.C. depot was a mile or so from the Drummond Street house, ten minute’s pedal.

In 1953, when Greg was three, the Young family moved to Shepparton, then, a year later, to Albury, over the border in NSW. Greg has some memories of this move, but almost none of the house in Drummond Street.

Wendouree Parade looking at East power station on the corner of Ripon Street in the 1930s or 40s. Image from Rotary Club of Ballarat. A flour mill occupied the site before the Ballarat ‘A’ Power Station was constructed on the site in 1904. Part of the mill was used for the main power station building. The State Electricity Commission of Victoria took over operations of the station in the 1930s from the Electricity Supply Company Ballarat. The station ceased operation in
the 1950s and the site became the Mid Western Electricity Supply Region Office and Depot. In 1983 the major portion of activities conducted on the site were transferred to a new depot
in Norman Street Ballarat and the site completely closed in 1993. It has since been redeveloped for housing. From 1994 Environmental Audit report.

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