You have to feel for the good burghers of Rosstown. The founding developer of this village, 7 miles southeast of Melbourne, William Murray Ross, had gone broke after the land boom of the 1880s went bust in the early 1890s, and all the promise and potential which had come with his big dreams had evaporated.
And so, when they heard that Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie was donating money for civic good works around the globe, they decided to change the name of their town from Rosstown to Carnegie in 1909.
They hoped that as a result of this flattery, Andrew Carnegie might find it in his heart (and wallet) to fund a public library for his namesake town.
This did not happen, but the name Carnegie stuck, as a reminder of this failed attempt at flattering a foreign tycoon into parting with his money.
Perhaps it was better than leaving the original name to remind the townsfolk of the trials and tribulations of the land boom and the failed speculations of their local dodgy property developer.
The only remnants of the Rosstown name now, over a century later, are Rosstown Road, and the Rosstown Hotel, which sits on Dandenong Road.
I was in Carnegie recently which is a rare thing for me. The pretty old wooden railway station, surrounded by peppercorn trees, has been overshadowed and superseded by the skyrail station, and whilst this gets rid of a level crossing bottleneck, it does make the area feel a little colder and impersonal.
I was there to have a look at the local bottleshop, which was formerly known for its back vintages. Sadly, whilst it is still of excellent quality, back vintages no longer make up a part of their business plan.
Hence, out of curiosity, I decided to pop into the Rosstown Hotel for a look.
Aside from the Nottinghill Hotel on Ferntree Gully Road, I am not particularly familiar with any of the pubs in the intermediate southeastern suburbs. Travelling to and from Monash Uni to my home in Footscray took long enough in my younger days, and when I worked in Dandenong, the journey home was even longer and more tiring.
So I was interested in seeing what the Rosstown Hotel was all about. From the outside, it is done in a Spanish Mission style, with attractive terracotta tiles on the roof – I think there is another pub nearby which has been done in a similar style. [Of course, do not quote me on that – I don’t pass through there often enough to have the landmarks engraved into my mental map of Greater Melbourne.]
The inside however, is a bit of a shock. It is a giant rabbit warren of poker machines and possibly nothing else. The only other pub I can think of in Greater Melbourne with such a large poker machine presence is the Braybrook Hotel, approximately 11km due west of the city.
I heard tell, around the time that Crown Casino was opened, that no other casino was ever to be permitted (or at least for very many years) within 10km of the city. That, I heard, made large pub venues just over the 10km radius, even more valuable as potential alternative sites for future casinos.
That might not be true, and I am not particularly interested in digging out the realities of Crown’s casino license and whatever undertakings were made 30 years ago when it opened. But what is true is that the Rosstown Hotel is, in terms of poker machines, almost a casino in its own right, as are the Braybrook Hotel and Ashley Hotel (a former uber-dive pub with sticky carpet and ball point pen graffiti on its walls) on the other side of town.
In the case of the Rosstown and Braybrook, I fear that these are pubs which could have been something better for the local communities than de facto casinos.
But it is what it is. Poker machines have ruined a lot of pubs in the past three decades, and represent a lack of imagination and creativity on the part of pub owners, many of whom are now large corporations who care nothing about a local community.
Lost For Words! 