History
Above: St Mark's dedication day, 26 April, 1914.
The Thirty-Three Trees By Ilma Hackett - Balnarring & District Historical Society
T
he small, white, weatherboard church is overshadowed by old pine trees. It occupies a prominent corner at the junction of Balnarring, Stumpy Gully and the Frankston Flinders Roads at Balnarring. This is St Mark’s Anglican Church. It celebrated its centenary in 2014 and several of the pines that crowd the grounds in front of the church may also have passed their centenary. The oldest were planted in 1918. A church is built
In the early years of the 20th century Balnarring was a rural community with a population of about 500. It was made up of grazing properties, farms and orchards. It had no centre as such. The central Van Suylen property had been subdivided during the 1890s, and as reported in the Mornington Standard in 1908, "The Balnarring district . . . has changed considerably during the last few years, and been cut up largely into smaller holdings and settlements." On the corner of Buckley’s Road (Balnarring Road) and the Frankston-Flinders Road there now stood a general store on one of these smaller holdings. Some short distance further north, a Mechanics Institute Hall had been built opposite the school with the sports reserve a little further north from the school. Roman Catholic settlers had built a church on land at the corner of Buckley’s Road and the track that ran from Bittern to Dromana. Those of the
Anglican and Presbyterian faiths could worship at the small Union Church that was built at Merricks some thirty years earlier. Here services were held for the two groups on alternate Sundays. However, Balnarring was growing at a faster rate than Merricks and the Anglicans were looking for a more central location. Land at the tip of the triangle formed by Stumpy Gully Road, Balnarring Road and the Frankston-Flinders Road had been granted to the Church of England in 1868 and in 1912 a Vestry of seven was formed at Balnarring with Thomas Cole as secretary and the Reverend Cyril Eva as vicar. Shortly afterwards the group applied for a grant to help build a church at Balnarring. The simple, rectangular, weatherboard construction with its steeply pitched and gabled roof was completed two years later. An unusual feature was its twin porches on one long wall. One was the entry porch; the other, the vestry. The dedication service was held on April 26th, 1914. Two months later, in a distant European country, the heirpresumptive to a foreign throne, and his wife, were shot dead during a state visit. Europe was plunged into chaos and another two months on Australia found itself involved in a war that would be long and bloody. Britain had declared war against Germany and, so, member countries of the British Empire also found themselves at war. Including Australia. continued next page...
January 2023
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