History
STOPPING ALL STATIONS TO RED HILL By Ilma Hackett - Balnarring and District Historical Society
“
T
hey came from the orchards on the hills and valleys of Mornington Peninsula yesterday to witness the official opening of the railway extension of 10 miles from Bittern to Red Hill.” So ran the opening sentence of a news item in the Frankston and Somerville Standard written on December 2, 1921. The writer estimated 700 people, some put the figure at closer to 1,000, crowded at the new Red Hill railway terminal on that hot summer morning to greet the very first train to arrive from Melbourne. Excitement ran high. It was a long awaited event. The Railway’s Background
The railway had reached Hastings and Stony Point in 1889. This extension from Frankston had been built mainly for military purposes. Its construction followed the installation of a telegraph line at Sandy Point to relay news of Russian warships in Western Port Bay where, as one reader of The Argus in May 1875 argued, once alerted by telegraph and with a railway in place “a force might
be sent down in time to dispute an attempt at landing.” Even before the line was completed there had been a cry to extend it further, to bring the line through to Red Hill and “put life into the district”. The fruit-growers in particular called for a faster and more efficient means to get their produce to city markets. The roads at the time, more often than not, were impassable. It took as long as ten hours to get fruit to the Bittern railhead, fourteen to Mornington. A rail line would be a real boon. Not all agreed. In a letter to the editor in 1915 one person wrote: “ . . . as a means of transport of beetroot from Bitten and red strawberries from Red Hill we doubt its usefulness”. Most though were in favour and several routes were considered. One was a coastal route through Shoreham to Flinders. A second was a link from Mornington across to Red Hill or from Baxter junction along the centre of the peninsula to Red Hill. The third, and chosen, route went from Bittern through Balnarring and Merricks to Red Hill (with the possibility of extending it further south at a future date). continued next page...
October 2020
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