September 14 - 20, 2022
Let there be light ◆ A DAY TO REMEMBER: September 14, 1922 saw Wangaratta switch on electricity for the first time. PHOTO C/- Wangaratta Historical Society (originally Marg Pullen)
By BELINDA HARRISON
SEPTEMBER 14, 2022 marks 100 years since electric lighting came to Wangaratta and not only illuminated Wangaratta’s main street, but helped forge new standards of living and prosperity. Before kerosene street lamps were installed in 1866, the only street lights were the hotels lamps and a publican could go to court for ‘failing to keep their lamps lighted’. In January 1888, the provision for electricity for lighting was proposed but the Gasworks were built and the transition from kerosene to gas began.
Gas lights had to be lit each night and both the company and gas lighter were fined for each lamp not alight when the council inspector did his rounds. In November 1911 the subject of electricity was raised again after council received a letter from messrs Lincolne and McDougall suggesting ‘that the undertaking of pumping the water supply and providing lighting by electricity might be carried out by a combined plant’. Authority to install electric light was sought from the government in Melbourne as the borough had to obtain an ‘order in Council’.
It didn’t get through the council the first time and back and forth it went with schemes designed, reports prepared for the Electricity Commission in Melbourne and letters from ratepayers, engineers, electrical firms supply equipment and government departments pouring into the council. Eventually, in November 1915, the Works Department gave the authority. In 1918 the Co-Store installed its own electric lighting which was run by a generator, and a number of other businesses including the Theatre Royal (Reid St next to Pinsent Hotel), Her
Majesty’s Theatre (Murphy St) and St Pat’s Pictures (Ford St) were also said to have their own generators for electricity. But for the town as a whole, all went quiet and nothing happened until May 1921 when the council received a proposal from the new woollen mills to supply the town with power. Just like the connecting of electricity, talk of a mill in Wangaratta started many years before in 1876 - when a meeting was held at the Royal Victoria Hotel and deputations sent to mills in Geelong and Ballarat.
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