Salvage Archaeology in Melbourne’s CBD: Reflections upon Documentary Sources and the Role of Prefabricated Buildings in Construction of the “Instant City” of Gold-Rush-Era Melbourne

Abstract

Salvage excavation and monitoring of a site in Melbourne’s CBD was undertaken in early 2015, ahead of construction of an apartment tower with a basement carpark. The site at the northeast corner of Elizabeth and Franklin Streets is situated to the north of the original plan of Melbourne, within an extension of the urban grid where allotments were sold during 1851, the year gold was officially discovered in the Colony of Victoria. Demolition of brick buildings from ca. 1905, then removal of rubble and fill revealed the substantially intact footings of three much earlier buildings, together with their yards and outbuildings. This excavation has provided an opportunity to review the usefulness of the pictorial and mapped record of nineteenth-century Melbourne as tools for archaeological modelling and interpretation. In particular, contemporary photographic images enabled the identification of two of the main structures archaeologically present as having been of prefabricated iron erected before 1856. The consequent focus upon prefabricated iron buildings led to analysis of building fabric recorded within a detailed plan of the city ca. 1856 and the confirmation that such structures made a significant contribution to the phenomenal growth of Melbourne during the 1850s gold rush.