Down the rabbit hole in Melbourne

Why does a rabbit take up residence in a small garden at the foot of a corporate tower at the corner of Bourke and King streets?

The poets have observed that there is providence in the fall of a sparrow, that even seemingly insignificant events have significance or meaning.

However, this bunny is too late for Christmas and too early for Easter so if not redemption and rebirth, what is his message? 

While the corner of King and Bourke streets has long been home to many homeless with some taking refuge outside convenience stores and others finding respite in the benevolent shadow of St Augustine Parish, this is the first undomesticated creature calling the area home. 

Unknown (or known) to the bunny is that the small garden where he has been living these past few months has a long history rooted and intertwined with social justice, philanthropy, gold, British Royalty, and the Australian Labor Party. There is even a link to madness – but that’s another story.

In 1840, the first building was erected to provide offices for the Crown Lands Department. This function was subsequently replaced in 1841 by the operations of the first Supreme Court of Victoria with justice John Willis presiding and declaring beards in court were contempt of court. John Willis’s father was a physician who treated King George the third for mental illness.

The garden has a variety of plants but is mostly distinguished by a single large tree whose branches stretch out well beyond the black iron fence erected around the perimeter.  

The current corporate tower behind the tree was famously designed in 1987 to complement the tree with a concave facade enveloping the garden. The tree – a Honey Locust, is 166 years old according to Victoria’s horticultural records and the only one of its kind in Melbourne.

Another specimen of the Honey Locust tree is still growing in a cemetery in Bratislava, Slovakia after being planted in the late 1700s – some 245 years later. 

At the current dizzying rate of demolition and redevelopment in Melbourne’s CBD, the Honey Locust in the garden at 607 Bourke and King is likely to outlive the other corporate tenant-tower on the corner.

After all, the last time a developer wanted to pull down a building on same site at 607 Bourke St in 1970, Whelan the Wreckers chief declared that the old bluestone edifice would have lasted another 100 years. In spite of local protests involving Melbourne University students and the National Trust, the demolition went ahead, and the site lay disused for almost two decades before the current building was erected. 

The Honey Locust tree has survived many changes since its seeds were first planted in the late 1850s. In 1850, The site was used as the Office of The Colonial Storekeeper proving food, supplies, guns, equipment and tools to local residents. The building was subsequently improved to include bluestone in 1857, and a garden was added – with seeds for a Honey Locust tree which came with immigrants arriving for the 1851 Gold Rush.

The same building was used over time by the Schools Department, labor Bureau, and the State Relief Committee (1930-1960). It was this history of philanthropy that Joan Kirner acknowledged by placing the monument in the garden beside the tree.

The Victorian Relief Fund eventually relocated but the proud legacy of the organisation is forever associated with 607 Bourke St. There was a time when Australia faced a different type of housing crisis with the Great Depression displacing hundreds of thousands from their jobs, farms and homes and making food and other provisions scarce with widespread social disruption and devastation including many suicides. 

Today, there is little evidence of the storied history of the corner of Bourke and King streets, except the small rough-hewn bluestone monument, mostly obscured by foliage and shade, marking the garden as the birthplace of the State Relief Committee (known today as The Foodbank).  

Premier Joan Kirner unveiled the monument in 1990, and her words still come to life in the dappled light falling between the layers of branches and leaves. She never imagined that when she and her colleagues shouted across the parliamentary chamber to former liberal deputy leader Tom Austin that he should pull a rabbit out of his hat, one would turn up at her monument years later. 

And that’s where this story really goes down a rabbit hole. Tom Austin was a descendant of Thomas Austin (1815-1871) who is famous for bringing the first 24 rabbits into Australia in 1869 – for sport.

Those DNA-matched 24 multiplied into 10 billion at one point before the war against the rabbits was declared with bounty hunters, rabbit-proof fences and the CSIRO introduced myxomatosis to reduce their numbers.

Today their numbers nationally stand at around 200 million – a small but brave home-guard force, with members in Melbourne seeking sanctuary under the towers of the Westgate Bridge, in the thickets around the Royal Children’s hospital and in tussocks near the Newport power station on the west bank of the Yarra River.

And, for reasons only known to him, one has come to a small patch of land on the corner of Bourke and King streets.