Cut paw paw

Reading a lot about quarries in Sunshine North:

• Unsurprisingly the council owned the land
• For some time the area was the "Parish of Cut Paw Paw"
• Footscray was called "Stoneopolis" by the "Melbourne Punch" circa 1850 
• 1870s - quarries in "Braybrook Shire" (I believe this is the area now known as Sunshine North but I'm not yet certain of this) supplied stone for "road metal" and railway ballast (I think road metal is just large pieces of gravel)

From this document:

• "Sometimes a single small reserve located in a residential or industrial landscape is a hint that a small quarry once existed on the site"
• Somewhat unrelated but the bluestone house between my house and the fish and chip shop had a basalt quarry behind it
• Again unrelated but I like the name of this company: "Footscray Enterprise Dandelion Wine and Aerated Water Manufactory"

I think I would also like to contact one of the authors of this report (or maybe both)

Additionally I found a document entitled "Brimbank City Council Post-contact Cultural Heritage Study". It notes the quarries are historically significant in the context of local economic development, and confirms that they're the last quarries left undeveloped. I'm not sure what to make of their suggested timeline ("Date 1920c" - "Prior to 1933, the land was used for farming" - "The first quarries were opened … probably shortly after World War Two". Boral got involved at some point during the 80s and then moved operations to the urban fringe (beginning of the end). Public oppositions to the quarries and operations taking place is noted as having occurred in the 70s and 80s (being able to interview someone who was involved in this would be really neat). Apparently the local community was also concerned about the environmental impact of quarry remediation given the general trend to turn them into tips. I wonder what the site would be like today if local residents gave in to the idea of a tip back then - it'd probably be a giant flat park (or some sunken houses) by now

Further to that, the River Valley estate was actually sold to private investors in 1994

This is also interesting

And also this: "…the land was previously used for quarrying, soil extraction and other industry and there is a need for a return on the investment in rehabilitating this degraded site."

Other misc. matters:

• Saw musk lorikeet family in the (elm?) tree outside the Royal Melbourne hospital
• Two masked lapwings standing in the middle of a puddle outside geometric bank HQ in Docklands
• Unintentionally eavesdropping on conversation outside said HQ: "At the end of the day I feel as though I excelled in my skill set. I've been corporate for 9 years"
• Kitten introduced two crickets into the house and promptly lost track of them both, then conjured a small beetle as a new friend and tapped it around for a little bit while the beetle made that odd sucking noise beetles make
• Thought something was a white rabbit or cat but it was a plastic bag
• Still having dreams (or nightmares) where I'm in close proximity to the spillway of a very large, deep dam and I can see the algae growing on the concrete. What does it mean

And some old Trove things I found related to the quarry (I would provide links or dates for the articles but it is well past midnight and I am lazy):

Good work on obviating that nuisance 

And other things

This was embedded in between ads and various articles. I think it's a joke

This is my favourite thing I have found so far

Lastly, things I should find and read/look at:

1. Gary Vines, Quarry and Stone, Melbourne's Living Museum of the West, 1993: 27
2. O. Ford and D. Parsons, Quarrying in Melbourne's West, Living Museum of the West, 1988. 
3. Sands & McDougall Melbourne Directories, 1930 - 1968. Australian Survey Corps, Topographic Survey, Melbourne Sheet SJ55 South (map) 1933.

I was going to include a drawing but my sense of scale is off which is a sign I need to sleep