Local community advocate Neil Head, who has made a submission supporting the heritage bid, said the history of the western suburbs and its pivotal role in Victoria’s industrial legacy was being overlooked. The buildings’ role in women’s trade education was particularly noteworthy, Head said.
“It would be hard to imagine anything more significant, women from all backgrounds, including migrant backgrounds, would have come through those corridors,” he said.
Head also said the Victorian Heritage Register needed to include more sites in the western suburbs. “As a casual observer there seems to be bias towards eastern suburbs, there’s more clout on one side of the city than the other,” he said.
There are 106 state-listed heritage places in Melbourne’s western suburbs and 116 in the eastern suburbs, according to the state government.
At present, there are only 13 places in the City of Brimbank on the Victorian Heritage Register. “It’s a very big and populous municipality with very few state heritage sites,” said Head.
In comparison, municipalities in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs such as the City of Boroondara and City of Stonnington have 57 and 71 places on the state register, respectively.
The Henty Wing of the former Sunshine Technical School at 129 Derby Road, Sunshine.Credit: Chris Hopkins
Professor Charles Sowerwine, heritage committee chair at the Royal Historical Society of Victoria, the peak body for Victoria’s 340 local history societies, disputed the final findings of the report and an assertion made that there was “no evidence of a strong or special attachment to the former Sunshine Technical College”.
“I don’t think they [Heritage Victoria] gave enough weight to the very real community support owing to the outreach the school had in that community, which is a working-class community. There’s still an old boys and old girls network,” Sowerwine said.
Sowerwine, who is supporting the council with a submission on behalf of the RHSV, said getting the buildings’ state protection was essential despite the buildings having a local heritage overlay.
“The problem with the local heritage overlays in recent years is that the Education Department have been basically overriding it so that it doesn’t provide the protection that it was intended to,” he said.
The former Sunshine Technical School site is currently vacant with some options for interim use being considered, which includes consultation with Brimbank City Council.
A spokesperson for the Victorian School Building Authority said the site was being “retained for future education use given the population growth expected in the local area”.
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