Altona Beach in Melbourne for Water H2O Thursday

June 25, 2024 • 5 Comments

Altona Pier was built for the steam ferries in 1888, but these days is used mostly by fishermen and ‘promenaders’. Lovely old boardwalk stretching out over Altona Beach.

Altona Pier reaches a long way out over the water of Hobsons Bay. The information sign on the shore suggests that it needed to be this long because it had to cater for steam ferries that berthed here when the pier was first built in the late 1880s.

And sure enough, down at the far end, you can see the structure of the pier changes, with steps down to a lower level, from which passengers no doubt used to embark and disembark. There is also a solid metal mooring post on each side for those ferries to attach themselves to the pier.

History and stories about Altona Pier

The Bacchus Marsh Express of 15 September 1888 makes the first mention of the ‘almost complete’ Altona Pier, so I’d say this pier dates from 1888 rather than the year earlier mentioned on the information signs at the end of the pier now. Big crowds had gone to Altona on a free trip by steamer (to the pier) or train to watch the auctioning of the first land lots up for grabs in Altona.

And there were similar crowds in December 1888 when the Caledonia Society organised its annual picnic in Altona, two bagpipers marching the crowd off the ferries along the pier to the marquees set up nearby. The report in The Argus newspaper also mentioned the two miles of pines skirting the beach at Altona, and they are still there today.

Always popular with anglers, Altona Pier has the occasional big catch: in 1898 a man by the name of John Drydale hooked a shark, which was nearly 10ft long. No idea how he reeled it in, mind you…

The photo on the information board by the pier shows a shop standing by the start of the pier. This may well be Mr Davey’s store, mentioned in the Williamstown Chronicle in 1920. A ‘cosmopolitan’ place, said the Chronicle, Mr Davey caters ‘for all classes’, and has tea rooms and dressing rooms for bathers as well as his store. What a shame it isn’t there anymore!

By 1932 the pier had fallen into a state of disrepair (ferries had stopped by then and it was ‘used only by fisherman, swimmers and promenaders’, said one newspaper). It’s actually thanks to the public spending available for ‘unemployment relief’ in the 1930s that the pier was saved and repaired.

By 1939, though, there were more concerns about the pier’s dilapidated state, with the Werribee Shire Banner newspaper claiming that missing planks meant in places gaps as big as 2’6” (that’s about 80cm) had appeared, and ‘as the pier is unljghted at night, it is considered a menace to visitors’! (By the way, there are now lights all along Altona Pier)…

It still took years to have the pier properly restored, though. A Minister visited in 1946, funds were finally found in 1947, but then supply issues slowed things down and work only began in 1950. Funnily enough, press reports on Trove website then dry up and there seems to have been no major celebration of the newly re-built pier.

This is linking Sunday Best Intelliblog My Corner of the World Through My Lens