Faster: Manly in the 1920s
By Terry Metherell, 2006
Chapter 2: Speeding Up: Manly Transport in the 1920s
The first motor cars were seen in Manly around 1903-05. No doubt a few very early
touring cars found their way to Manly via the Spit Punt. However, the first cars based in
Manly were hire cars offering ‘joy rides’ along the Steyne’s ocean beachfront and the
Esplanade’s harbour front.
Several photos from this period show De Dion hire cars on the Steyne and Pittwater
Road, Manly, with families on board either for a ride or a photo opportunity. One shows
W A Thomas with his 1903 De Dion hire car no.60 outside the Steyne Hotel. Another
shows a 1905 De Dion outside ‘Undercliff’ at the corner of Carlton Street and Pittwater
road, probably travelling on a short scenic loop around the Flat of Manly and the
beachfront.
Posing for the camera in a Guyon automobile, Esplanade, Manly, c1909.
The NSW Motor Traffic Act of 1909 forced the registration of all motor vehicles. The
first Manly car registered was the 9-10hp Renault of William Wild of Whistler Street.
Next was a 15-25hp Fiat owned by James Bonner of Fairlight, who was then the Mayor
of Manly.
Other Manly pre-war car registrations included real estate agent Horace Robey’s
Renault; F W Richardson’s Sunbeam; Henry Devlin’s De Dion; and the Metallurgique (a
Belgian car) of well-known doctor, Dr David Thomas.1
In 1908, J W Nicholson established the New Manly and Pittwater Motor Car
Company in Whistler Street on the current site of Manly Council’s multi-storey car
parking station. Nicholson’s garage was alongside a horse-drawn carrier’s business and
three doors from the Manly Livery Stable Company. The horse-drawn transport era was
facing a new challenge. The Great War and post-war prosperity were to gradually force
1
Manly Library, Early Motor Cars in Manly fact-sheet, information drawn from Charles McDonald,
Stories of the Peninsula, second collection, pp37-8, first published in Manly Daily 10 June 1976.
1
out the horse-based businesses that lined Whistler Street from The Corso to Raglan
Street – the saddler’s shop and forge (on the corner of Market Lane), the horse-drawn
‘cab proprietor’, the blacksmith and the coachbuilder.2
In 1909, William Wild established his Manly Motor Garage Company in Whistler
Street probably taking over Nicholson’s Garage3. By 1911 he was running a car hire
business there and advertised his ‘30hp Hire Cars’ in the Manly Daily.
William Wild’s was not the only hire car business in pre-war Manly. The Manly Daily
advertised J J Franklin’s ‘new and up-to-date cars’ capable of seating two to ten
passengers. Mr J McIntosh of Norton Street offered his ‘Good reliable car for Private
Hire on moderate terms.’
An early attempt to provide a local bus service by John Ecklin in 1906-07 with his
grandly named Manly and Pittwater Omnibus Company seems to have failed soon
after.4 Manly’s first bus service had a trial run in February 1906: “On a trial run to
Newport, two motor-buses recently imported from England left the Pier Hotel with a
gaggle of dignitaries, cheered on by a large crowd.”5 Despite struggling with
Sheepstation Hill at Mona Vale, the journey was completed in only 49 minutes. The
vehicles’ springs were reported to be a ‘trifle weak for the Manly-Newport road’.6 His
premises probably became Nicholson’s Garage in 1908, and in 1909 William Wild’s
Manly Motor Garage.
In September 1911, Manly experienced its first fatal motor accident. The Manly Daily
advertised a ‘Monster Benefit to Aid the Widow and Orphans of the Late Stanley Hall
who was killed on 2nd September in a Motor Car Accident on Pittwater Road.’7 The
Benefit, called by the Mayor James Bonner, was made up of performances at Manly’s
three picture ‘palaces’: the Pavilion, Lyric, and West’s. In addition to silent films, ‘A
Good Musical Program has been arranged at each place.’
Was the unfortunate Stanley Hall a victim of the Wolseley registered to Manly’s
George Hall, and listed as one of the first in Manly (number plate 726)?8
The Great War led to a huge expansion in motorised transport and in the power of
motor engines which spread to Australia. In Manly, William Wild’s Manly Motor Garage
expanded from [14] Whistler Street around the corner to Market Lane. The Pacific Motor
Garage opened in [2-4] Raglan Street, opposite the Hotel Pacific.9 By this time, garages
were selling several brands of fuel in tins carrying the advertising brands of their
imported refiners.
However, it was the gradual restoration of peace time prosperity that saw an
explosion of motor vehicles in Manly and the gradual reduction in horse-drawn transport.
By 1920, Manly had at least six motor garages, all clustered in and around the heart of
‘the village’. Manly Motor Garage in Whistler Street; Rutherford’s in Sydney Road; the
Pacific in Raglan Street; William Sinden’s ‘Motor Engineers and Repairers’ in Sydney
Road; and Slocombe and Rose’s in Short Street.10
2
Sands’ Directory for 1909.
Sands’ Directory for 1910.
4
Sands’ Directory for 1908.
5
Curby, Pauline, Seven Miles from Sydney p189.
6
Sydney Morning Herald, 10 February 1906, quoted in Curby, op cit.
7
Manly Daily, 17 October 1911.
8
Manly Library, Early Motor Cars in Manly fact-sheet, information drawn from McDonald,
Charles, Stories of the Peninsula, second collection, pp37-8, first published in Manly Daily 10
June 1976.
9
Sands’ Directory for 1917.
10
Sands’ Directory for 1921.
3
2
1919 advert for Slocombe and Rose, from North Steyne SLSC Carnival Programme
Until 1924, post-war recovery was uneven. Just as Ecklin’s Manly and Pittwater
Omnibus Company and Nicholson’s New Manly and Pittwater Motor Car Company failed
in 1907-08, so too Manly’s Premier Motor Works went bankrupt in 1923. The Manly
Daily advertised for sale “The whole equipment of the up-to-date Motor Garage and
Service Station” including a 3-ton International motor lorry11.
The same year, however, Nimmo’s Ocean Garage in Pittwater Road, Manly, was
advertising new Ford cars for sale:
“The Ford is The Car… £305 Buys a Ford Touring Car.”
In Sydney, main agents for Ford, Buick, Cadillac, and Fiat were being established
based in the city. Garages in selected suburbs such as Manly acted as local agents.
In the 1920s, car, tram and bus transport was changing the way Manly residents saw
their homes and, therefore, their lives. Getting to and from home, work and shops was
becoming faster and more convenient. Most children were still expected to walk to and
from school.
Manly Daily advertisements in 1925 for homes for sale reflected this growing value on
speed and convenience, as well as other amenities. A building lot on the corner of
Marshall and Stuart Streets on Manly’s Eastern Hill was advertised as ‘near the ‘bus to
Addison Road.’ Another block on the corner of Denison Street and Francis Lane, ‘On
the Flat between Tram and Beach, suitable for the erection of residential flats’, also
featured a ‘brick motor garage’. A pair of brick houses ‘On the Heights’ in Margaret
Street was within ‘7 minutes walk of the Ferry’ and ‘Bus passes door’.
Hardie and Gorman with Robey, Hanson and Strong of the Corso were to auction
number 7 Bower Street ‘at the corner of Cliff Street, right at the terminus of the Fairy
Bower Motor ‘Bus.’ This feature ranked ahead of ‘splendid surroundings… enchanting
views of the Ocean, within a few minutes of the Surf Sheds and Beach’, and even details
of the imposing and profitable ‘well-built Brick Residence’ itself12.
11
12
Manly Daily, 26 July 1923, p4.
Manly Daily, 25 April 1925, p8.
3
Real estate agents invariably featured Manly’s tram network in advertisements for the
many subdivisions released for sale in the 1920s, especially in Fairlight and Balgowlah.
Faster and more reliable transport had become an essential part of the quickening pace
of inter-war life. Whether it meant cars for the wealthier classes or motor-cycles, trams
and buses for working-class families, speed had become as desirable a ‘good’ as any of
the goods for sale in the attractive new shops lining Manly’s Corso.
By 1925, as post-war prosperity increased, the number of garages had grown to at
least nine. Demand for motor services had spread to the developing suburbs like
Balgowlah, where the Balgowlah Motor Garage was operating in the growing local
shopping centre around Condamine Street and Sydney Road. Even Dee Why had its
first garage in Howard Avenue. The first specialised, American-style ‘Motor Service
Station’ in Manly selling petrol from the new, hand-operated fuel pumps, was established
by Stan Williams in Sydney Road, on the corner of Austin Street, Fairlight.13
Another garage to introduce petrol pumps was James Barry’s Barry and Son, which
operated in Belgrave Street (now Pittwater Road), next door to Barry’s house, beside the
well-known Gornich Flats.
In February 1926, Council approved the installation of new petrol pumps with storage
tanks under the footpath at six Manly premises, including Fred Deaton’s Hotel Manly, J
B Barry’s garage, F L Luker’s motor bike shop in Sydney Road and the Pacific Motor
Garage in Raglan Street.14
During the 1920s, Manly’s carriers gradually converted from horse-drawn carts to
trucks. R J Wild and Son, one of the first carriers to be based in Manly and by far the
largest by World War One, expanded from its original base in Victoria Parade and
Wentworth Street in the centre of Manly, to a new depot on Pittwater Road near the
Manly Tram Sheds.
William Wild, R J Wild’s brother, led the way into motor transport with his garage and
hire car business. Another brother, Edwin, ran the Pittwater Road depot in the 1920s.
Never again would huge teams of carthorses be seen pulling massive wagons up the
Sydney Road hill to Fairlight or up the Spit Hill to and from Sydney, piled high with
household possessions.15
RJ Wild, from Manly Daily Pictorial.
13
Sands’ Directory for 1926.
Manly Council Minutes, 25 February 1926 (Erection of Petrol Pumps).
15
See R J Wild: a Note, Manly Library vertical files.
14
4
Meanwhile, Manly’s tram network curbed the growth of motor bus proprietors. The
first Manly tram service was established in 1903, from Manly Wharf to Manly Lagoon
(then known as Curl Curl Lagoon). Steam-driven until 1905, then horse-drawn until
1909, the service was electrified gradually, starting with the Manly-Brookvale service in
1911. The Manly to Spit tram service along Sydney Road was opened in 1911. Further
extensions, to Brookvale in 1910, Narrabeen in 1913 and Harbord in 1925 followed the
increase in population of these outlying small farming communities. Tram services
speeded their transformation into commuter suburbs feeding into Manly’s transport and
business hub.
By 1925, only two bus proprietors were listed as operating in the Manly area: Arthur
Curtis in Lauderdale Avenue, serving parts of Manly’s Eastern Hill, Fairlight and
Balgowlah, and Turner’s in Condamine Street, serving Manly Vale. Other bus services
ran to Harbord and further north to Newport, but few were able to compete on a daily
basis with the efficient trams.
Workers were now able to get to Manly Wharf and the ferries to Sydney more quickly.
Housewives were able to shop more easily at the Corso. Cheap land and housing in
suburbs like Balgowlah, Manly Vale and Harbord attracted new families to the Manly
area. Construction materials, household furniture and all the other goods to support
suburban life had to be moved more quickly and in greater volumes. As transport
accelerated, so too did every other aspect of daily life in Manly.
Nowhere was the speeding up of life better illustrated than in motor vehicle
registrations. In 1921, there was only one vehicle per 45 persons in Australia. By 1930,
at the beginning of the great Depression, there was one vehicle per 11 persons. By
1939, at the outbreak of World War Two, this ratio of motor vehicles to population had
only increased slowly to just under one per 8 persons. It was the 1920s that saw the
most profound cultural and social changes driven by this speeding up of transport and
the economic life that relied upon it.
In 1921, there were 99,000 motor vehicles (including trucks) and over 37,000 motor
cycles registered in Australia. By 1939, this had increased to 562,000 motorcars,
258,000 commercial vehicles and 79,000 motorcycles. Manly experienced and thrilled
with its share of this boom in vehicles especially during the ‘fast’ 1920s.16
By 1930, it seemed that every major road and intersection around Manly had
sprouted roadside petrol pumps, oil company advertising and primitive motor repair
workshops. Many motor businesses from the 1920s were to become household names
in Manly and other communities in Manly-Warringah. William Sinden’s motor tyres (the
famous ‘Man on the Tyres’) in Sydney Road, Fairlight; the Lachlan Garage and
Brotherton’s Motor Cycles in Pittwater Road (then Belgrave Street) near the People’s
Palace (formerly Barry and Son’s garage); Les Luker’s motor cycle agency in Sydney
Road, next to the Congregational Church and church school; Paynes’, Williams’, Harry
Headley’s, Balgowlah Garage and Wanganella Garage, all on Sydney Road from
Fairlight to Seaforth.
Dee Why, Narrabeen, Collaroy, Mona Vale and Newport all had one or two garages
by 1930, often combining fuel pumps, repair workshops, bus depot and hire car
business.
The demand for motor vehicle services quickly led to specialization in Manly:
Sinden’s Tyres; Coglan’s Manly Tyre Service and ‘battery station’; IXL Engineering
Works; and several motor cycle agents. By 1930, motor vehicle services were an
16
ABS, Year Book of Australia 2001: Australia’s Motor Vehicle Fleet since the 1920s.
5
important employer in Manly, concentrated especially in Whistler Street, Sydney Road
and Raglan Street.
The demand and excitement generated by motor vehicle travel and traffic increased
the pressure for improved roads, a new bridge across the Spit and, eventually, the
widening of the Corso in Manly. Throughout the 1920s, Manly Council struggled to keep
up with community pressure from Progress Associations and local residents to re-grade,
re-surface and asphalt the growing network of roads.
Council experimented with several forms of road surface including crushed stone,
gravel and various new bitumen mixes. On one occasion, many of the homes, shops
and footpaths in central Manly were fouled with tar from a sloppy mix of asphalt laid by a
contractor. Despite innovations in road surfaces, most Manly and Balgowlah roads
remained roughly graded dirt tracks during the 1920s, subject to heavy erosion in wet
weather.
Edgar McIntosh, who joined Manly Council as a cadet engineer in 1929 on the eve of
the Great Depression, recalled that horses and drays were still in use for road
maintenance work and street cleaning: “The horse practically drove itself and followed
the sweepers on the accustomed daily round without much instruction from its driver. It
earned 19 shillings a week.” Council’s works transport consisted of three tipping trucks
and one for street cleaning which had solid rubber tyres. The Engineer used his own
car: “Road surveyors took a tram as near as possible to the job and walked the rest of
the way.”17
Council’s steam-roller was used to winch a heavy road plough through the toughest
surfaces to help break them up for road construction and surfacing. If the road was to
receive a tar surface, Council’s metal mixer would produce a mixture of blue metal and
Manly Gasworks’ tar for laying as road pavement. Blue metal was delivered by ship to
wooden hoppers located at the old Brightside Wharf area, where Gocher Court now
stands. Resurfacing was done by hand spraying with Gasworks tar, covered with beach
sand.
McIntosh remembered a Council ganger, Billy Saillard, describing how he had
constructed a box culvert by hand in the 1920s under Balgowlah Road, at Condamine
Street: “We got some cement from the depot, some sand from the beach, broke up
some stone spalls for the concrete and got some old bedstands from the tip for
reinforcement.” From about 1929, road resurfacing was done by contract spraying of tar
or bitumen onto the existing surface and covering with and rolling in fine blue metal
chips, “a process which has been refined and is still in use today.”
In 1924, after many years of Council lobbying and community agitation, the first Spit
Bridge opened. It was built by the Sydney Harbour Trust on behalf of Manly Council, to
be paid for by tolls on road users, collected by the Council. The timber bridge with its
central opening span replaced the Spit Punt, first established by Peter Ellery around
1850. It eliminated for a time the notorious traffic snarls caused by the punt especially at
weekends and public holidays.
As early as 1925, only one year after completion, concerns were raised about the
capacity of the bridge to meet rapidly increasing traffic and the need for a high level
bridge to eliminate frequent bridge openings. In 1927, motor traffic was 60 per cent
higher than in 1923, prior to the bridge opening. The bridge proved a financial bonanza
for Manly Council, which was able to pay off the debt owing in 1930, years ahead of
schedule. However, despite public meetings and lobbying throughout the 1930s to
17
Recollections of Edgar McIntosh (former Manly Municipal Engineer), Wellings Local Studies, pp
5-6.
6
widen, then replace the bridge, it was to be 1958 before the second Spit Bridge opened
to traffic.18
First Spit Bridge and tram terminus
Manly’s road toll began to strain the facilities and resources of Manly Cottage
Hospital which was still in Raglan Street despite community efforts to secure State
Government funding for a new hospital on North Head. The ambulance attended 97
accidents in 1923, receiving nothing in payment; 67 x-rays were done the same year on
accident victims. Dr David Thomas suggested car owners should insure against
personal injury and the money be earmarked for the ambulance and Hospital.19
In 1926, the first Manly Motor Registry opened in new premises in Belgrave Street,
next door to the new Manly Court House and Manly Police Station. It shared the same
building as Wood Coffill, the undertakers – an unwitting statement on Manly’s rapidly
rising road toll?20 In 1928, a stylish new Manly Tyre Service Station opened in Belgrave
Street, opposite Gilbert Park.21 A few years later Manly’s most architecturally advanced
service station, the Spanish Mission-style Auckland Garage, was to open on the southwest of Gilbert Park, opposite the fashionable Hotel Manly. The age of speed had swept
into central Manly.
In 1928, the craving for speed and modern style in Manly claimed its most notable
victim – not a driver or pedestrian, but a church. The beautiful St Matthew’s Church in
the Corso, designed by Edmund Blacket, and a Manly landmark since 1865, was
demolished for road widening.
Since 1880, when the trustees of Manly’s Bassett-Darley Estate agreed to widen the
Corso and abandon their plans to make Victoria Parade the main thoroughfare leading
to a new wharf, St Matthew’s Church had projected awkwardly into the Corso.
Successive Councils pressed the Church trustees to permit the partial destruction or
complete removal of St Matthew’s. The Church in 1927 finally succumbed to Council
pressure, driven by the Chamber of Commerce and the Manly ‘Boosters’ Committee.
The popularity of the motor car and road widening as much as a fixation with the new,
helped ensure the resumption of the ‘offending’ projection of land and the demolition of
18
RTA Heritage and Conservation Register, The Spit Bridge.
Curby, P, Visitors Sixpence, p70.
20
Sands’ Directory 1927.
21
Sands’ Directory 1929.
19
7
one of Sydney’s most architecturally and historically significant churches. With the old
St Matthew’s went the church-owned Victoria Hall – Manly’s only major public hall and
principal public entertainment venue, used by almost every amateur theatrical, musical
and school group in Manly. Manly’s cars and trucks could now speed along the Corso
unobstructed by Manly’s heritage.
8