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Victoria Dock

Location Footscray Road and Docklands Highway,, DOCKLANDS VIC 3008 - Property No B6247 File Number B6247 Level National

[1/1] B6247 Victoria Dock

Statement of Significance

In various ways Victoria Dock is of Local, State, National and International significance. For the past one hundred years Victoria Dock has formed a major part of the general cargo handling capability of one of the major ports in the world. At the time of its opening in 1892 it was the second largest single dock in the world, and is now the oldest extant single large dock in the world which still retains much of its original piling and some of its original cargo sheds and wharf fittings, with its long, consciously planned lines of simple linear wharfage it foreshadowed by at least two decades such development in British docks. It contains the earliest extant example of a multi-berth cargo shed in the world, it was the prototype for all other dock/tidal basin development in the port of Melbourne, and foreshadowed (although probably never influenced) similar developments at Rotterdam, Antwerp and Hamburg. It was the first of the large basins to be constructed in Australia, and it was, in the period at least from 1924 to 1970, the main port facility through which general cargo was shipped not only for the city of Melbourne, but for the whole of Victoria and beyond. It symbolizes the triumph of the Melbourne Harbor Trust Commissioners over all other vested interests in Melbourne, and it is a significant monument to Joseph Brady's vision, experience and persistence, and a testament to the durability of Australian timbers.
This classification applies particularly to the shape and form of the dock; to its long lines of simple linear wharfage, the Central Pier, the extant cargo sheds and wharf fittings along the north-east and north-west sides of the dock, the crane and railway tracks along the wharf aprons, the original sections of timber piling, and the remnant sections of wharf roadways with their bluestone pitching - particularly Cowper Street and Pitt Street.
Classified: 14/08/1991