The Collingwood Telephone Exchange

The Collingwood Telephone Exchange

An October 1915 Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works Report recommended approval of a proposal for the provision of a new telephone exchange building and installation of automatic telephone switching equipment at Collingwood. Following a hiatus in construction during World War I, the building portion of the Collingwood Telephone Exchange works was completed during the 1921-22 financial year, and the supply and installation of the air-conditioning, heating, ventilating and vacuum cleaning plant were completed during the 1922-23 financial year. Collingwood’s automatic Telephone Exchange commenced operation on 14 October 1922.

Subsequent expansion of the Collingwood Telephone Exchange took place in at least two stages, with construction of new fabric abutting and connected to the original. The precise design and construction dates of these stages are unknown. It is likely that the first extension was completed between the late 1920s and the late 1930s, and the second extension around the late 1950s or the early 1960s.

In February 1972, construction of a substantial two-storey extension began to the existing Exchange building complex’s east. This was completed in mid-1973. In the late 1970s a second two-storey extension was added, again to the east of the Exchange buildings. The exteriors of these two 1970s additions are mostly of unpainted off-form concrete, and they display some Brutalist style characteristics. The design drawings for the latter of these 1970s extensions indicate that the Commonwealth Department of Construction anticipated future substantial upward and eastward further additions to these parts of the Exchange, but changes in switching technology have obviated the need for further expansion of the buildings.

Privatisation of Telstra

In 1975 the Postmaster-General’s Department was disaggregated into the Australian Telecommunications Commission (trading as Telecom Australia) and the Australian Postal Commission (trading as Australia Post). Following the merger of the Australian Telecommunications Commission and the Overseas Telecommunications Corporation (OTC) in 1992, the resulting new corporation traded as ‘Telstra’ internationally and ‘Telecom Australia’ domestically until uniform branding of ‘Telstra’ was introduced throughout the entire organisation in 1995.

Telstra was subsequently partially-privatised in three different stages, informally known as ‘T1’ ($3.30), ‘T2’ ($7.40) and ‘T3’ ($3.60) in 1997, 1999 and 2006 respectively. In T1, the Australian Government sold one third of its shares in Telstra and publicly listed the company on the Australian Stock Exchange. In 1999’s T2, a further 16% of Telstra shares were sold to the public, leaving the Government with 51% ownership. In 2006, T3 (the largest of the three public releases) reduced the Government's ownership of Telstra to 17%. This ‘remainder’ was then placed into the Australian Government Future Fund, an independently-managed sovereign wealth fund into which the Government deposits funds to meet its future liabilities for payment of super to retired civil servants of the Australian Public Service. In 2009 the Future Fund sold a A$2.4 billion parcel of Telstra shares which reduced the Government’s stake to 10.9%. In August 2011 the Future Fund sold its remaining Telstra shares, effectively completing Telstra’s privatisation.

Up until 2011, buildings owned by Telstra were therefore also in Commonwealth Government ownership and thus not eligible for inclusion in the Victorian Heritage Register. This restriction also still applies to buildings currently owned by Australia Post.

Construction details

Architect name: 1922 building: Commonwealth Department of Works and Railways

1970s building: Commonwealth Department of Construction, Victoria & Tasmania Region

Architectural style name: 1922 and late 1920s to 1930s buildings: Early Commonwealth Vernacular

1970s building: Brutalist.

Builder name: not known

Construction started date: 1922

Construction ended date: late 1970s

VICTORIAN HISTORICAL THEMES

03 Connecting Victorians by transport and communications

3.7 Establishing and maintaining communications

06 Building towns, cities and the garden state

6.2 Creating Melbourne

6.3 Shaping the suburbs

INTEGRITY/INTACTNESS

Intactness

The intactness of the Collingwood Telephone Exchange is good. The buildings’ exteriors retain much of their original fabric. Internally, the walls, fixtures and finishes of the Exchange’s 1922 building and its late 1920s to late 1930s two-storey extension have been altered in many areas, although much of the original fabric of these buildings is also evident. Both stages of the 1970s two storey unpainted-concrete building are highly intact. No original 1922-era exchange equipment remains at the place. [March 2017]

Integrity

The exterior integrity of the place is good. The heritage values of the Collingwood Telephone Exchange are evident in the group of buildings, and the buildings’ individual forms encapsulate the different architectural style characteristics of their separate construction periods. The integrity of the interiors is good-to-fair, but as noted above none of the original 1922-era exchange equipment remains. [March 2017]

CONDITION

The place is in good/fair condition. Its current use as a Telstra telephone exchange has ensured that the extant building fabric is for the most part well-maintained. However, painted graffiti tags extend across the single-storey garage building’s roller-shutter doors and large areas of the buildings’ ground floor facades. The graffiti are concentrated most densely on the exterior walls facing Wellington and Glasgow Streets. Many layers of advertising posters are also affixed to the Wellington Street façade of the single-storey standalone garage building at the site’s south-west corner.

COMPARISONS

On the available evidence it appears that the Victorian Heritage Register includes only two buildings that have contained telephone exchanges.

1. Telephone exchanges in the VHR

Former Post Office, Geelong [VHR H1046]

The former Geelong Post Office, designed by J H Marsden and assisted by J H Brabin, of the Public Works Department, was built in 1889-90. The two-storey rendered brick building with an ornamental tower is prominently sited at the intersection of Ryrie and Gheringhap Streets. One of the largest regional post offices in Victoria, the building represents the important function played by the post office in a large regional centre. +In 1907 Geelong’s manual telephone exchange was established in this building. In 1912 the first automatic telephone exchange in the southern hemisphere was installed in the northeast corner of this building on the first floor, pioneering the development of this technology in Australia.

Former Post Office, Geelong [VHR H1046]

Glenisla, 6495 Henty Highway, Glenisla, (Near Horsham) [VHR H0444]

Glenisla is historically significant as an important centre of communication in Victoria. A post office was located at the homestead until 1970 and the c1940s telephone exchange survives in a small room off the rear courtyard. The Glenisla squatting run was established in 1843 by a Scotsman named Simpson who named the run after a kirkdom near Balmoral. In 1860 Charles Carter and Sons acquired the run. From the 1870s the Carter family owned or leased vast tracts of Grampian and Wimmera pastoral lands. The current homestead was built for one of Carter's sons, Samuel, and was completed in c1875. The single storey homestead is constructed of Mount Bepcha Grampians sandstone and is formed by a symmetrically arranged group of four buildings – the house, the kitchen block, the servants quarters and a store building arranged around a large rear stone paved courtyard.

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Glenisla [VHR H0444]

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