Camp Pell (1946 - 1956)

Camp Pell was an army camp within Royal Park in the suburb of Parkville which, in 1946 became home for around 3,000 people experiencing the post-war housing shortage in Victoria. Many of these families needed temporary accommodation, having been directly affected by 'slum reclamation' policies. Other emergency camps were established at Fawkner Park, Watsonia, South Melbourne and Port Melbourne, but Camp Pell was the most well-known of these. Indeed, Camp Pell and the families who lived there became somewhat notorious and some newspapers even referred to it as 'Camp Hell'. The looming 1956 Melbourne Olympics saw widespread public agitation to close down Camp Pell. Families were often moved on from Camp Pell to public housing developed by the Victorian Housing Commission.

Leonard Tierney's doctoral thesis was about following up with a group of families who had lived in emergency housing at Camp Pell during the post-war period. Tierney described them as 'excluded families' due to these families' difficulties with housing, employment and other social services. Tierney observed that a high proportion of members of the families involved in his research study had been involved with the Social Welfare Department - the family's unstable housing situation often resulting in children being admitted into 'care'.

In 1954, welfare organisation the Brotherhood of St Laurence published a pamphlet, 'What's wrong with Victoria's housing programme?', in which Camp Pell was described as a 'government sponsored slum', and claiming that the families living there were demoralized by the unfair and unsympathetic treatment they received from the government authorities.

Most public representations of Camp Pell were not as sympathetic to the residents. Andrew May writes that '"Camp Hell" was popularly represented in slum stereotypes as a hotbed of immorality and disease'. In 1954, the Liberal opposition campaigned for the closure of Camp Pell. Future Premier Henry Bolte called for the establishment of a 'rehabilitation centre' to train Camp Pell tenants to 'take possession of a home and not turn it into a slum'. The new government elected in 1955 made the closure of Camp Pell a priority, to be effected before the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. In 1956, all of Camp Pell's residents were moved on to public housing estates.

Source: Find and Connect website viewed 14 June 2019 

1952

Each day through the month of January, buses loaded with children ran from North Melbourne, Camp Pell, Carlton, Fitzroy, South Melbourne and Burnley to various beaches” (BSL Annual Report 1952, p.12).

1955

Family Service Project commenced in February as an experiment with one social worker working intensively with a group of ten families in Camp Pell who had many long-term and continually recurring problems (joint BSL/Housing Commission project designed to bring so-called ‘multi-problem’ families up to Housing Commission standards of acceptability in the short term).  Camp Pell was in Royal Park, the largest of Melbourne’s Parks.  The project was based on work with multi-problem families that had been developed by Family Service Units in the UK and similar projects in the USA and Holland.  “Certain units in Tyler Street Preston, were set aside to accommodate problem cases for a probationary period under the guidance of the Brotherhood of St. Laurence.”  The long term aim was to assist the families to become self reliant; improve standards of childcare, housekeeping and rent payments; and, most important of all, to establish a more secure environment for the children by assisting the family to hold together” (BSL Annual Report 1958-1959 p.5).  

1956

Family Service Project relocates 79 families from Camp Pell to East Preston (May)