3.3 Frankston and the Outside World

Passing Cars

Frankston was like many other rural settlements; a few street trees and asphalted paths around the centre of town and rough tracks leading out to the isolated settlements strung through the Shire. In Frankston the sandy or sometimes marshy land made roads more difficult than in other towns around the fringe of Melbourne. More than most other places Frankston had to deal with rapid increases in traffic and the new demands of the motor car after the First World War. In Frankston the problem of the car and its impact on the environment derived initially from passing tourist traffic.

When tourist traffic revived after the First World War it became clear that Frankston was going to have to deal with the motor car. At first the drivers who braved the route from Melbourne to the Peninsula were intent on passing through Frankston heading for Mornington or Sorrento. In 1925 Frankston attempted to have the Pt. Nepean Road declared a National Highway because of the number of cars using the still-rough route over summer.1

Complaints about speeding motorists and damage to trees and roadways continued. But in the 1930s the more terrible consequences of motor traffic became clear when each summer rush was accompanied by deaths on the Nepean Rd. Motorists seemed to speed with no sense of the threat they posed nor any concern about breaking laws. Typical of this indifference to road laws was the response of Terry McQuiggan when pulled over by the police when driving at seventy miles per hour in a fifty mile per hour zone at Seaford. McQuiggan had no time to argue the case with police answering their charge about his speed with "well you have the guts of it - don't detain me I'm running late."2

To slow the traffic Frankston shire workmen began placing SLOW signs at the most dangerous spots but with little obvious impact.3 A more fundamental control over traffic, a by-pass around the Frankston shopping centre was rejected by the shire.4 Frankston traders and their spokesmen on the Shire Council argued that a traffic diversion would take holiday trade further round the bay.

While the Country Roads Board still insisted that this by-pass was essential if Frankston was to be spared more road deaths, Council (aided by the local Arborean Club) went ahead with street planting around the main shopping area but left Beach, Davey, Young and Bay Streets bare, more for commercial that safety reasons,5 (elsewhere in the shire street trees were pollarded by the 1930s increasing visibility for drivers.6 During 1937 when the CRB recommended rounding the corner of High Street and the Esplanade Council refused because of the loss of land.7

More tragedies on local roads, a head-on collision and then the death of a. Seaford boy while riding his bike along the Pt. Nepean Road, both in November 1937, resulted in more concern about road traffic but no real solutions to the problem.8

For most of the inter-war period, safety only concerned residents and their municipal representatives after a road death or when holidays began and ended and traffic blocked local roads or outrageous speedsters appeared in court. Council was often more concerned about the scenic quality of local roads and joined with the RACV in 1936 to condemn state authorities carelessly hacking at roadside trees.

"one of the great pleasures of motoring is derived from driving along roadways fringed with trees these protests cannot be couched in terms too strong apart from the aesthetic aspect of tree-lined roadways touring means the circulation of money and no bureaucratic action should be allowed to discourage it."9