‘The Opera house of service stations’: Heritage plan for West Gate canopies

City of Melbourne officers have recommended that the council approve the West Gate service stations’ heritage review at its meeting on Tuesday night and provide recommendations for permanent heritage controls.

Deputy Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece said they were probably Melbourne’s most famous service stations and known to every Melburnian.

“They are certainly iconic and well-known structures in Melbourne that are very much seen as the gateway for people arriving in the city from the western suburbs or are a common stopover for people heading to the west coast of the state on holidays,” he said.

Reece said the council meeting was just the next step on the heritage listing process and that there would be a further opportunity for the public and landowners to make formal submissions.

“Look I understand there’ll be some people who would say ‘What’s so special about a couple of white sails over a servo’ [but] there’ll be others who know them as Melbourne’s most iconic service stations and a real gateway location for the city, which has been well known to Melburnians for almost 40 years,” he said. “Amongst architecture types it is really a thing.”

Royal Historical Society of Victoria chair Charles Sowerwine said a heritage overlay may well be merited if the service station canopies were significant in terms of technological innovation or aesthetics.

Sowerwine said increasingly diverse structures were being listed for heritage protection and in the Fisherman’s Bend precinct alone there were important remnants of General Motors Holden and the Australian automotive industry, which were set to be preserved and incorporated into the University of Melbourne’s campus there.

“We’re increasingly seeking to ensure that heritage means that we have places people can see in their daily lives of Australia’s past not only our great architecture and domestic architecture, but also industrial and things that are run-of-the-mill,” he said.

“Service stations played a big role in the past, maybe it won’t be a service station when we are all electric, but it may be a restaurant and maybe the canopies can be included in a way that enhances their visibility to remind people of the important automotive past that made the city what it is.”

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Sowerwine said it was critical that when a building was listed for heritage protection that protection was adhered to.

“Local heritage overlays are terribly weak and inadequate, it’s certainly not going to be over-protected,” he said. “The problem that we have is that the heritage overlay is often ignored or not paid sufficient attention to when the next stage of life for a building or site comes up.”

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