Lost Places of Glen Iris
- scraze
- 17 hours ago
- 6 min read
After a busy couple of weeks doing work that people have actually paid me for (exciting!) I’m back to researching Glen Iris. This time, I’m trawling through decades of City of Camberwell Council minutes. The historian’s life is fun and glamorous, said no-one ever.
That said, reading through these endless documents about street repairs, drainage, permits, and the brief thrill of the occasional outbreak of diphtheria, I did encounter some interesting snippets of information. Old names for reserves, washed away bridges, fights over bus services, petty vandalism at Glen Iris Park. Now I’m not saying Glen Iris in the 1930s was a thriving hub of excitement but… actually, no… I’m not saying that.
However, it was one recurring snippet that got me thinking about how many lost places of Glen Iris there might be around. Here are four I have come up with and I know there’s more: Have a suggestion? Email me or drop a note in the comments!
Glen Iris Mechanics Institute
Every so often, I encountered reference to a mysterious place called the Glen Iris Mechanics Institute. Mechanics Institutes were a kind of Victorian-era TAFE for working class men. The idea for one in Glen Iris pre-dates even the formation of Glen Iris Primary School: 1862. It was an ambitious one; there was far more livestock than people back then. Perhaps its supporters thought it would bring more people and development to the area. It eventually underwent some construction, next door to Glen Iris School, but then money trouble struck and construction faltered. Still the idea of it hung around for some time until it permanently disappeared around 1941 when the Government gave Glen Iris School the land for its playground.
Camberwell Council’s restrictions on factories meant Glen Iris residents were enthusiastic brick recyclers. The Mechanics Institute’s old bricks became part of Glen Iris School’s new school room.
The Glen Iris Recreation Club
Opened in 1923 as a lawn bowls, tennis and croquet club, the Glen Iris Recreation Club occupied the space between Glen Iris Station and Brixton Rise where the Freeway runs now. The developers of Glen Iris Recreation Club deliberately chose sports that limited sudden bursts of noise and could be played by men and women, either separately or together. There was no alcohol served at the Club either. It sounds rather wowserish but in fact, the idea was to create a safe place for the PTSD-riddled war veterans proliferating across Glen Iris to enjoy spending active time together or with their families in a leafy, predictable environment.
The Club thrived right up until the Government came calling to join up the Southeastern and Mulgrave Freeways in the mid-1980s. The Club then made a killing selling the land and moved themselves much further up High Street Road to land between Huntingdale and Stephenson Roads, where the Riversdale Golf Club (another relocated sports club) is now. They dropped lawn bowls and croquet, joined up with the old MCC tennis club and live out their days still playing tennis as a little piece of Glen Iris in Mt Waverley.
Ishka Handicrafts
Last year, as part of one of my side gigs as the coordinator of the Boroondara Writers Group, we produced Boroondara Memories. It contains a story by Ashburton resident Lyn Pope on her love for the Glen Iris shop: Ishka Handicrafts.
Without fail, women of a certain age who encounter Lyn’s story squeal “Ishka! Ooh, I loved that place!”
Ishka Handicrafts began its life in the shops near Glen Iris Station that used to be on Wills Street. “I’m not sure when or how I discovered this little treasure,” Lyn writes. “But I can remember walking to the shop from our home in Ashburton… around 1974. At that stage, I was heavily invested in all things ‘hippy’. My clothes were often handcrafted as I experimented with techniques such as tie-dye and batik.”[1]
Ishka’s philosophy was to import a range of handcrafted homewares from all over the world and use the sales to help support the craftspeople who made them.
Michael Sklovsky started Ishka with three ‘hippy mates’ he met at St Kilda’s Esplanade market in 1975. Originally selling local craft, a trip to Bali opened Sklovsky’s eyes to crafts of different cultures. He began importing them to his shop.
“To the people of the world who have few options, paid work at home or their own village is a wonderful alternative to starvation or being forced from their familiar context into the big cities,” he said in 2003.[2]
Ishka expanded across Melbourne so much that by the time the shop in Wills Street fell to the Freeway bulldozers, Sklovsky could easily pivot to make Clayton his flagship store.
Sadly, in 2020, Ishka went into voluntary administration and by 2024, its doors closed forever.
“At that place,” Lyn concluded, “a special relationship was forged between the owner, talented artisans from all over the world and loyal customers who recognised a business with a heart.”
The Iris Buffet
In 1994, the residents of Glen Iris were shocked to learn of a very unwelcome new business in their midst… McDonalds. McDonalds was expanding aggressively across Melbourne’s outer suburbs in the developing south-east and north-east. Fast food was immensely popular; households spent $21 per week on fast food (24 per cent of the average household food budget… ah, the 90s) and fast-food outlets targeted land on big intersections.[3] But suitable land was beginning to run out. By 1994, land in the previous no-go zone of middle suburbia was on the radar of the fast food outlets. This included the chunk of land off the High Street exit of the Monash Freeway. McDonalds led the charge.
When word filtered out of a Maccas in their midst, 1,700 Glen Iris residents lodged objections.
According to Mrs Meredith Lane, “McDonalds even sought a trade-off in which they would depart the Glen Iris site in return for a promise from the residents to drop their opposition to the planning changes.”
The site ended up going to Sizzler, another American import. Sizzler could get around residential zoning regulations because it was a sit-down restaurant, not a take-away. But it sat in the Glen Iris Borderlands between Boroondara and Stonnington and neither Council was about to antagonise the enthusiastic and articulate letter-writers of Glen Iris.
Eventually, a restaurant did emerge on the site: the Iris Buffet. It ran an all-you-can-eat restaurant with an Asian twist for well over a decade. by the early 2000s, it proved a popular option for servicemen returning from the ANZAC day parade and hungry cyclists riding the Gardiners Creek/Anniversary Trail.
According to a 2009 review: “I wouldn't say that they have a lot of food but it's sufficient and the quality of the food is quite high. Whenever there is any special occasion, it is one of our first choices.”
But then it changed hands. And changed hands again.
By 2011, the final review revealed the truth. The Iris Buffet had fallen victim to the scrouge of all smorgasbords: the prawn hoggers. “People who were eating there would rush and take all the prawns like they hadn’t been fed in weeks!” wrote one disgruntled reviewer. “This place is somewhere I will never go back to.”
Fortunately for that reviewer they did not have to because by 2013, the Iris Buffet closed, a victim of the changing palate of Melbourne’s all-you-can-eat enthusiasts. Or maybe they got too many health violations, I never went there myself.
The Iris Buffet building stood vacant for several years, the prawn hoggers giving way to graffiti artists of considerable prolificacy. Today it is gone, replaced by apartments.
Do you know a lost place? Let me know in the comments!
[1] Pope, Lyn, 'Ishka: From Simple Beginnings,' in Boroondara Memories, ed. Sarah Craze (Ashburton, Vic: Boroondara Writers Inc, 2025).
[2] Silva, Janet de, "Global Village Showcase," The Age, 12 July 2003.
[3] "Fast Food? You Ain't Seen Nuthin' Yet!," The Age, 26 November 1994.
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