Let’s digress from Flinders Street Station for an update on the ballroom that lives above the station.

Closing the Ballroom

Back in 1926, Flinders Street Station was the place to be. It was so busy, that New York’s Grand Central Station couldn’t even compare. And with the rooms making up the station building being managed by the Victorian Railways Institute, it was bustling with employees learning all sorts of things.

As we already know from the Flinders Street Station episode, the three floors above Platform 1 were full of rooms being used by the railway staff for all sorts of things, like lectures, there were clubs for fencing, debating and even a cat lovers club. There was a gym, a nursery, library, even a billiards room, and let’s not forget the running track on the roof.

And of course the reason why we’re all here today. Under the clock tower was the ballroom. Which was quite the place to be in Melbourne throughout the 50s and 60s with weekly dance classes and regular dance competitions.

Here’s a quote from a Guardian article about the station:

A report from the Victorian Heritage Register emphasises the station’s cultural history along with the station’s ‘[unique] eclectic design [that] represents an extraordinary example of a building type’

But as we know every heyday has to end at some point, and the last dance was held in the ballroom in 1983, and the other rooms were closed a couple years later in 1985.

But this wasn’t all that was happening. Throughout the 1980s, the station itself went through quite a number of renovations, and not many were beneficial. There were stone archways leading to each platform that were removed, the blue and green ceramic tiles that lined the main hall were replaced and the bluestones that made up the floor were resurfaced with cement. Can you imagine how amazing that would look today? Because I do have to say that the station concourse really isn’t anything spectacular. Maybe one day they’ll bring it all back.

Since the rooms that make up the upper levels of Flinders have fallen into disrepair, many people have forgotten that there are even rooms at all. But this massive building that stands empty, definitely lends itself to an air of mystery that sort of surrounds the station building.

The Art Gallery Ballroom

So ever since the Ballroom was closed very few have been allowed in to see how its faired. Every now and then there’s a ‘golden ticket’ type lottery offering Open House tours. And there’s also been the odd event happening for those in the know.

The poor Ballroom has sat silent but not forgotten, and finally in 2015, the Victorian Government declared that a $100m refurbishment would be taking place.

Throughout the works, the ballroom received some structural repairs which included the installation of steel struts and support beams to help stabilise the roof. Parts of the ceiling, which was tin pressed with decorations, were removed in places, but parts do still remain not only on the ceiling but also on the walls. This particular style makes it look like moulded plaster, until it all goes wrong and the rust gets in ruining the aesthetic.

After being closed to the public for about 35 years, RISING, a new Winter Arts Festival for Melbourne may have just come to the rescue. Hannah Fox and Gideon Obarzanek, RISING’s festival directors, really wanted to use Flinders’ abandoned rooms in unexpected ways. Here’s what the Sydney Morning Herald had to stay:

The station’s hidden-in-plain sight mystery and faded grandeur offer a delicious backdrop.

And that’s where Patricia Piccinini comes in. A local artist who you might recognise by her design of the Skywhale, the hot air balloon designed for Canberra making it to 100 years. Piccinini and her team have been creating their exhibition A Miracle Constantly Repeated, with the station’s rooms, the Ballroom being one of them, in mind.

At the start of the exhibition, visitors will see a giant diorama, the kind they used to have in natural history museums, but the Ballroom is the real centre stage by housing the ‘finale’ of the exhibition, here’s another quote from The Guardian:

The Ballroom is the creative and cultural heart of the old station. It’s the pinnacle of the spaces in the exhibition in which you can have what Piccinini calls ‘a more sensory experience’.

The festival’s directors started trying to get into the station about two years ago. And Piccinini started working on the exhibition before they even knew that they would get the space. It was some tough negotiating with so many stakeholders, there was Metro, the Department of Transport, VicTrack, Visit Victoria, the City of Melbourne, Creative Victoria and even the station’s administration. Things were only settled just a couple days before the festival program was announced in March 2021.

But things don’t always go so smoothly when we’re in the middle of a pandemic, and that is exactly what has happened for A Miracle Constantly Repeated. The day after the exhibition opened, Melbourne went into a snap 7 day lockdown after a recent outbreak of COVID-19, that at the time of recording has just been extended by another week. Unfortunately this goes over the length of the exhibition. But we do still have this quote from The Age so we can kind of imagine what the exhibition would have been like:

For RISING, Piccinini [created] a walkable ecosystem of hyper-real silicone sculptures, video, sound and light, in a bit to explore themes of nature, care and connection while looking at the ability of communities to bounce back from traumatic events.

And that is the brief reopening of the Flinders Street Station ballroom. Let’s hope that in the not too distant future the Ballroom is fully restored and back in working order once more.

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