Page 30 - CinemaRecord #82

SURREY REVISITED

nion Road in the Melbourne suburb of I still recall my first encounter with a cinema: Popular though the Rex was (according to
USurrey Hills, was always the epitome of walking down the hill hand-in-hand with mum Mechanics Institute files) it would prove no
urban Middle Australia. for my daily visit to watch the trains passing match for the new Surrey Theatre.
through the railway gates at Surrey Hills
It was lined with substantial 1920’s and 30’s station. We would come across a neat little The Surrey has a special place in Australian
rd
homes (featuring a marked preference for shopping strip of two-storey buildings and history, it was opened on 3 September 1939,
variations on the “Californian Bungalow” here was the site of the very first cinema I ever the day World War II was declared.
style) which often hid behind well-clipped encountered.
cypress hedges. The opening ceremony was performed by the
My earliest memories are from close on three local Federal Member, the Prime Minister, Mr.
We’d come to live in Surrey Hills in a rented years of age, naturally, at that tender age I was Robert Menzies. While Menzies was making
house when I was scarcely two years of age. never actually a cinema patron! his speech, he received an urgent phone call
We left there in late 1943 to go to our first to say that England had declared war on
owned home. So we lived there for less than All this and more came back to me recently Germany. After he concluded his speech, he
two years. when I discovered that the long-closed cinema announced to those present that England, and
was going through yet another metamorphosis. consequently Australia was now at war with
Germany. He then left to make the official
Some years ago the rear of the former cinema announcement on ABC Radio.
(the auditorium) had been walled off to create
a new office block and staff carpark. However, The theatre was located on the corner of Union
the original iron roof structure from its cinema Road and Croydon Street, one street north
days had been retained, still sitting on the brick from the railway gates. Ironically for me, the
structural walls. Now a ubiquitous apartment cinema was located on the opposite corner (of
construction is planned for the streetscape. Croydon Street) to the first dental surgery I
had the doubtful pleasure of visiting. If the
When movies
ruled the building… I know several historians have already charted movies would eventually come to dominate so
the history of the Surrey Theatre (the last much of my life, Dr David Ellis and his surgery
being Cameron Hall in 2003 in CinemaRecord of horrors held no such fascination for a three-
#40.) Those who aren’t familiar with the year-old!
Surrey may like to be reminded how the
theatre had opened in 1939, soon replacing the But to return to the latest demolition job!
earlier cinema which had been operating from
the old Mechanics Institute Hall (known as When the crew started taking apart the line of
the Surrey Hills Hall.) shops (which had earlier replaced the cinema’s
foyer and a number of adjacent shops along
Silent movies had first arrived in the Mechanics Union Road) I fortuitously happened to be
in the twenties, later replaced by “the talkies” driving down the street.
when the exhibitor renamed his business the I realised that evidence of the cinema’s
Rex Theatre. Although the Surrey Hills Hall existence might have remained long-hidden
makes a substantial architectural statement on from view behind the shops.
Union Road, the hall behind (the former home
of the Rex Theatre) today looks incongruously As the front elevation came down and was
out of place: a run-down old weatherboard being stripped away, I could see that the
structure. But then it was generally felt that construction of the Surrey Theatre had borne
early audiences were none too particular about not a little resemblance to features of other
the cinema ambience of Mechanics halls! cinemas of my acquaintance: like the Rialto in
Box Hill or the Camberwell Picture Theatre.

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