Melbourne’s original aquarium destroyed by fire

Melbourne’s original aquarium was located in the Royal Exhibition Building in Carlton.

In those days the Exhibition Building was more extensive than it is today. It had two large wings attached to its northwest and northeast corners, and from 1930 until 1953, the northeast wing housed what was then Melbourne’s only public aquarium.

That was until January 1953 when it was destroyed by a massive fire that almost consumed the historic Royal Exhibition Building as well.

At about 6pm on the evening of January 28, 1953, an alarm was raised by two children who saw flames at the rear of the building and ran to the night watchman calling out, “there’s a fire. The place is burning!”

Firemen and members of the staff said afterwards that if the boys had not acted so quickly the whole of the historic building might have been destroyed.

Fire trucks soon arrived, and a large crowd began to gather. Thousands of people who were heading home after a day’s work gathered to watch and to help the firemen try to control the blaze and stop it spreading to the adjacent main building.

Dozens of members of the public joined in the efforts to fight the inferno, including children who scurried up ladders to deliver extinguishers to firemen on the walls of the aquarium.

Thousands of fish perished as red-hot sheets of corrugated galvanised iron from the roof crashed into the fish tanks. Rare tropical fish, brought to the aquarium only a few months before, were lost.

The seals, which had been a big attraction at the aquarium, escaped as volunteers from the crowd coaxed the blackened creatures from the water. The terrified seals were still circling the pool long after the fire was out.

All of the birds including two peacocks were rescued. Firemen and volunteers dashed through choking fumes to release the terrified birds and carry them to other cages out of the danger area. One peacock escaped and was still wandering around the blackened ruins at dusk.

Perhaps the most famous of the aquarium’s exhibits, Ned Kelly’s armour, was fortunately saved.

The fire caused damage in the millions of dollars in today’s terms, and the aquarium was never reopened. •