Perth Voice Interactive

It was the street which brought the first milkshake to WA and from where a “down and out swaggy” became one of the state’s richest men.

Barrack Street’s history is uncovered this week at the state library with rarely seen photos on display and stories told about its characters.

“There are people like Peter Albany Bell,” Richard Offen from Heritage Perth says.

“He was the chap who introduced the milkshake into WA in the late 1890s. He was of quite humble beginnings, and just like so many of them from that era had little formal education.

“He set up a little shop selling confectionary and soda on Barrack Street.”

It was during a trip to New York that Bell saw vendors mixing milk with vanilla.

The milkshake, along with his confectionary factory at the Albany Bell castle on Guildford Road, saw his empire expand and he ended up with about 20 tearooms across the state.

Barrack Street was where philanthropist Sir Charles McNess made his fortune.

“He’d apprenticed to a tinsmith in the UK. He came here in 1876 and set up an ironmonger shop and a scrap metal dealership, and he made his fortune on that,” Mr Offen says.

“He was a very shrewd businessman and he realised that when the gold rush came he could capitalise on that, and sold mining equipment—shovels and such—to the miners who were going out to the goldfields.

“He built the McNess arcade in 1896 on the profits he made in the ironmonger shop which was known as McNess’s rusty nailshop.”

Snowy McNess used his fortune on charitable works during the great depression, like building state housing and setting up Yanchep national park as a job creation scheme, and was ultimately knighted for his philanthropy. He stayed true to his humble roots, and on receiving his knightship someone remarked he, “looked like a down and out swaggy”.

Not everyone made a fortune on Barrack. The architect who designed McNess arcade—the New York-born and German-trained William Wolf—went broke midway through the project and it had to be finished by someone else. “It was apparently [due to] high living,” Mr Offen says. “He and his family of six and his wife, according to one biographer, lived way above their means.”

The free exhibition Barrack Street: A Time to Reminisce, is on at the state library ground floor, August 19 to September 6. There are also talks on the early days of Barrack Street and the street’s characters on August 26 and 28, they’re also free but book at http://www.heritageperth.com.au

by DAVID BELL