PART FIVE - Finding Bonnar's Workshop

When my research revealed Scott Bonnar's Young Street premises I immediately had two questions:
what did the premises look like; what did Scott do there? I'll deal with the first question now.

It goes without saying that Young Street has almost completely changed its landscape today.
The clue "next Detmold's" was the starting point.

The first thing I did was find as many old photographs of Young Street as I could. I then compared
these with Directories of the period. It was at this point I encountered a problem: street numbers
were in a state of flux. Whilst odd and even numbering had been standardised by the mid-1880s,
street numbers were changing in order to account for the many subdivisions that had taken place
since settlement.

Thus, Detmold's building changed from being No.17 to No.29. The biggest problem, though, was that
Scott Bonnar's premises were also lumped in with No.17 in the 1917 Directory, the only Directory
to include Scott Bonnar! What this Directory did establish, though, was that Scott Bonnar was not
'exactly' next door to Detmold's ... There was a Blacksmith's shop in between. There was also an
engineer on the other side, along with good old Mrs Goodchild - all at No.17!

A lucky break came in the 1921 Directory, when new numbering separated the No.17 properties.
Detmold's would become No.29 (actually 25-29), next door would be No.23 and then No.19. It would
appear by deduction that Scott Bonnar had been at the No.19 structure, now occupied by one Ern Bateup,
a secondhand car dealer. I reproduce the 1917 and 1922 Directories below:-

[Linked Image]

A SURPRISE - of Biblical Proportions
A big surprise was that research revealed that there was a church in Young Street! It was -
or appeared to be - next door to the Detmold's building! This was the gabled roof in the Part Two
photograph. It can also be seen in the Part Three photograph taken from afar - looking back from
the GPO towards Young Street. Surely Scott Bonnar's first premises were not in a ... church!

In articles in the Register (14/02/1925) and Observer (20/04/1929) I discovered that the church
in Young Street was once the main church of the Bible Christian denomination. It would appear
that this building, built in the 1850s, ceased being a place of worship in about 1888, when this
sect merged with the Methodist Church of Australia, and worship was transferred to Maughan Church
in Franklin Street.

My approach was this: if I could find photographs of the church area (next to Detmold's building)
I might be able to match the building structure with known addresses and known businesses (from the
Directories and other sources).

That opportunity arose with a disaster that occurred a few years after Scott Bonnar left Young Street ...

TO BE CONTINUED ...