Victoria Square, Kerang
Kerang, Victoria
Hansen Partnership
02T
he pace changed a hundred years ago along the main
streets of Australian country towns as automobiles
proliferated, demanding and obtaining better roads.
The roads became sealed, increasing the automobiles speeds
and making claims for their own space, for the sole purpose
of parking convenience. Each parking spot on the ground was
delineated by white paint outside the shop or business one had
driven to visit. The adjoining sidewalk became a stepping stone
between car door and shop door, rather than a promenade.While today automobiles remain vitally important to rural life,
the digital age has bypassed the main street with only a couple
of exceptions: cafes thriving on the nation’s coffee addiction
and post offices surviving on Ebay’s back amid dwindling piles
of letters and paper bills. Local merchants not dealing coffee
have given way to national corporations parked in shopping
centres on town outskirts, leaving “For Lease” signs plastered
across main street storefronts in scenes reminiscent of Russell
Drysdale paintings, full of buildings but empty of people.It was this type of ecosystem that presented to Hansen
Partnership in 2016, when they were commissioned by
Gannawarra Shire Council to undertake a landscape and
public realm works plan for Victoria Street in Kerang, a
rural town 250 kilometres north-west of Melbourne, with
the aim of transforming the town’s main street into a more
pedestrian-orientated place. Following extensive community
consultation, Hansen Partnership’s proposal to concentrate02
A platform winds across
the forecourts of the historic
Post Office, Courthouse
and Memorial Municipal
Chambers, unifying three
buildings and offering a
meeting place with a view
over the street.