The land where the Oakleigh Motel now stands was the original stables for 100 horses for Cobb and Co., so it was natural with the rapid growth of car ownership in the '50s for business and pleasure, that the motel industry was set to boom!
"The Oak" being the first motel built in Victoria in 1956, the year of the Olympic Games in Melbourne, has became quite a landmark!
HERITAGE LISTING OF "THE OAK" IN 2001
The excerpt below is taken from the Heritage Listing document:-
"The Oakleigh Motel is amongst the earliest built in Australia, based on the concept begun in America a number of years earlier. It appears that the first motel in Australia was built in Bathurst NSW in 1954 and other motels followed mainly in the large country towns in NSW and Victoria. The Motel Federation of Australia was not formed until July 1957 and standards adopted in March of the following year.
The Oakleigh Motel was built on the site of the Mulgrave Arms Hotel on Dandenong Rd and construction was supervised by the owner C. J. Lewis, who had traveled extensively studying motels in America. It appears that no Australian architect was employed to design the motel. Called a luxury motel at the time of construction, there were 43 rooms with air conditioning, sound proofing and individual bathrooms, as well as a dining room, lounge and playground.
The front wall of each room is set at an angled in order to deflect noise and wing-wells provide privacy. The buildings are box-like with low sloping roofs and the original dining room has sloping glass windows.
Intactness: The motel building remains substantially intact.
The Oakleigh Motel is important as an example of an early motel in Australia and as one of the first motels.
Recommended for inclusion in the schedule to the Heritage overlay table in the City of Monash Planning Scheme, December 1991."
THE ROLE "THE OAK" PLAYED DURING THE 1956 OLYMPIC GAMES
When Melbourne secured the Games "The Oak" was chosen as the turn-around point for the Marathon being exactly 20km from the MCG.
Many members of the IOC had doubts about Melbourne as a venue for the Games. A big strike against it was its location in the Southern Hemisphere, where the seasons are reversed since it would require that the Olympics be held in the Northern Hemisphere's off-season, so to speak, when many athletes were accustomed to resting from the rigors of one year and gathering themselves for the rigors of the next.
Once the games were underway, though, they certainly went well. The Aussies were excellent hosts, both friendly and efficient. They were also well represented in competition. Betty Cuthbert, an 18-year-old from Sydney, won the 100- and 200-meter dashes and ran a great final leg in the 4 x 100-meter relay to overcome Great Britain's lead and claim her third gold medal. The veteran Shirley Strickland repeated in the 80-meter hurdles and also ran on the relay team, running her career total to seven, three golds, a silver, and three bronze medals.
The Marathon was won by Alain Mimoun, of France in 2:25:00.0. Second was Franjo Mihalic, YUGOSLAVIA in 2:26:32.0 and third was Veikko Karvonen of FINLAND 2:27:47.0.
But it was in swimming that the Australians shone. They won all of the freestyle races, men's and women's, and collected a total of eight gold, four silver and two bronze medals. Murray Rose became the first male swimmer to win two freestyle events since Johnny Weissmuller in 1924, while Dawn Fraser won gold medals in the 100-meter freestyle and as the leadoff swimmer on the 4 x 100-meter relay team.
Despite the international tensions of 1956, or perhaps because of them, the Australian organizers came up with a new idea for the closing ceremony. Instead of marching as teams, behind their national flags, the athletes mingled with one another as they paraded into and around the arena for a final appearance before the spectators. That began an Olympic tradition that has been followed ever since.
