Shutter City

Fragments of a Forgotten Melbourne

Robyn Annear

$49.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

Miegunyah Press
01 October 2025

Photographs: collections; History; Australasian & Pacific history

Suppose that you could travel back in time to a Melbourne city street from 150 years ago or even longer. What might meet your eye that has eluded history’s gaze?

Shutter City presents city street views spanning the hurly-burly decades of the 1850s to 1870s, between the gold rushes and Marvellous Melbourne. Robyn Annear peers into every shadowy corner to reveal postcard streetscapes as miraculous time-capsules, packed with hidden-in-plain-sight historical detail. Her discoveries – she calls them ‘sparks’ – illuminate and decode each of Shutter City’s street views.

Among the sightings: barbers’ poles, drinking fountains, the three gilded balls of a pawnbroker’s sign, gleaming white cups at a coffee stall, street-vendors’ carts, neighbourhood dogs (and a cat), assorted ghosts, and ladders lots of ladders.

Let Shutter City be your time-machine and Robyn Annear your guide: her lively and insightful commentary weaves the street views and their ‘sparks’ into a vivid narrative of a near-forgotten Melbourne and the photographers who captured it.

By: Robyn Annear
Imprint: Miegunyah Press
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 250mm, Width: 250mm,
Weight: 272g
ISBN: 9780522881776
ISBN 10: 0522881777
Pages: 160
Publication Date: 01 October 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Robyn Annear has been ransacking Melbourne’s history for thirty years. Her books include Bearbrass, A City Lost & Found (Whelan the Wrecker’s Melbourne) and Adrift in Melbourne.