By Bryn Jones
Few current residents of Healesville are likely to remember the Band Rotunda, a structure which existed in the town for more than four decades.
The idea for such a building was mooted in September 1901 when members of the local brass band agreed that such a facility should be erected.
Concerts to raise the expected sixty-pound cost of the building were held, the highlight of which was a performance by the band at Athelstane Guest House, overlooking the Watts River flats.
After an evening of music, dancing and fireworks, the princely sum of five pounds was raised for the Rotunda fund!
After further fund-raising efforts, the Band Rotunda was officially opened in April 1903.
It was located in the present Green Street, approximately where the public toilets are today.
The structure was a small, six-sided, well-designed wooden building with a steep roof and flagpole at its centre.
A generator to light it with acetylene gas was added later.
The Rotunda provided a regular Saturday evening venue for the town band to display its musical skills and provide entertainment for locals and visitors alike.
However, by June 1904 rumblings appeared in the local press about the band needing to be ‘reorganised on a satisfactory basis’.
The newspaper suggested that the bandsmen were slow to appreciate the support they had been given by the public, and that the Rotunda ‘is seldom used by the bandsmen’.
A year later, the band had been disbanded, and the newspaper posed the question, ‘What is to be done, with its rusty ironwork simply rotting away?’
By 1905, Council suggested that given its rickety condition it should be removed to a more suitable site.
However, it remained on its existing site, and by 1911 the newspaper reported the Rotunda had been ‘transfigured from a cold, dreary bandstand into a fern bower of extremely tempting cosiness, whilst fairy lights gleamed among the foliage’.
The new band, under Olly Potts provided fortnightly concerts there, and its initiative and enterprise were publicly recognised, especially in December when ‘the streets were thronged with trippers, providing a decidedly lively and joyous evening’.
However, musical activities were restricted during the First World War (1914-1918) when the Rotunda was variously used for the sale of vegetables in aid of the Red Cross, and as a recruiting centre.
By June 1920, councillors agreed that ‘its present condition is an eyesore and a disgrace to the town’.
There were few references in the newspaper to the Rotunda during the next decade or so, and its condition continued to deteriorate, until in June 1941 Council decided ‘on the removal of the bandstand in its recent dilapidated state’, so it was duly dismantled.
So, sadly, ended what started as an enterprising, almost exciting, venture, and finished forty years later with the removal of a dilapidated eyesore, considered a disgrace to the town.
