Winning essay shows connection between book café and award-winning author T.A.G. Hungerford
Year 6 student Julian Henningsgaard won the Phillip Pendal Young Heritage Award for his essay Words From the Past, which shares the serendipitous connection between T.A.G. Hungerford and the MillPoint Caffé Bookshop. We are delighted to publish the essay for you to enjoy, too.
Words From the Past
Imagine you are in a café drinking a milkshake and eating a cinnamon bun, but you didn’t realise that you are in the same building a famous author once lived in! Maybe he tied up his horse where your car is parked, or maybe he talked to a customer where the kitchen is, or maybe he sat where you are sitting now. Well, there is a place like that in South Perth, and it is the MillPoint Caffé Bookshop!
Arthur T. Hungerford was the original owner of the building that is now the MillPoint Caffé Bookshop. In addition to being his house, it was a corner shop for groceries between 1914 and 1929. Starting in 1926, he also ran a library from his store, charging 3 pence when borrowing books. His son, Thomas Arthur Guy Hungerford, worked there too, and used a horse and cart to deliver groceries to customers. In 1983, he wrote the book Stories from Suburban Road. It is an autobiographical book of short stories about his childhood in the 1920s and 1930s. It later became a play and TV show!
Hungerford wrote a story describing South Perth in the 1920s and 1930s as ‘a rushy riverside retreat of cow paddocks and market gardens and bush, where … horses leaned thoughtfully over every second front fence along the one main road through the suburb’. I think this is interesting because South Perth doesn’t really look like that now. It is also fascinating that we get to know what it was like back then because we get to see what it’s like from his perspective.
But why would Hungerford talk about the landscape of South Perth and call his book Stories from Suburban Road? Until the late 1940s, back when the Hungerfords lived there, Mill Point Road was originally called Surburban Road. At the time, the road was only gravel! On the 1st of September 1947, Surburban Road was changed to Mill Point Road. In my opinion, I think the name shouldn’t have been changed because then people driving along the road would know that this was the one that T.A.G. Hungerford’s book Stories from Suburban Road was about.
It is possible that when most people go to the MillPoint Caffé Bookshop, they don’t even realise that a famous author once lived and worked there. The MillPoint Caffé Bookshop opened back in 1996. There are so many amazing things at MillPoint Caffé Bookshop like the selection of books and all the food for breakfast and lunch including French toast with fairy floss. How amazing is it that, after it was once a library and workplace for a future author, it’s now a bookshop? What a coincidence!
The next time you go to the MillPoint Caffé Bookshop, think about what happened in the building over the years – all the different uses from a corner shop and a library to a bookshop, and all the amazing people who worked there over the years. I hope the MillPoint Caffé Bookshop stays how it is, but if it changes to something else, I would be excited to see what the building is used as next!
Congratulations, Julian!
The ceremony to celebrate the City of Fremantle Hungerford Award – named for T.A.G Hungerford – takes place on Thursday 24 October, and we’d love to see you all there! Book your tickets here:
2024 City of Fremantle Hungerford Award Ceremony and Great Big Book Club | Humanitix
