Historical Business Listings

Historical business information can help Victorians understand more about businesses that were located at a particular place, at a point in time. Historical land use data can provide information to assist determining if a site may have been contaminated. For most business types there is no increased risk of contamination from a business activity. However some business activities have a higher likelihood of causing contamination. That's why this information is included in Victoria Unearthed, appearing as purple dots on the map.

The Historical Business Listings and are not evidence of contamination. The information may, however, help you decide to make your own further enquiries about land and/or groundwater at a particular location.

The Planning Practice Note PPN30: Potentially Contaminated Land has a list of land uses or activities that might indicate potential contamination.

It is important to note that a business record is not necessarily evidence of business activity having historically occurred at that location. Historical business information in the directories can, for example, indicate the head office of a manufacturing business rather than the address of the factory floor.

The actual activities undertaken on a site are a better indication of potential for contamination. You can find out more from other sources including:

• historical aerial photos
• local historical societies
• historical land titles
• Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works plans
• Victorian Heritage database

For a long time, Victoria has had laws in place to help manage contamination.

Find out more about what contamination is and isn't

A business record is not necessarily evidence of business activity having historically occurred at that location. Historical business information in the directories can, for example, indicate the head office of a manufacturing business rather than the address of the factory floor.

The location of Historical Business Listings data points on the Victoria Unearthed map can differ in accuracy. In many regional and suburban areas, the business address listed in the Sands & McDougall directories only indicates a town or suburb, and does not include a street name or street number.

There may also be some errors in the data that occurred in the transfer from hardcopy to digital, and also in geocoding the data to display in the Victoria Unearthed map.

Over half a million historical business records have been geocoded by an automated process for Victoria Unearthed. Many of these records have been manually checked and verified, to ensure the correct location on the map. However, many still remain unverified and may be located incorrectly in Victoria Unearthed.

The original records are old and may themselves have been inaccurate, incomplete or both. For example, not all businesses would have had their information published in the Historical Business Listings (Sands & McDougall directories).

If you find a Historical Business Listing that you know is incorrect, you can contact us by clicking the feedback button in the top toolbar of the Victoria Unearthed map. We will endeavour to correct information that has been incorrectly transcribed from Sands and McDougall. However we cannot add additional historical business information at this time.

Click here to read the Historical Business Listings disclaimer.

Each business could be listed under multiple business types in the same directory. For example, Sands & McDougall listed themselves 16 times in the 1925 directory under different business types, including ‘Account Book Manufacturers’, ‘Bookbinders, Paper rulers’ and more. All of these business types were linked to the Sands & McDougall head office on Collins Street, Melbourne. This does not mean that 16 different businesses operated out of the one site, but that this same single business created multiple products. To ensure that customers were able to find them, they listed themselves under every possible product category.

Multilevel buildings in Melbourne, will often include multiple listings to account for multiple businesses located on different floors.

There won't be Historical Business Listings information for every current address in Victoria. Not all businesses were included in the directories, and a developed area today may not have been developed 100 years ago.

In Victoria Unearthed, there is more information available for central Melbourne - as it was already well populated in the late 1800s. In this first release of Victoria Unearthed, only the 1925 directory includes extensive information about regional areas. Future Victoria Unearthed updates may include more Historical Business Listings from across Victoria.

In many regional and suburban areas, the business address from the Sands & McDougall directories is only listed as a town or suburb, with no street name or street number included. For some business listings only the street name is included with no street number given. Therefore, the ability to display this data with specificity in Victoria Unearthed is problematic.

To help address this, the Historical Business Listings information in Victoria Unearthed appear as purple dots with three different sizes. The different sizes represent whether the business listing is for a specific property address, a street section, or for a more general area such as a suburb or town.

• Small dot = Property address known
• Medium dot = Street only known
• Large dot = Suburb/town only known.

Victoria Unearthed only includes information from the 'professional and trades' sections of the directories. If your address is the site of an old family home, that information will not be displayed in Victoria Unearthed.

There are a range of ways you can find out more about potential legacy land and groundwater contamination, including from historical aerial photos, local historical societies, historical land titles, council rates records, Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works plans, and the Victorian Heritage database.

Inexpensive soil sample tests like VegeSafe are also a practical way for people to test for metals and understand more about their soil.

Alternatively, you may wish to contact a qualified and experienced environmental consultant if you require a more comprehensive land and/or groundwater assessment.

If you find an Historical Business Listing that you know is incorrect, you can contact us by clicking the feedback button in the top toolbar of the Victoria Unearthed map. We will endeavour to correct information that has been incorrectly transcribed from Sands and McDougall.

S&McD Year: The year of Sands & McDougall directory publication.

Business Type: The business type as listed in the Sands & McDougall directory.

ANZSIC Subdivision: The general business category, using the 2006 Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification (ANZSIC) system. The ANZSIC system was developed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics and Statistics New Zealand to standardise industry classifications. Victoria Unearthed includes a relevant ANZSIC ‘subdivision’ for each business type in Sands and McDougall. This attribute has been included to assist with data analysis and is not part of the original Sands and McDougall directories.

Business Name: Name of the business and/or owner as listed in the Sands & McDougall directory.

Historical Address: The business address as listed in the Sands & McDougall directory.

S&McD Page Number: The page number of the listing in the Sands & McDougall directory.

Link to State Library Victoria: Link to the relevant Sands & McDougall directory at State Library Victoria.

Geocode ID: Unique Identifier for each Sands & McDougall record.

Adopted Street No: Street number entered for geocoding process.

Adopted Street Name: Street name entered for geocoding process.

Adopted Street Type: Street type entered for geocoding process.

Adopted corner: Additional street name(s) indicating an intersection for geocoding process.

Adopted Locality: Suburb or locality entered for geocoding process.

Pregeocode status: Lists any issues if the address record for geocoding process is incomplete (e.g. "No Street Number").

Returned street no: Geocoding result for street number.

Returned street name: Geocoding result for street name.

Returned street type: Geocoding result for the street type.

Returned locality: Geocoding result for suburb, town or locality.

Geocode partial match: Geocoding result. Indicates if the address was matched on part of the information provided.

Geocode result type: Geocoding result. Indicates the type of location returned by the geocoder.

Geocode precision: Geocoding result. Indicates the location precision as reported by the geocoding process. "ROOFTOP" is a precise location; other values are approximations at street or suburb/town level precision.

Geocode status: Geocoding result. Lists any errors or mismatches found during the geocoding process.

Post Geocode Location quality: Level of confidence in the accuracy of the geocoding result (e.g. “Very Low”, “Moderate”, “Very High”).

Secondary Source: Source of information used to verify/correct the geocoding result.

Secondary Source Comment: Describes the verification/review process for the record. Explains what corrections were made, if any, to the locations of the records.

Geocoding Issue: Issues encountered during the geocoding process. Mostly blanks or nulls.

Location precision: Describes the location precision of map point, including any corrections from verification/review (e.g., "street address match", "street level", "locality level").

Vicmap address / location: Location address (as at June 2018) obtained from the VicMap suite of products.

Vicmap product: The VicMap product containing the contemporary address.

Vicmap PFI: Unique Identifier (PFI) for each VicMap record.

Directory time stamp: The year of Sands & McDougall directory publication held in a time stamp format.