How 1,000 unemployed men paved the way for Kew’s “Golden Highway”

Couples with multiple children were given $40 a week, inflation adjusted, for food.

Matthew Sims
March 25, 2026

Yarra Boulevard is today surrounded by streets filled with multi-million-dollar homes, but the men who bent their backs to build the key thoroughfare had nothing.

Off to work we go: The Great Depression began in 1929, and by 1932 more than 60,000 Australian men, women and children depended on government payments for food. They were known as “sustenance” or “susso” payments.

Many lived in makeshift tents in hodge-podge shantytowns.

In some cases, men were employed to work on State Government infrastructure projects, including the construction of Yarra Boulevard, with 1,000 men brought on to use pickaxes, shovels and barrows to lay the roadway.

Sustenance payments consisted of eight shillings and six pence per week for a man and wife, with an additional shilling and six pence per week for each additional child – up to a maximum of 20 shillings and six pence per week, or the equivalent to about $40 in today’s money.

Now a road and cycling route, the Yarra Boulevard spans a little over 6km, from Kew to Richmond. It weaves along the Yarra River, providing access to Studley Park Boathouse and a number of hiking and cycling trails in Melbourne’s east.

The thoroughfare was informally known as “Susso Drive” for years after its completion.

Something from nothing: Civil engineer Carlo Catani was credited with devising plans for a highway from Melbourne to Heidelberg.

The project was mentioned in 1928, with a piece in the Herald dubbing it the Yarra Golden Highway and detailing “visions of a picturesque highway… through an avenue of wattle trees to a national reserve in Kinglake”.
Work began in 1931, with a further extension into Kew in 1933. It was officially opened in 1936.

Harsh conditions: In Australia in 1932 the unemployment rate was about 32 percent. In February 2026, it was 4.3 percent.