Tag: Moonee Ponds Creek

Broadmeadows

Broadmeadows is a residential and industrial suburb 16 km. north of Melbourne and until 1994 it was a municipality.

The lightly wooded landscape between the Merri and Moonee Ponds Creeks attracted pastoralists in the 1840s. In 1850 a Government survey laid out a township in an area along the Moonee Ponds Creek valley, now known as Westmeadows, but then named Broadmeadow. An Anglican church was built in 1850, and the church, police station and Broadmeadows hotel (now Westmeadows Tavern), in Ardlie Street were the first village centre. The old Council chamber and office are nearby.

East of the old village is today’s Broadmeadows, for which the early town centre was Campbellfield. In 1857 the Broadmeadows District Road Board was formed. Its area had Essendon on the south and it extended as far north as Mickleham, placing the village very much in the southern third of the Road District.

A primary school was established by the Anglican church in 1851, becoming a State school in 1870 (now Westmeadows). In 1872 the railway line was extended form Essendon to Seymour, creating a station about 2 km. east of the village. At the height of the landboom in 1889 another line was opened from Coburg, joining the Seymour line at Somerton. A station was provided at Campbellfield. These lines tended to draw subdivision and speculation eastwards, away from the Broadmeadows village. Hence the naming of the local municipal council as Broadmeadows shire on 27 January, 1871, did not reflect where the district’s future prosperity lay. The village was isolated westwards, separated from the railway areas by open grass lands. Broadmeadows consisted of farms, many of them dairying, and the few large holdings were subject to closer settlement subdivision during the early 1900s. The shire was enlarged on 1 October, 1915, when the shire of Merriang, to the north-west, was added. In 1903 The Australian Handbook described Broadmeadows as –

Two weeks and one day after the outbreak of the first world war the Australian Army established the Broadmeadows Military Camp in the open area between Broadmeadows and Campbellfield. Reticulated water was connected in five days, a project which the shire had been unable to persuade the Board of Works to undertake in seven years of negotiation. The camp and the surrounding areas were the venue of numerous bivouacs and military exercises.

Residential subdivisions had been released in the shire’s southern areas since the 1880s, and much of the land was not built on by the end of the first world war. More subdivision took place in the 1920s, and Broadmeadows had its (railway) Station Estate. Reticulated water and electricity were connected to the southern part of the shire in 1924 and 1925, and the railway was electrified in 1921. In 1928 new shire offices were opened near the railway station. These conveniences, plus the quicker travelling time to Melbourne, potentially made Broadmeadows more appealing for residential settlement. The line through Campbellfield, however, was closed between 1903 and 1928, when an infrequent service was resumed. During the 1930s financial depression the military camp accommodated unemployed men. The Broadmeadows landscape, however, remained one of small farms and derelict, undeveloped subdivisions, amounting to 17,000 allotments. In 1949 The Australian Blue Book described the Broadmeadows shire as –

In 1951 the Victorian Housing Commission announced its proposal to take over 2,270 ha. of land in Broadmeadows for a housing estate. The Commission’s housing construction proceeded apace, but the provision of shops and other facilities lagged. Glenroy became the main lcoal shopping area, four kilometres to the south. Schools were opened in time for the new population: Broadmeadows East and Broadmeadows South (later Glenroy North), in 1956, and Broadmeadows and Eastmeadows in 1961, the latter also attended by children from a migrant hostel in the military camp. The Commission built in the area between Broadmeadows and Glenroy in 1958, and the Jacana and Campmeadows primary schools were opened the following year. During the 1960s three secondary schools were opened – two technical and one high. Catholic schools comprise a primary, a co-educational secondary and a boys’ secondary.

Some way through Broadmeadows’ urbanisation it was decided to sever the rural parts north of Somerton Road and attach them to the adjoining shire. This occurred on 31 May, 1955, and next year on 30 May Broadmeadows was proclaimed a city. Six months later the Housing Commission began the transfer of a wedge of its land at Upfield and Campbellfield for the Ford motor car factory, which reactivated the railway which had been closed (again) the previous year. The Ford factory opened in 1959 and four other substantial factories opened the following year along the Hume Highway.

Schools were overcrowded, swimming pools unbuilt until 1962 and speech nights were held at Coburg or Essendon. A new civic hall and council offices were built in 1964. The adjoining local shopping centre, Meadow Fair, existed only on Housing Commission paper until the 1970s, and finally in 1974 it was completed. It is now the Broadmeadows Shopping Square, considerably enlarged to over 20,000 sq. metres of gross lettable area. The site for a hospital, however, still remained empty in the mid 1990s.

During the 1970s and 1980s Broadmeadows had a reputation for boisterous youth: the Broady Boys rode the trains and daubed graffiti proclaiming that they “rule, O.K.” By the 1990s this had lessened and there was a catch-up of some of the facilities long denied. Jacana gained a golf course, much of Westmeadows is a reserve, the town park and a TAFE are opposite the civic offices and there are two reserves beside the reduced military barracks. The technical school site is occupied by an Islamic College and there are four other secondary colleges. Space is reserved for further enlargement of the shopping centre, but public libraries are in other town areas under the Council’s jurisdiction (1996).

The Broadmeadows municipality contained Campbellfield, Collaroo, Dallas, Fawkner, Gladstone Park, Glenroy, Oak Park, Tullamarine, Upfield and Westmeadows. (Some of these contained smaller localities which are mentioned in their descriptions.) On 15 December, 1994, Broadmeadows city was united with most of Bulla shire and parts of Keilor and Whittlesea cities to form Hume city.

Broadmeadows’ census populations were 333 (1861), 192 (1911) and 522 (1947). The municipality’s census populations have been 2,100 (1911), 8,971 (1947), 23,065 91954), 66,306 (1961, after severance of the northern area), 101,100 (1971) and 102,996 (1991).

Further Reading:

  • Lemon, Andrew, “Broadmeadows: A Forgotten History”, City of Broadmeadows and Hargren Publishing Company, 1982.

Gladstone Park

Gladstone Park is the eastern part of Tullamarine, 15 km. north of Melbourne. It has the Moonee Ponds Creek to its north and east. The name comes from a grazing property owned by Thomas Gladstone between 1869 and 1883.

The area was subdivided for farms in 1842, and the Gladstone Park property was the best-watered and the only one to be sold. It was farmed until sold in 1887 to a land speculator, but his speculation was unsuccessful and the property returned to the Gladstone family. It continued to be farmed until coming into the hands of the Gladstone Park Syndicate in 1954. The Syndicate was part of Stanley Korman’s Standhill conglomerate.

Stanhill produced an elaborate subdivision plan but met with financial difficulties. The Commonwealth Government’s credit squeeze in 1961 caused the company to default and Costain and A.V. Jennings became the joint developer/builder of Gladstone Park. In 1966 they began the ten-year project of building 3,000 houses in Gladstone Park. In 1970 the area’s first primary school was opened.

Gladstone Park has a street configuration which is designed to discourage through traffic in most residential streets. There is a second State primary school, a State secondary college and a Catholic school. Gladstone Park drive-in shopping centre has nearly 19,000 sq. metres of gross lettable area, and five neighbourhood reserves are distributed towards the edges of the residential area. Part of the skirting Moonee Ponds valley, however, is the site of the Western Ring Road which was constructed during the mid 1990s.

The median house price in Gladstone Park in 1987 was the same as the Melbourne metropolitan median price and in 1996 it was 94% of the metropolitan median.

Further Reading:

  • Lemon, Andrew, “Broadmeadows: A Forgotten History”, City of Broadmeadows and Hargren Publishing Company, 1982.

Brunswick West

Brunswick West is a residential suburb 6 km. north of Melbourne. It lies between the Moonee Ponds Creek and central Brunswick with the Royal Park lands at its southern border.

It was the last area to be settled residentially in the former Brunswick municipality, being somewhat remote from north-south public transport services. Settlement in fact predated the opening of the Melville Road tram line in 1925-7. The area’s first primary school, west of Hoffman’s brickyard, opened in 1888.

An early, although unsuccessful, residential subdivision was in the north-west, at the Hopetoun Estate in 1892. Ten years later the area came under a State Government Closer Settlement Scheme, attracting about 200 residents. It was named Moonee Vale. The south-west was more attractive, being closer to Melbourne and less flood prone. Subdivision lots were larger than in Brunswick central and Brunswick East, and the predominant house design was the Californian bungalow.

Little or no shopping was developed apart from two small areas along the Melville Road tram route (1926). Schools, however,were plentiful: Brunswick North, originally Moonee Vale (1925), Brunswick South West (1927) and Brunswick North West (1929).

The last area to be subdivided into its present allotments was the Closer Settlement area at Moonee Vale, during the 1940s and early 1950s. Cream bricks and flats dot the postwar landscape.

Brunswick West has an array of linear parks along the Moonee Ponds Creek, but some of them must be reached by crossing the Tullamarine Freeway along the creek valley. There are two small reserves along an unused railway reservation and the large Dunstan Park with ovals.

Brunswick West has higher median house prices than the easterly parts. The prices have also risen faster than the metropolitan average, reflecting the suburb’s gentrification during the late 1980s and the 1990s. In 1987 Brunswick West’s median house price was a shade under metropolitan Melbourne’s, and in 1996 it was 144%.

Further Reading:

  • Blake, Alison M.T., (ed.), “Three ConservationStudies in Brunswick”, Footscray Institute of Technology, 1989.

West Melbourne

West Melbourne, an industrial, commercial and residential suburb, adjoins the north-west corner of Melbourne’s central business area. The Flagstaff Gardens and the Queen Victoria Market are included in West Melbourne’s postcode area.

West Melbourne is generally associated with North Melbourne, as both were surveyed and proposed for sale at the same time. The dividing line between them, however, is Victoria Street and its westerly prolongation to the Moonee Ponds Creek.

In 1842 the first institution of significance erected in the West Melbourne area was a cattle yard at the corner of Elizabeth and Victoria streets (now the Queen Victoria Market). In 1851 a Benevolent Asylum was built between Abbotsford and Curzon Streets, straddling Victoria Street and thus partly in West Melbourne. The opening of the asylum coincided with the Melbourne Town Council’s overtures for a new township to accommodate the gold-rush population influx. A site for the township was found by severance from an open-space reserve of 1,035 ha. that had been approved by the Governor of New South Wales in 1845. The result was a smaller reserve – now Royal Park – and a township called Parkside which now comprises North and West Melbourne. Town allotments were put up for sale in September, 1852.

The western extremity of West Melbourne’s subdivided area was Adderely Street. Beyond there the land was low-lying, with a lagoon about one kilometre across, into which flowed the Moonee Ponds watercourse and a stream from Parkville which runs through Ievers Reserve in that suburb. The lagoon dried out in Summer, but during wet spells the vista was park-like.

The lagoon and the low-lying land blocked easy access to Footscray and Williamstown, obliging early travellers to ford the Maribyrnong River at Avondale Heights, before punts and bridges were provided. The Dynon or Swamp Road required frequent maintenance for westwards movement. The swamp became a foetid receptacle for waste waters from Flemington, North Melbourne and Parkville, and in 1879 it was drained and filled. The North Melbourne railway yards occupy its northern area. In the 1930s depression its southern area, near the outfall of the Moonee Ponds Creek, was the notorious Dudley Flats, where impoverished people scrounged building material from the land-fill tip to build shelters and huts.

Being on the edge of a booming Melbourne, West Melbourne was quickly inhabited. Presbyterian and Catholic church services began in the early 1850s, and in 1854 the first church was built on the Catholic reserve in Victoria Street. By the end of the 1860s there were also Primitive Methodist, Methodist New Connection, Anglican and Baptist churches. The Baptist church (1866) at Hawke and King Streets (now a small grassed reserve), was for many years one of the most important Baptist congregations in Melbourne. A school was opened in King Street in 1853. It was replaced by a State School in 1875 at the corner of King and Roden Streets. The building is on the Victorian Heritage Register, although the school closed in 1992.

The dominant building in West Melbourne, however, came to be a church, St. Mary’s Star of the Sea, on the brow of a hill in Victoria Street. Built of Barrabool sandstone to a French Gothic design it is a testament to the money-raising capacity of the large Catholic congregation. Built between 1891 and 1900 it came after the presbytery and before the adjoining St. Mary’s co-educational regional school.

The railway yards were completed by the end of the 1880s, providing a significant source of local employment. Flour mills and wool stores were opened, served by railway sidings. The residential component of West Melbourne, however, was mostly displaced by expanding industry on the edge of the central city area, although several row houses and individual dwellings were identified in a conservation study in 1983 as being of significance.

In 1913 an Anglican church was erected in King Street, West Melbourne, opposite the Flagstaff Gardens. It was Melbourne’s first Anglican church, St. James’ Old Cathedral (1842), transferred from the corner of Williams and Little Collins Street. The Flagstaff Gardens are in the West Melbourne postcode area, and are an elevated point which has served as Melbourne’s first cemetery, an observatory, as a telegraph station and a quarry. In 1873 it was reserved as a public garden. In addition to monuments for the proclamation of separation from New South Wales in 1850 and for the old pioneers’ cemetery, the gardens have a bowling club and tennis courts which are increasingly used by workers from city high-rise offices.

Another well-known building in West Melbourne is Festival Hall. It was built by John Wren in 1915 and became metropolitan Melbourne’s main venue for boxing and wrestling. Rebuilt in 1956 after being burnt down the year before, it was the Olympic Games venue for gymnastics and wrestling. In the 1950s and 1960s it became an entertainment centre, with famous appearances including Bill Haley, Frank Sinatra and the Beatles. By the 1990s it had been overtaken by more spectacular venues, but the Wren family remained in ownership.

Although the State primary school closed in 1992 the Catholic school near the Star of the Sea church was enlarged to become the Simmonds Catholic Boys’ college. It constitutes one of four Catholic school campuses in North and West Melbourne.

The Queen Victoria Market west of Queen Street is in West Melbourne, consisting of open sheds, a few shops, a car park and former Market offices. The sheds sell mainly textiles, clothing, footwear, fruit and vegetables. The Market is discussed under Melbourne.

In 1987 the median house price in West Melbourne was 89% of the median for metropolitan Melbourne and in 1996 it was 120% of the metropolitan median.

Further Reading:

  • Butler, Graeme, “North and West Melbourne Conservation Study”, Melbourne City Council, 1983.
  • Mattingley, Albert, “The Early History of North Melbourne, The Victorian Historical Magazine, December, 1916, and March, 1917”, The Historical Society of Victoria.

Kensington

Kensigton is a residential and decreasingly industrial suburb 3 km. north-west of Melbourne. It is commonly associated with Flemington, once being in the Flemington and Kensington borough (1882-1906). Its northern boundary is Racecourse Road, the western boundary is Smithfield Road and the Maribyrnong River, the southern boundary is Dynon Road and the eastern boundary is the Moonee Ponds Creek. Kensington contained the Newmarket saleyards and abattoirs, and in its south there are the Dynon Road railway yards and a small area known as Browns Hill east of the railway yards.

Kensington has a substantial low-lying alluvial area on which the abattoirs was built. To the east was Seagull Swamp, now J.J. Holland Park. North of the low-lying area is a basaltic layer, defined by an escarpment at the back of the abattoirs and skirting the swamp to Browns Hill at Lloyd and Radcliffe Streets. Healy’s Point Hotel below Browns Hill has frequently had its cellar filled with flood water.

On 30 August, 1856, a Crown grant was made to the Melbourne City Council for cattle saleyards on the south side of Racecourse Road, Newmarket, and the abattoirs adjoining the saleyard to the south-west. Its most south-westerly boundary conveniently adjoined the Maribyrnong River for the discharge of liquid waste. The buildings were primitive and unhygenic and were replaced by better facilities between 1898 and 1908. Nearby, on the river bank, there were factories for boiling-down, fellmongery, bone manure and glue.

The cattle saleyards opened in 1859, the year before a railway line from North Melbourne to Essendon began operation, with stations at Kensington and Newmarket. Although sheep and cattle were driven to the stockyard on the hoof (and used residential streets as stock routes until the 1950s), the Newmarket railway siding also became active during night hours for holding and delivering stock.

In the mid 1870s Kensington included a small area named Balmoral. Future subdivisions yielded street names with a similar regal flavour, somewhat ironical given the proximity of the proletarian slaughter yards. In addition to the riverside industries there were three tanners, a candlemaker and a chapel with a school. By then moves were made for a State primary school, and the site in McCracken Street was found and the school opened in 1881. Commercial and residential development clustered around Racecourse Road and down beside the railway line. McConnell Street, McCracken Street and Rankins Road had several shops, but Macaulay Road had only Hardimans Hotel and three shops. The school precinct had Wesleyan and Anglican churches, and later gained the borough hall.

Flemington and Kensington borough was formed by severance from Essendon and Flemington borough on 17 March, 1882. The borough hall was opened in Bellair Street in 1902, four years before the borough was amalgamated with Melbourne City Council. The Council had run the saleyards and abattoirs for several years.

Between 1881 and 1890 the State school’s enrollment increased from 230 to 700 pupils, and to over 1,000 before the turn of the century. Overcrowding, classes in shelter sheds or pavilions with canvas enclosures, annexes in church halls and the town hall persisted until the 1920s. The peak enrolment was 1,241 in 1913. It had some notable ex-pupils, including Dr. E. Morris Miller and Hal Porter, who lived in a cottage in Bellair Street with smaller dimensions than described in his “Watcher On The Cast Iron Balcony”.

The abattoirs and saleyards dominated Kensington’s life. Newmarket saleyards became a national barometer for stock prices, growing in throughput for export sales after 1904. The peak throughput for sheep and lambs was 6.45 million head in 1944, and the daily record was nearly 146,000 head in 1953.

The swamp areas were virtually untouched until the Army established an ordnance depot at the back of the abattoirs in 1941. Twenty years later the Housing Commission began filling the margin of the Seagull Swamp with high-rise flats at Altona Street. By then upstream flood mitigation works and pumping stations had lessened the risk of inundation. Known as the Macaulay pumping stations, they are near the Macaulay railway station.

Marauding stock in old Kensington were effectively stopped when a stock bridge from the Newmarket railway siding was built in 1964. Within twenty years, however, there was general agreement that time was up for the saleyards and abattoirs, and the State Government began planning the Lynch’s Bridge project, replacing the stock facilities with housing and open space. (Lynch’s Bridge marked an early crossing place over the Maribyrnong River, joining Kensington to Ballarat road, Footscray.) The project extended to Footscray where the Angliss Meatworks site had similar medium-density housing put on it.

Kensington’s Lynch’s Bridge development marked the first time that open space was sensibly provided, apart from Holland Park. The Macaulay shopping area had been a struggling precinct for generations, and a Council report in 1987 predicted possible further decline from loss of jobs at the saleyards and abattoirs along with the general decline in manufacturing. Medium-density housing and gentrification of the cottages seem to have proved to be its salvation, although not without much-troubled traffic mitigation works to get heavy trucks out of Macaulay Road.

The Holy Rosary Catholic church and school continue to be notable landmarks in Kensington. The dominant red-brick church looking down Macaulay Road was disposed of by the Anglican Church to the Coptic Orthodox Church. It forms part of an interesting precinct consisting of the State school, a former Methodist church and Sunday School hall and an old Anglican parish hall. Kensington Community High School (1975) has found a site in the Lynch’s Bridge housing area.

In 1987 the median house price in Kensington was 70% of the median for metropolitan Melbourne, and in 1996 it was 117% of the metropolitan median.

Kensington’s census population in 1911 was 7,341 persons. Census figures for Flemington and Kensington have been 1,291 (1861), 10,946 (1901) and 12,860 (1991). (The last figure was calculated by Moonee Valley City council, which had Flemington and Kensington within its boundaries following the re-absorption of the district by Essendon city on 1 November, 1993).

FURTHER READING: Breen, Marcus, People, Cows and Cars: The Changing Face of Flemington, Melbourne City Council, 1989. Vincent, Keith, On the Fall of the Hammer: A personal history of the Newmarket Saleyards, State Library of Victoria, 1992.

Flemington

Flemington is an inner residential suburb 4 km north-west of Melbourne, situated between North Melbourne and Ascot Vale. Its eastern boundary is the Moonee Ponds Creek, with alluvial flats that were flood-prone until recent tines, rising to the north-west towards Ascot Vale. To the south-west is the Flemington Racecourse, also situated on low alluvial flats, next to the Maribyrnong River.

Flemington’s name has either of two possible origins. The more likely is from James Watson who early in 1839 came to Port Phillip as a pastoral agent for English and Scottish investors, as well as investing for himself. He purchased land in Flemington and Heidelberg. His wife was Elisabeth Rose, whose father was manager of the Flemington estate in Scotland. (Watson also named his Heidelberg land Rose-Anna, inspired by his wife’s name, and the area later became the suburb of Rosanna.) The other possible origin for the name is thought to be Robert Fleming, who established a butchery on the site later taken by the racecourse. A butchery beside the Saltwater (Maribyrnong) River would have been in keeping with the river’s later use for noxious outfalls.

Flemington racecourse was first used for horse racing in March, 1840. In 1848 the Port Phillip Racing Club took a lease of the racecourse site. The first Government land sales were held in December, 1840.

Flemington is traversed by Mt Alexander Road, the route to the Bendigo gold diggings. In 1851 the Flemington bridge over the Moonee Ponds Creek was built, improving the connection to the gold diggings’ road out of Melbourne. The Flemington Hotel had been there since about 1848. In 1855 the pre-eminent merchant and speculator, Hugh Glass, acquired Watson’s property and built Flemington House, in the vicinity of Mt Alexander Road and Mooltan Street.

In 1859 the western part of Flemington was taken for a new stockyards, to relieve the congested facility at Elizabeth Street, Melbourne. Two years later abattoirs were opened near the stockyard. The move coincided with the opening of the railway line from North Melbourne to Essendon, which ran near the stockyard at Newmarket, Flemington’s commercial centre.

A primary school was opened in 1858 in Mt Alexander Road, next to a Wesleyan church, both on land given by Glass. Down at the bridge several industries were established: a bone mill, soap and candle works, and more hotels were opened along Mt Alexander Road and around the stockyards.

On 25 January, 1862, Flemington was incorporated in the Borough of Essendon, an association which lasted until 17 March, 1882, when the separate Flemington and Kensington borough was created.

In 1876 Flemington’s third large industry was opened (after the stockyards and the abattoirs) on low-lying land: Debney’s tannery, a source of local employment, gave its name to lower-lying land next to it, Debney’s Paddock, later to become a major postwar high-rise housing site.

When Flemington and Kensington borough was created in 1882 it met in a hall at 323 Racecourse Road Newmarket, by then an active area with three hotels but only a few shops. By the turn of the century several churches were opened, friendly societies were formed and the hotels continued active trading. Newmarket was “racehorses, drovers and dogs.”

In 1906 tramlines were opened along Mt Alexander Road and Racecourse Road (Newmarket), a year after the borough was united with Melbourne city. (The Melbourne council had taken over the stockyards in 1898.) The borough’s town hall in Bellair Street, just off Newmarket, had an independent life of only four years, but it continued to be a social centre for years to come, housing a free library and providing meeting rooms.

In 1910 the Glass property was sold, having been vacant for some tine. (When Glass died in 1871 his widow had remained on the property.) The owner, John Madden bred horses for export to India, and he renamed the house Travancore, after the Indian state. In 1924 the property was subdivided, creating the Travancore Estate (with Indian street names), and space for the new Flemington primary school. Travancore House (demolished 1947) became a special school, the land down near Debney’s tannery became a land-fill tip for thirty years, providing a breeding place for rats and venue for tip-scratching during the depression years. Occasional floods from the Moonee Ponds Creek still carried in frogs to nearby houses.

The land-fill area was partly taken in 1957 for the Debneys Park high-rise flats which were erected within ten years, adding over 4,000 residents to Flemington. A primary school was opened in 1975 (relieving the Flemington Primary School), and a high school opened in 1965. A girls’ high school opened in 1966, replacing the Domestic Arts School which occupied the original school site in Mt Alexander Road (1858), and subsequently became the Debney Park secondary college.

By the 1950s Flemington received influxes of European migrants, the largest group being Italian. St. Brendan’s church and school, always a landmark, was well attended. The smaller St. Stephen’s Presbyterian church, with its attractive spire in the post office precinct, at Newmarket, was burnt down in 1970.

As the postwar migrant families moved out of the Flemington cottages they were bought by people wanting inner-city living, but at prices which became less affordable as demand strengthened. Travancore, with pre-war art nouveau flats and larger Californian bungalows, had always commanded better prices, and property values moved accordingly. Whereas in 1986 the median house price in Flemington was 87% of the median for metropolitan Melbourne, in 1996 it was 118%.

Flemington has open space at its extremities, along the Moonee Ponds Creek and in Debneys Park, and in a corner near the racecourse. There is local shopping in Newmarket, and the most convenient regional centre is at Puckle Street, Moonee Ponds. Flemington remains best known for the racecourse. In years past optimists owned or had a stake in horses hopefully destined for a Melbourne Cup win. The blend of blowflies and air borne manure on a day with a hot northerly seldom disturbs Flemington in the 1990s. The drovers and dogs went when the last muster was held at the stockyard in 1985.

Flemington and Kensington had a census population of 1,291 in 1861. Estimated populations were 1,811 (1883), 4,825 (1886) and 9,069 (1890). Flemington had a census population of 6,109 in 1911.

FURTHER READING:

  • Breen, Marcus, People, Cows and Cars: The Changing Face of Flemington, Melbourne City Council, 1989.
  • Butler, Graeme, Flemington and Kensington Conservation Study, Melbourne City Council, 1985.