Neighbourhood Postcards - Welcome to Braybrook
Neighbourhood Postcards - Welcome to Braybrook
Braybrook is a place of many surprises with ancient volcanoes to the RAAF; peanut butter and the AFL; from one of Victoria's first radio transmission towers to its housing estates.
Summary
Braybrook is a place of many surprises with ancient volcanoes to the RAAF; peanut butter and the AFL; from one of Victoria's first radio transmission towers to its housing estates.
Description
In 1890 there were only ten streets with 25 residents, one hotel and one school in Braybrook. Life was focused around Ballarat Road and the Maribyrnong, or Saltwater River. What was this country like before these 25 people settled her and what forces have been at play since to produce the Braybrook of today?
You can explore the curious and the everyday histories of Braybrook's local people and places with History At Work's set of Neighbourhood Postcards that probe the memories of our communities and places across Victoria. We've mined the archives for stories of past residents - their pre-occupations and how they lived, worked, played and shaped today's Braybrook.
Click on this link to see the complete set of Welcome to Braybrook's postcards with map and hyperlinks, extra images and information, and stories in more detail -
Neighbourhood Postcards - Welcome to Braybrook
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Points of Interest
1. Munition Workers Housing Estate
Developed to house desperately needed 'war workers' c100 houses were built in the early 1940s. Myalla St to the south only had its estate side built, the opposite side not complete until late 1950s
2. GreenWORKS!
Students at Caroline Chisholm Catholic College created this fabulous, colourful and story-telling mural over six months in 2016 to 'pay homage' to their community
3. 77 children in 28 houses!!
In 1954 - the post-war baby boom - the Argus newspaper hunted for the street with the most children. Braybrook residents offered 3 nominations including Carlton Street which had 77 kids in 28 houses.
4. Two-up raids
Illegal but loved, this gambling game was played in secret. Sergeant Murphy was famous for netting 'schools' of players in the 1940s, big catches being here and a swoop on 94 players in Duke St.
5. The basalt plains of the west
Basalt, bluestone, is hard lava from ancient volcanoes. Hand quarried by the Marin baluk for 1000's of years it was blasted from this now filled and transformed quarry to construct & build Melbourne
6. Solomon's Ford
The Solomons settled in the area in the 1830s, one of the first Europeans to do so. There is debate over whether the ford was built by Joseph or had for much longer been a Marin baluk fish trap
7. Quang Minh Temple
An important site for the Vietnamese Buddhist community since 1989, His Holiness the Dalai Lama has been here twice, in 2011 and 2013.
8. Braybrook in 1905
With just 37 households Braybrook near the river was still 'becoming an important manufacturing centre', with some families lingering today in street and business names - Cranwell, Mullinger, Pennell
9. The animal by-products industry
'Noxious trades' were here since the 1890s. The Victorian Gut Factory, an early iteration of Klipspringer, made 'tennis gut, surgical gut, fishing gut, and musical strings from the intestines of sheep
10. Braybrook Radio Broadcasting Station
Employing 100s of people and enabling the official opening of Radio 3LO with a broadcasted concert of Dame Nellie Melba, this station was one of the most powerful in the world in the 1920s
11. For lovers of peanut butter
Designed by Frederick Romberg of renowned architects Grounds Romberg Boyd, ETA was part of Melbourne's 1960's industrial confidence. Some remember the great Christmas lights they staged each year too
12. Yvonne Barrett, pop singer
Growing up in Dodd Street in the 1950s Barrett was a singer and member of the Aust govt team sent to entertain troops in Vietnam. She married a veteran, which led to her tragic murder in 1985
13. The Marin baluk
The escarpment of the Maribyrnong River is an important archaeological site for the Marin baluk who have lived right across this region for tens of thousands of years. The crow, Waa, is their moiety.
14. Melon Street, early 20th century
This was one of the very few streets in existence south of Ballarat Rd. Largely grazing and farmland, there were few residents and only one or two cross streets until Braybrook's post-war development
15. Doug Hawkins AFL Champion
Hawkins grew up in Braybrook from the 1960s - 'we went from a caravan park to a bungalow. Then we got the housing commission flat at Sth Rd ... so that was pretty good'. Braybook won many premierships
16. Tottenham RAAF
An RAAF training & parade ground and depots stretched across Braybrook's south in WW2. This was later a Police Dog Training Centre and over time employed as many as 550 service and civilian personnel
17. 'We want to function like the rest of bloody Melbourne'
Les Twentyman is synonymous with the western suburbs but grew up in Myamyn St and some of what he saw in his early volunteer work led to, and shaped, his lifelong advocacy for the youth of the west
18. 1st 'pledged Labor candidate'
Alfred Ravenhall was not a Councillor for long but made a big difference to residents after his election in 1924. This street did not exist until the 1945 Munition Workers Housing Estate was built
Features
Public Transport
Historical interest
Local treasures
Lake, creek, river
