The Ramadan night market in Dandenong Melbourne was attended by 30,000 each night.Credit: Chris Hopkins
To tell the story of Dandenong, we can begin in a small red-roof hamlet hemmed in by the rolling mountains, dark rivers and thick forests of the Pelagonia Valley. The people who live there call their town Keshava.
The valley lies on the fault line that divides North Macedonia and Greece. The towns here have been repeatedly exchanged between would-be empires, the rich earth beneath the forests a final resting place for warriors ancient and modern.
Keshava is home to 185 people. There are about 5000 people living in Dandenong who have Kisivan ancestors – which means there are now about 30 times more Kisivans living in Dandenong than in Keshava.
“My dad saw there was no future back in Macedonia,” says Jim Memeti, who arrived as a two-year-old with his family in Dandenong in 1975. “You could go down Dandenong South now, and you can see house after house after house … of families that have come from Keshava.”
The Drum Theatre on Lonsdale Street.Credit: Chris Hopkins
This is a fact both remarkable and, here, unremarkable. You could tell the same story about hundreds of other towns scattered across the old world and the new: Pristina and Kabul, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh, Colombo and New Delhi and, now, Kyiv.
“If there’s conflict somewhere in the world,” says Daniel Riley, principal of Dandenong Primary School, “that’s when we see new arrivals.”
These threads come from all over the world to weave together the story of Dandenong – and the suburb has an important tale to tell.
We live in an era of hatred and fear of the other. Anti-immigrant rhetoric is ascendant in Europe, while America rounds up and exports its migrants to El Salvadorean jails.
Dandenong should fail, if not because of ancient ethnic enmities then anti-immigrant sentiment. But a visit to a suburb so diverse that researchers call it superdiverse (diversity within diversity) reveals a thriving community bonded by shared hurt – and shared hope.
Shoppers at Dandenong Market.Credit: Simon Schluter
The bubbling centre of this melting pot can be found under the vaulted roofs of Dandenong Market, which on a Tuesday morning is busy with different languages and accents haggling over the ripe bananas and curling cucumbers and blushing green capsicums that overflow from the stalls. There are pink roses and black grapes and inscrutable green knobbly things – heirloom zucchinis, perhaps, or chillies? “Eggplants $1! Garlic $1! Bananas $1.29!”
A man drives through the crowd on a motor scooter, trailing an Australian flag. There are Manchester United jerseys and turbans and hijabs, fake perfumes and “authentic” Nikes. Wives drag husbands who drag children, their faces locked in silent screams after a treat is denied. My girlfriend has asked me to bring back some sweets, but I am overwhelmed. Chestnut Turkish delight? Nougat wrapped in plastic? I plump for a squat loaf of banana bread and a sheaf of lilies.
It is a cliche to talk about food when discussing multiculturalism. But, hey, people need to eat, and they want to eat the food they grew up eating. Food is community, and safety.
“Never underestimate that food element,” says Peter McNamara, chief executive of South East Community Links. “Food brings people together because it’s about love.”
Constance Vavasis’ grandparents started a peanut stand in 1974 – her young father translating for his Greek immigrant parents. “There were a lot of Greeks that lived in South Yarra. And they came out a bit further because they wanted more space,” she says. As the suburb grew, they added Perfect Coffee and a deli selling Iranian spices and Turkish apricots to new arrivals.
Sam Vavasis, owner of Sam’s Spice & Grocery, with daughter Constance Vavasis.Credit: Chris Hopkins
Schwarze Seafood has been at the market since the early 1900s and is into its fourth generation of family ownership.
“When my daughter comes to work, she’ll be fifth generation,” says Jess Schwarze. That’s not the younger Schwarze’s current plan. “But I also said no,” says Schwarze with a laugh. “After watching my dad work himself into the ground … he ended up passing away from cancer about three years ago. And even the customers say, ‘Please don’t sell, keep it in the family.’ The motivation is the customers that come back and tell you, you’re doing such a good job, your dad would be so proud.”
Louise and Jessica Schwarze, owners of Schwarze Seafoods at the Dandenong Market.Credit: Chris Hopkins
The market tracks the story of the suburb. Migrants from Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Scandinavia settled here in the 1830s, attracted by secure water supplies – the Dandenong Creek flows down from the foothills and through the suburb en route to the bay – and good grass for grazing livestock. The market opened in 1866 – predating Melbourne’s market by 12 years. Farmers would drive cattle for sale right through the centre of town. The suburb had one of Victoria’s major live cattle markets up to 1998.
“It progressed steadily. After the Second World War it really boomed,” says Christine Keys, president of the Dandenong Historical Society.
Industry spotted the potential of this sleepy market town: lots of empty flat land, ready access to water, power and transport links, and proximity to Victoria’s agricultural heartland. International Harvester arrived in 1949, followed by Heinz and then General Motors Holden, making cars and white goods and canned beans to feed Australia’s new middle class.
“At home, married women work to make ends meet; here we take jobs for luxuries such as TV sets, cars, and home buying,” Scottish migrant worker Mrs Frederick McRobb told the Australian Women’s Weekly in 1959 – when there were more than 200 factories in Dandenong, some running 24 hours a day.
The Women’s Weekly called Dandenong a “symbol of industrial strength”, and that’s what it was: a global beacon calling migrants to new jobs and new lives the war-ravaged old world could no longer offer.
Shelter Makonese, the owner-operator of Zimbabwean Shop.Credit: Chris Hopkins
As each wave of migration broke over Dandenong, the suburb was reshaped. Immigrants from Europe sold fish and introduced locals to espresso; then came waves of Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants, before those communities grew wealthy enough to move out to Casey and Cardinia. The dumpling shops were soon overlaid with Indian and Sri Lankan restaurants and sweet shops, African hairdressers, and now Afghan butcheries and bakeries.
Dandenong is the most culturally diverse community in Australia. There are Pashtuns from Afghanistan but also Hazaras and Tajiks – a community so diverse it is now fighting over the name “Afghan Bazaar”.
Hope of a better future
Shelter Makonese’s hands are full of a customer’s hair, which she is firmly pulling back into a braid, but the owner of the Zimbabwean Shop shakes one out to count the nationalities of her customers. “Burundi. Rwanda. Congo. Malawi. Zambia.” She runs out of fingers but keeps counting. “South African. Zimbabwe. Botswana. Mozambique. Liberia. Nigeria. Sierra Leone. Mali. Togo. So I have had to buy a lot of variety.”
About 60 per cent of the population was born overseas; about 2000 refugees live in Dandenong, the most of any Victorian suburb.
Loi Truong, now a Greater Dandenong councillor, arrived in Australia in 1983 from Vietnam – after navigating nine other border crossings. “The last time I escaped on a boat woven from bamboo and rubbed on the outside with a layer of road plastic to cut water absorption,” he told a council publication. “We had to take turns pumping out the water day and night.”
There are marked incidents of racism – most locals say their household has experienced racism or prejudice in the past 12 months – but by and large this superdiversity seems to function. Compare Dandenong with London, where Muslims were assaulted and a hotel housing asylum seekers was set on fire in race riots last year.
“As I was living in the UK, we could see some sort of prejudice,” says Steve Khan, who runs an Indian grocer. But in Dandenong “we all have a sense – if I see another person, I know he too has migrated. We don’t have that prejudice.”
Racial conflict is often fuelled by fears new immigrants will take jobs or resources. But rather than fear, many locals see hope of a new, better future. Migrant entrepreneurs line the streets.
City of Greater Dandenong Mayor Jim Memeti.Credit: Chris Hopkins
Makonese tells me she felt she had to buy her shop because she could see so many other migrants buying up property.
“Walk into any of these shops and ask them about their story,” says Jim Memeti. “They would have come here with nothing. And they have established themselves now.”
Memeti is a case in point. By 19 he had his own poultry shop – eventually he would own 20. Now he’s the mayor. “Australia has been a really good country for me and my family,” he says.
He is one of the rare mayors who does not complain about crowded local roads or infrastructure delivery. “We’re pretty happy, actually,” he says with a laugh. The city is well served for transport. The recently widened Monash Freeway runs straight into the city, and EastLink offers an orbital route. There is a large train and bus interchange.
“It’s so close to everything,” says Louise Noy, who has sold pet goods at the market for 24 years. “You’ve got your hospitals here. You’ve got all your services here. Why would you not want to go here?”
The ability to buy a slice of the Australian dream surrounded by a white picket fence is a major draw. Dandenong remains relatively affordable to rent and buy in compared with other nearby areas, but prices continue to grow. The average house price rose from $475,000 in 2016 to $734,000 in 2025. Average weekly rents have climbed more steeply, up from $395 in 2023 to $530 – an increase many can’t afford. The city is now a hotspot for homelessness and rough sleeping.
A global suburb
Dandenong is a global suburb, so it is exposed to the tides and eddies of the global economy, for good and ill. The long postwar boom ended in the ’70s, and the federal government’s move to slash tariffs exposed local factories to competition from low-paid foreign workforces. International Harvester went broke, the GM factory closed in 1991 and Heinz in 2000.
Working-class families reliant on those jobs, who could once afford to buy homes and cars and whitegoods, found themselves pushed into poverty. Unemployment at Doveton, a social-housing estate that neighbours Dandenong, reached 19 per cent in 1991; poverty rates jumped from 10 per cent to 37 per cent.
This once comfortably middle-class suburb is now stuck in the poverty trap. Unemployment hit 21 per cent there in 2015, almost four times higher than the national average.
“In Doveton we have the third generation of a household that does not have a job,” says Gabrielle Williams, the state MP for Dandenong. “That’s extraordinarily concerning” and very hard to fix, she says.
Refugees face a different problem – many are prevented from working because of the conditions of their visas. Eventually, the kindness of friends and family runs out and many find themselves homeless. The local Asylum Seeker Resource Centre is directly supporting 160 refugees, and a further 400 people use its food bank.
Poverty can foment criminality. In the early ’90s Dandenong became pockmarked by urban blight: dying retail strips, vacant buildings, smashed storefronts. Dandenong still has the 12th highest rate of offences per head of population of any Victorian postcode. Most locals say they don’t feel safe walking around the suburb after dark. It is Melbourne’s most disadvantaged local government area.
Steve Khan, a Dandenong resident and business owner, was one of the pioneers of the Little India precinct.Credit: Penny Stephens
News Corp christened it the “the worst place in Melbourne” in 2015. Then came media focus on gang violence and the Apex Gang, a group of young men based in Dandenong who were responsible for a wave of carjackings and burglaries across the state (despite the police saying no such gang existed).
Cameron Prins, local area police commander for Greater Dandenong, says: “Certainly that is the history. But greater Dandenong is a safe place to live and to visit – and that’s an important message the community need to understand.” But disadvantage is not the driver of local crime, he says. “We look at it from the perspective of the community being a little bit more susceptible,” he says.
Steve Khan was one of those who lost his job in the early ’90s recession. With few other options, he agreed to go into business with a family friend. Their first shop, on Mason Street, “had been vacant for god knows how many years – not a single windowpane was intact”, he says.
They sold Indian groceries and rented videos, across from another store selling Indian sweets. One store on a deserted street is a risk, but two is a sign of success. Soon, more Indian stores came, selling Punjab suits and sarees, biryanis, gulab jamun and mustard oil. By the late ’90s, Little India was thriving (Khan is now vice president of the traders’ association).
Their success seems to have sparked a new identity for the suburb. Little India now abuts a thriving Afghan precinct in Thomas Street, where nearly every trader would have once come as a refugee, the mayor says. An inaugural Ramadan Night Market in April was so successful the council plans to bring it back for a whole month next year.
Murtaza Khoshiwal, the owner of Shams Restaurant, cooks with his father, Miraqa.Credit: Chris Hopkins
At Shams Restaurant, my table is soon laden with chicken and lamb smoky from the charcoal grill, maunto dumplings stuffed with meat and spices, and cups of green tea sweetened with small fruit candies.
“In my community, I know lots of people, they are looking for shops to rent or to buy,” owner Murtaza Khoshiwal tells me over the food. “They want to invest in Dandenong. Last week, one of my friends, he bought a house. I said, ‘It’s very old.’ But he said, ‘It does not matter because the location is good.’”
Perhaps most important is that the state and federal governments embarked on a huge redevelopment program in 2006 to address urban decline and to try to turn Dandenong into a second CBD. Government and private investment totalling more than $1 billion has beautified the suburb’s public spaces. The market and town hall have been redeveloped, there’s a new theatre, community hub, library and public square, and a new $122.5 million pool is coming soon.
A private developer has been tapped to deliver a $600 million redevelopment, turning a slice of the suburb into a mixed-use development of apartments, retail and businesses – a process that requires demolishing Little India. Unemployment is now down to 6 per cent, only a couple of points higher than the national average.
That redevelopment has been slower than many stakeholders wanted, and remains incomplete. “But my goodness, I wish we had more – the scale of investment in Dandenong outweighs almost anything else that’s been done in Victoria,” says Dr Hayley Henderson, an Australian National University researcher who has studied Dandenong’s rebuild. “We haven’t seen a comprehensive revitalisation program like it since.”
And that’s the story of Dandenong, really. One of rebuilding, one of striving for something better.
Aman Najimi has lived in Dandenong for 25 years and runs the Sadaqat Halal Butcher on Thomas Street for 18. “When we first came to this street, it was only one shop,” he says from behind the meat counter. “People were scared to walk in this street. But now … all the shops are open. Since Afghan people came to this street, to Dandenong, everything has been good.”
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