In my suburb, a bypass was meant to fix the traffic. But people still pour in

It’s 2003, and half the neighbourhood seems to have gathered outside the modest family home I grew up in. Out the front is a real estate board and raised flag to advertise the auction. A line of slow cars fills the street as they park as close to my dad’s house as possible.

A crowd gathers around the house, which has been vacant since Dad’s death. The two-bedroom Californian bungalow was home to eight of us, and to my dad for more than 60 years. A couple of neighbours I’ve known since I was a boy sit on a brick fence and wave as I pass by.

Like many of the local houses from the postwar years, it’s small and sat on a quarter-acre block with large gardens that provided plenty of space for us six kids to play. The bidding went fast that day – the buyers were a young couple who began the series of renovations that led to the house being extended outwards and upwards. Twenty years later, the house fills most of the block, with just the period facade remaining. My parents would have said that “it scrubbed up well”.

I’ve witnessed that same beehive of development spread over the Greensborough of my youth. My childhood is buried deep below this multicultural metropolis where the shops are now bigger and brighter – and no longer owned by people whose names I once knew, but by companies and multinationals.

There is a constant line of traffic through the centre of town, unlike half a century ago when the chemist and the butcher would have a kick-to-kick of the footy in Main Street. Try that today and you might need a chemist. Busyness abounds with people I don’t recognise.

My connection to Greensborough goes back to the 1950s when I was delivered by the celebrated and imposing Dr Ted Cordner – also a premiership footballer with the Demons – in the community hospital. My pregnant mum walked two blocks to get there.

As a child, I would hear the milky’s Clydesdale outside my window on the otherwise quiet streets in the mornings. As evidence of the visit, horse droppings would be scattered down the road. Once a week, the tatty-hatted dunny man visited our outhouse. A remnant memory of jobs long gone.

In early November, rubbish would be collected into a pagan-like pyre a few doors down for Guy Fawkes bonfire night. Fizzing skyrockets would light the sky, and crackers explode with a bang. In cooler months, fog and woodfire smoke would saturate the air.

The development of Greensborough by Europeans dates back to 1841, when Edward Green purchased a parcel of land for a telegraph and postal business 17 kilometres north-east of the CBD in the area that’s now named after him.

During the gold rush, hotels were built to provide refreshments and accommodation for carters and travellers. Only photos and memories remain of the infamous Marble Hall hotel that boasted a murder, a resident ghost, and mayhem. Currently planned for the site is a 300-unit, 22-tier apartment block. Greensborough’s massive new railway development is a far cry from Green’s original staging post.

In the late 1980s, the Greensborough bypass was constructed to remedy the overwhelming number of cars and trucks that clogged the shopping streets. Today, traffic continues to flow around the suburb’s western border, feeding cars in and out, or past the township.

The Plenty River flows through the middle of Greensborough, although it is not as pristine as when the early European settlers found platypuses and trout swimming in its waters. During the Depression years, a swimming pool was built into the river and it became a popular spot for locals to cool off.

On more than one occasion, Dr Cordner had to order its closure to swimmers when contamination or broken beer bottles fouled the river. Now locals swim at the indoor pool complex, a dropkick away from the doctor’s old home, Ashmead.

The medieval-style mansion that was the family home of four brothers who became legends of the Melbourne footy club still remains, enclosed by a huge heritage-listed cypress hedge. When the home sold in 2012, it was somewhat ironic to note that the modern, hygienic, pool complex had destroyed the views from the former doctor’s house.

Greensborough was a great place to grow up. Edward Green would be gobsmacked to see it today.

Martin Galvin is a retired nurse and Watsonia Tech alumni.

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