My suburb on the city fringe has a claim to fame, but it’s no one-trick pony

I was once embarrassed to hail from Cranbourne. “Crimebourne” was once — still is — its dreadful diminutive, often delivered with an exaggerated drawl. That, or simply Cranny.

In my hometown, I felt tucked away from any semblance of culture, emerging only to scoff a Shake n’ Dog at the beat-up Wendy’s in town, to rent Human Centipede at the Blockbuster that was opposite Kelly’s Hotel, where barflies would bet on the ponies, or to play squash against my dad in the now-defunct courts behind one of Cranbourne’s many drive-through joints.

My home was a little over a kilometre out of the main strip: a seven-acre farm with racehorses, a couple of dogs, and eight odd stable cats. I’d scale the paddocks of an evening while filling up water troughs, imagining a colourful life elsewhere. I was a true-blue “horse girl”, from a tribe of trainers, jockeys, farriers, breakers, track-riders and the like, and the echo of a thoroughbred’s neigh pierces through most of my childhood memories.

I was brushing a horse’s mane or picking soil from the furrows of their hooves, while many girls stuck in suburban dwellings – the kind that framed the property I grew up on – could only dream of such a life. I once boasted at school about having met Heli Simpson, the actor who played the Saddle Club’s “mean girl” Veronica, at a neighbouring horse show: a prized run-in for an 11-year-old girl who engrossed herself in the comings-and-goings of Pine Hollow Stables.

But tending to a stable’s daily needs was a large undertaking, and somewhere between dusting myself off after a fall and wheeling a large sum of manure to a smelly pit, I lost the bug. Boys, books and make-up did not require such maintenance.

Eventually, I traded in my jodhpurs, climbed into my car with a mattress shoved into the back, and drove an hour and a bit into the city, where I commenced my 20s in the inner north. There were no horses in sight. I went to arts school, drank soy flat whites and turned vegan, which made returning home for the occasional family dinner – routinely held at the now-inoperative Cranbourne RSL – particularly difficult. My order? A side of bruschetta, sans the feta.

Before long, my family home was bulldozed to make way for a now-endless sprawl of new house-and-land packages as Cranbourne grew, and the name spread through the suburbs of Cranbourne North, South, East and West. Despite being quasi-rural, Cranbourne was still technically part of metropolitan Melbourne: the last stop on the train line and one of the few places where people could still afford to buy. Some things remained, like the Royal Botanic Gardens – a favoured excursion for many since it opened in 2006. It’s a striking homage to native shrubbery, and boasts over 25 endangered, rare or threatened species of plants in its vibrant collection.

But Centro Cranbourne, the once-dusty shopping mall, got a facelift. Now, one is less inclined to mosey into the mall in a pair of rip-off Uggs and pyjama pants, given the presence of not-half-bad dining establishments such as Groove Train and Times. St Agatha’s Church, built in 1929, turned Pancake Parlour turned Taco Bell then became Amazing Grace, a popular cafe and restaurant. The squash court once where jockeys belted out a sweat while the soft humdrum of Prince played on the speaker was turned into a community hall.

Even the odd smattering of meteorite replicas, once only a meagre stone’s throw from Domino’s Pizza, got a rebrand. The homage to the enormous meteorite that crashed into Cranbourne around 200 years ago was remodelled and embedded into a rock display out the front of Casey RACE in Cranbourne East. Rumour has it a blacksmith — way back in 1854 — nicked iron from the 3500-kilogram space boulder, and turned it into a horseshoe. Sounds about right.

Even after all this time and exponential growth, the pulse of “horse” types still persists down south: courtesy of the Cranbourne racecourse, home to the largest training complex in the southern hemisphere. At 3am on any given morning, cars will gather at a coffee float nestled just off the South Gippsland Highway for a caffeine fix before track work.

Even businesses with no presumed affiliation to horse racing embody its essence. The Racetrack Cafe, for example. Silks — a restaurant that hails off the South Gippsland Highway — is affectionately named after a jockey’s colourful ensemble, and Trios, a popular sports club on Grant Street that overlooks the track, is a salute to the three racing codes that operate out of Cranbourne: the dogs, the horses and the trotters. Well over 22,000 people reside here now, but all I need to do is mention my last name to a local if I wish to hear a wistful story or be met with an affectionate nod.

But every time I visit Cranbourne, especially when driving through the trees that frame the racetrack, I wonder: where did all the actual horses go? I’d long seen them grazing on the fringes of the South Gippsland Highway, their presence now replaced by estates and construction sites. Cranbourne’s four-metre welcome sign even boasts the metal silhouette of a horse mid-gallop.

Bruce Smith, who has resided in Cranbourne for 50-odd years and runs a booming saddlery business, tells me the horses can still be found – they’re just tucked deeper down the highway, on larger blocks of land or at agistment properties – stable dwellings with sufficient acreage that suburban horse owners can rent.

The master leathersmith delights when I mention I’m a Griffiths, and recalls how my grandparents rented a small shanty off him and his wife, a humble farm where my grandfather would break in racehorses.

I am comforted to know that horses still run the joint. When my uncle Rodney passed away in 2022 — an esteemed jockey and staunch Cranbournite — his funeral procession was held at the Cranbourne racecourse, where a large gaggle of horse people met, laughed and paid their respects.

I no longer felt embarrassed about hailing from the dry, flat pains of an outer suburb I once declared doddery.

Now, when I enter Cranbourne, I make sure to drive past the now-paved road I grew up on and, like an old codger, lament the sight of traffic lights and crossings. Back in my day, it was all horses. Perhaps, it always will be.

Madison Griffiths is a freelance writer and author of Tissue.

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