My suburb was a spacious garden until residents built over their backyards

When my wife and I were looking for a new home in 1989, there were two key features that attracted us to Balwyn North: the route 48 tram providing ready access to the city, and its appealing neighbourhood character.

The suburb’s homes had gardens and a canopy of trees. They also had low or no front fences, which promoted community connectedness. Coming from generations of rural dwellers, the sense of space was and remains appealing. And this was all just 12 kilometres north-east of the CBD.

Large homes have become the norm in Balwyn North.Credit: Penny Stephens

Bounded by the Yarra River along its north, much of Balwyn North was converted from orchards and farmland into a residential suburb after World War II in a major building surge. Conveniently for new arrivals, the final section of the route 48 tram had been completed just a few years earlier.

John Brack lived here for a while and in 1954 painted the North Balwyn tram terminal as a place where the city ended.

It was a view echoed by long-term residents who told us how they would walk unformed roads in gum boots to catch the tram to the city. Their boots remained at the tram stop for the day and were donned again for the often squelchy walk home in the evening.

It was a time when new families had little money, building materials were in short supply, as was indoor plumbing – it preceded Gough Whitlam’s promise of “sewerage socialism” for outer urban dwellers. Many households shared copper telephone cable connections.

Some of the new houses, small by current standards, were the product of the Robin Boyd-led Small Homes Service, through which prospective home buyers could purchase architectural drawings for five pounds.

However, most of the residential stock, including ours, built in 1952, was plain vanilla-brick-veneer bungalows, the ubiquitous kind of “brick veneer prison” that the Skyhooks scoffed at in their 1974 song Balwyn Calling.

These typically three-bedroom homes occupied as little as 15 per cent of blocks that were often more than 800 square metres. What else to do if your house is relatively small, other than to develop a garden?

Balwyn North has largely remained a suburb of detached houses – 6490 in 2021, compared to 6416 in 1991 and the population has grown at a much slower rate than much of Melbourne over that time, from 17,811 to 20,938.

But make no mistake, substantial redevelopment of homes has taken place over the last 20 years or so, and surely accounts for Balwyn North regularly featuring in lists of Melbourne’s 20 most exclusive suburbs.

Today, buyers of post-WWII houses, more cashed up than their predecessors, typically demolish and replace them with two or three storey places designed to use the maximum 60 per cent footprint permitted. Front gardens are often much diminished and rear gardens lost altogether.

Particularly popular is a form of historic Greek and Roman-style gigantism, commonly characterised by giant columns.

Unsurprisingly, new residences in Balwyn North have not recently featured in Boroondara Council’s urban design awards. Rather than presenting as welcoming from the street, many of these developments have a “compound” or enclosed presence to them. Vegetation, including canopy trees, is diminished.

The fact that much of the suburb is undulating provides for significant views from many properties, including to the west and the Melbourne’s CBD.

Regrettably, in some cases, the view has been so compelling for some that it has led to the removal of mature trees, both legally and illegally. A phenomenon shared with Melbourne’s bayside, sans salt water.

Early developers were no doubt eager to emphasise those views, and where the gradient rises in the suburb’s north they were relentless in their choice of street names: Longview Road, Cityview Road, Viewpoint Road, Highview Road, Hill Road, Hillview Road, Viewhill Road, Mountain View Road and Panoramic Road. Having run out of English words for “good views” they moved on to Belle Vue Road, Bon Vue Road and Jolie Vue Road.

Finally, not to be outdone, there’s Kosciusko Road, even if it is missing the “Z” and anything like the altitude of Australia’s tallest mountain.

Another local feature that is said to lift residential property prices in Balwyn North is the sought-after Balwyn High School. Although, one realtor suggested to me that a residential presence in the Balwyn High zone is the “fallback” position if entry to an elite private school fails.

Shopping is generally easy in Balwyn North. It was the location of Australia’s first supermarket with the opening of Dickins (now Coles) in 1960 at the intersection of Burke and Doncaster Roads.

Numerous shopping strips remain in the suburb, however, the increasing dominance of big box and online retailing has had an impact here, as elsewhere. Luckily, we still have a hardware store, so we do not have to travel several kilometres for a small box of nails.

Balwyn North for a long time had a reputation as a dull suburb, no doubt partly because it was for many years one of a few “dry” areas in Melbourne where locals had to give approval via plebiscite to liquor licences.

I doubt that per capita liquor consumption was any lower in Balwyn North, nor has it changed much since regulations were relaxed in 2015. We have not seen the opening of pubs in Balwyn North – the new licensees have been cafes and restaurants for the most part.

Balwyn North has become much more multicultural. Households that only speak English at home have fallen from 67 per cent in 2001 to less than 50 per cent in 2021. Mandarin and Cantonese are the two languages that have increased the most in that period.

Balwyn North is well served by green open space, although as in much of Melbourne, there is growing tension between parkland and organised sporting uses.

These include the Glass Creek linear parks, Leigh Park, Greythorn Park and the Koonung Creek Linear Park. Greythorn Park was formerly a privately owned wildlife sanctuary bequeathed to the then-Camberwell Council in 1951, while Macleay Park, in the Glass Creek corridor, had an earlier life in the 1950s as a council rubbish tip.

The creek is now hidden away in a barrel drain – it is difficult to forget the workman who I observed climbing out of an access pit for the drain who exclaimed: “gee it stinks down there!”

Regrettably, we have not seen the extension of the 48 tram service to Doncaster Hill, while the Eastern Freeway has become an increasingly dominant presence along the northern fringe of Balwyn North since it arrived in 1982. It promised easy mobility, paradoxically, it diminished local access to neighbouring Bulleen and beyond.

A substantial increase in lane capacity, now under construction as part of the North East Link Project has many residents on edge, with the prospect of larger volumes of traffic on local roads, and concerns about noise and air pollution. The loss of much of Koonung Creek Linear Park and its trees to the freeway is also keenly felt.

What will Balwyn North be like as a place to live in 20 years’ time? It is difficult to say. While we inherited a spacious garden, it is starting to feel rather more like an oasis than something typical of the suburb we arrived in.

Change is inevitable, but if a few more residents could be inspired by the spirit of Robin Boyd, Balwyn North would be enhanced for all.

Ian Hundley is a long-term resident of Balwyn North and active on local planning and transport policy and community service issues.