The tale of three Heidelbergs, suburbs full of contradictions

In a series, The Age profiles Victorian suburbs and towns to reveal how they’ve changed over the decades.See all 45 stories.

Heidelberg West is a suburb full of contradictions.

For a start, locals call it West Heidelberg. It also shares part of a name with its neighbours, Heidelberg and Heidelberg Heights, but is resolutely worlds apart.

More than a quarter of Heidelberg West’s households are social housing, compared with 3.6 per cent nationwide and 3.8 per cent a few blocks away. That’s quite a difference between two suburbs separated by the block between Waiora and Waterdale roads.

For such a small area – less than 10 square kilometres – there are vast differences between these three suburbs. The 2021 census showed households in Heidelberg reported a weekly household median income of $2012. In contrast, residents a few streets away in Heidelberg West had a median household weekly income of $1257.

Brother Harry Prout outside his Liberty Parade home.Credit: Wayne Taylor

Heidelberg’s median house price, according to Domain, is $1,137,000, compared with $730,000 for Heidelberg West.

Banyule City Council describes the Olympic Park precinct in Heidelberg West as being one of the most disadvantaged communities in the country.

Despite its challenges, though, this is a place with a fiercely proud community spirit. And few embody that like Brother Harry Prout.

A member of the Marist Brothers order of Catholics, Prout shares a modest home with Brother Doug Walsh on Liberty Parade in the Olympic Village.

Their pre-fabricated concrete home, which almost 60 years ago hosted members of the Danish men’s team during the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games, is now host to regular drop-in sessions. The Exodus Community, of which the brothers are part, supports about 100 local families thanks to some 50 volunteers.

“There’s really good stuff that happens around the place, and there’s really awful stuff that happens, too,” Prout says prosaically.

“But most of the awful stuff has got to do with people who are struggling with addictions, and/or mental health issues ... so that can create some challenging behaviours in the area.”

Olympic Village was built to house international athletes venturing to the other side of the world for Melbourne’s summer Games – the first to be held outside Europe and North America.

After the event, Olympic Village’s houses were returned to the Australian public for public housing. The streets – including Kokoda Street, Tobruk Avenue and Malahang Parade – carried memories of World War II, while the large blocks and tree-lined streets still evoke a 1950s suburban memory.

Prout estimates about half the original homes in the streets bordered by Southern Road, Oriel Road, Dougherty Road and Liberty Parade, remain as public housing. But the area is slowly changing.

According to census data, 22.8 per cent of homes in West Heidelberg and Bellfield were social housing in 2021– down from 25.2 per cent in 2016.

Drive around the area and you’ll see dozens of shopping trolleys littering nature strips. There are plenty of overgrown yards, too, with hard rubbish colonising verges and front yards, and weather-worn pairs of shoes dangling over powerlines.

Heidelberg West’s Olympic Village turns 70 in 2026.Credit: Jason South

But amidst the visible signs of struggle are public housing properties with meticulously planted and maintained gardens, and groups of neighbours chatting at their fence lines and looking out for each other.

“Around here, they really help each other, welcome each other, and support each other,” says Tom Melican, the mayor of Banyule City Council. He is standing in the middle of Bell Street Mall, which opened in 1956 and is thought to be Australia’s first drive-in shopping mall.

He waves at passing locals: “It’s an amazing community because they understand each other and what people need.”

The list of things Heidelberg West needs is long. Melican’s own priorities are a permanent library for Heidelberg West, a funding boost to the community hub (which feeds, educates and trains thousands of people every week), and money to upgrade the leisure centre.

A Banyule Council paper describes the leisure pool as being in such a dire condition it no longer meets child-safety standards. The problems, it says, will only get worse without urgent state government funding.

“The surrounding area is beset by antisocial behaviour and the current design creates hidden corners around the centre,” the paper states. “Locals say they don’t feel safe to walk in the area at night.”

Banyule mayor Tom Melican says Bell Street Mall is one of his favourite places in the area.Credit: Wayne Taylor

In 2019, Banyule Support and Information Centre (BANSIC) volunteer co-ordinator Kate Farrelly set up a makeshift food hub in a state government-owned building across the road from the Mall. In its first month, 96 people sought emergency food relief. These days, they feed up to 400 a month.

“It’s not uncommon for us to have people waiting outside before we open,” Farrelly says. She, too, is concerned about the gradual erosion of public housing, which has slowly been making way for privately owned housing stock. “It’s all about housing here. West Heidelberg is a suburb that advocates for more public housing. Not many other suburbs are asking for more.”

Mick Geary, chief executive of the Banyule Community Health Service in West Heidelberg, acknowledges the community faces challenges. But, he maintains, this place is more than the sum of its problems. The place is special.

“It has a truly authentic community feel to it,” he says over tea in the light-filled cafe inside the health service. “We talk about diverse and authentic communities, but this truly has that.”

“I went to a funeral last week, for a single mum of six children,” he continues. “She did the paper round for 40 years. There were hundreds of people there. She was like a local hero. She rode her bike until she was in her 90s, and there was so much love there for her and what she achieved. You see the pride of community looking after themselves.”

Peter Castaldo is a former mayor and Greens councillor on Banyule Council. He nominates the area’s open spaces as among his favourite local places, including the once-unloved Malahang Park in Heidelberg West. As in so many other parts of Melbourne, people flocked to Malahang during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s turned into almost a community fair on nice days – there’s so many things for kids to do,” Castaldo says. “There’s an enclosed soccer pitch, climbing frames for the kids, a playground, a skate park, a bike repair shop … It used to be a place you wouldn’t think of going to, but it’s absolutely marvellous now.”

Heidelberg West has an unemployment rate of 8.4 per cent, compared with 5.3 per cent across Greater Melbourne. In some parts of Heidelberg West and Heidelberg, the youth unemployment rate is 40 per cent.

But while Heidelberg West has a battler reputation, the number of recorded criminal incidents in the suburb is lower than in other parts of Banyule. Heidelberg itself led the way in the 12 months to September 2023 with 1249 incidents; dwarfing Heidelberg West (627) and Heidelberg Heights (450).

Social worker Abdiaziz Farah is manager of Himilo Community Connect, an organisation working on the development and empowerment of the Australian-Somali community in and around Heidelberg West.

Migrants born in Somalia began arriving in large groups in the 1990s and by the 2000s, family reunions began. Now, most Australian-Somalis were born here.

“It is a community that is transitioning from resettlement to integration,” Farah says.

“We don’t want to be seen as the others. We are part of the Australian community. We are ethnically Somali, but most of our population are born in Australia.”

Abdiaziz Farah is the manager of Himilo, a community organisation that’s changing lives in Heidelberg West.Credit: Jason South

It’s believed Banyule has the largest Australian-Somali population in Victoria and Farah doesn’t buy the official estimate of 1000 people. “I have 250 in-laws, so I wouldn’t believe that,” he laughs. “I would go with 3000.”

Farah has worked tirelessly to reduce the challenges faced by many in Australian-Somali communities including systemic barriers to education, employment and economic empowerment.

“West Heidelberg has got a high number of public housing and with that comes intergenerational poverty,” he says.

“What we want to do is break that cycle.”

In this way, Himilo has worked to secure jobs for 600 Australian-Somalis from Heidelberg West, including in state government roles, and has established a homework club attended by 240 children.

Farah points to research showing Somali-Australians who complete university degrees have the same employment outcomes as people from the broader community who left school in year 10.

“So that’s the obvious impact of discrimination and racism, but also lack of networks that facilitate employment,” he says. “So we’re building those networks from the ground up.”

Less than two kilometres and a world away is Heidelberg, which retains some of the English village feel built up over decades from its colonial inception in the 1880s.

Children climbing up the wire fence at the Melbourne Olympic Village on 21 November, 1956.Credit: The Age

Heidelberg was a town on the outskirts of the city until it was absorbed into metropolitan Melbourne after World War II. Heidelberg Historical Society member Steven Barlow says Burgundy Street in the pre-gold rush 1840s and 1850s had a blacksmith, a timber yard (now supermarket), grand banks, a post office (now gone) and two pubs (still there).

Barlow believes the suburb’s enduring heritage character stems from the suburb’s railway station, which opened in 1888 as a terminal station. It was only in 1902 that the rail line was extended to Eltham, which led to Heidelberg being slowly developed.

It was this “end of the line” feel that attracted the famed members of the Heidelberg school of art, who painted en plein air in a large area including what is now Heidelberg, the Yarra Valley and Dandenong Ranges. Many of the artists, Barlow says, travelled to Heidelberg by train.

“Heidelberg was attractive to artists at the Heidelberg school because the land around here was partly Australian and partly European,” Barlow says. “It offered beautiful views, and the train meant they were able to get here with the local railway. But the railway wasn’t good enough to attract suburban development and settlement for a long time.”

These days, however, Heidelberg is changing fast.

Burgundy Street in Heidelberg.Credit: Jason South

The hospital precinct – comprising the Austin, Mercy Hospital for Women, Warringal Private, Austin Acute Psychiatric and Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital, and a host of primary care facilities – employs thousands of workers (with more than 11,000 people employed by the Austin alone).

Banyule Council describes the health cluster as a “world-class health precinct of state significance”, but faces challenges in better integrating it – and its workers – into the local area.

Banyule’s Structure Plan describes the health precinct and Heidelberg’s commercial centre as being “two economies” that rarely interact.

“The economies of the health precinct and [Heidelberg’s] commercial precincts are currently quite distinct, with only two in 100 visitors typically moving between them,” it says.

The sheer number of people commuting to Heidelberg is projected to rapidly rise if the Allan government’s Suburban Rail Loop comes to fruition.

Heidelberg is one of seven new stations set to comprise the north section of the rail loop (Heidelberg, Doncaster, Bundoora, Reservoir, Fawkner, Broadmeadows and Melbourne Airport) by 2053, although it is unclear whether this will involve a second station at Heidelberg or the replacement of the 1800s station.

Banyule Council says the rail loop project will elevate Heidelberg into being a substantial transport hub with regional accessibility.

But key to this will be managing the rapid growth around the health precinct. Banyule Council says Heidelberg is the major activity centre in Melbourne’s north-east, and there is “genuine expectation” that Heidelberg will have higher density developments than in other suburbs.

A new structure plan envisages height limits in the activity centre of central Heidelberg of between 11 metres and 32 metres, while also protecting the heritage areas that Heidelberg locals love.