This was published 5 months ago
They call it ‘MoPo’: Dame Edna’s hidden gem of the north is changing
Even the concreted-over creek is being brought back to life as Moonee Ponds ascends into the sky.
The Moonee Ponds skyline taken from the Moonee Valley Racecourse.Credit: Penny Stephens
It’s 20 minutes from the city, but many Melburnians couldn’t point to it on a map. It’s been described as the Toorak of the North – others know it simply as Dame Edna Everage’s home ’burb. It’s the “forgotten” inner-city suburb that Tina Arena, Bill Shorten and Jason Moran all have in common – and it’s changing fast.
Moonee Ponds is a leafy, well-serviced 3.5 kilometre-wide suburb tucked between the Moonee Ponds Creek and the Tullamarine Freeway in the east, the Maribyrnong River in the west – smack bang between the city and the airport.
For decades it’s had a rep as a functional, family-friendly – if not boring – suburb, associated with the toffy glitz of the Moonee Valley Racecourse and the kitsch of the fictitious Everage character who boasted of a Moonee Ponds home with “burgundy wall-to-wall carpets, lamington cakes and reindeers frosted on glass dining-room doors”.
But the suburb is changing its skin, according to Moonee Valley Mayor Pierce Tyson. “In the last few decades, really, the place has become the hidden gem in the north,” he says.
“It’s the same radius out of the city as Brunswick, Northcote, Prahran, and I think we’re growing and catching up to those places in nightlife, culture, cafes and being the place to be.”
Early days
The origin of the name Moonee Ponds has never been pinned down, but it is most likely Indigenous, according to the Essendon Historical Society. Traditional owners the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung relied on the Maribyrnong River, Moonee Ponds Creek and Steele Creek for fishing, transport and food.
Post-colonisation, the area was mainly farms, vineyards and large estates until proper transport came in, according to the Historical Society secretary and Moonee Ponds local Hayden Williams.
“The transport links determined its status. Mount Alexander Road was a key road to the goldfields from 1851. High volumes of traffic on the road led to increased business opportunities and subdivision of farms and the growth of small towns such as Moonee Ponds,” he said.
A quiet area with quiet self-confidence
Maribyrnong federal MP Bill Shorten recently moved just out of the ‘MoPo’ boundary into nearby hamlet Travancore. “Everyone that lives in Moonee Ponds, and the surrounding area – we all think we’re lucky to live there … no one really complains,” he says.
“It’s a quiet self-confidence that Moonee Ponds is a lovely area to live.”
One of the most treasured parts of Moonee Ponds for locals is the ornate Queens Park, which was the first campsite of Burke and Wills and their party in 1860. Today this sprawling green lung with a central lake is overrun on weekends with weddings, parties and picnickers.
At the park, local mum Haylin Nunez, 35, tells The Age she lived in Werribee, Toorak and North Melbourne in the years after she migrated from Venezuela. Five years ago, Nunez and her husband landed in Moonee Ponds – and are not planning to leave.
“I come from a Latin American background. For us, community is massive – especially when you are an immigrant. You want that feeling of belonging. So yeah the community, I love that it’s family oriented. I love the area. It’s quiet – I feel safe,” she said.
Moonee Ponds local Haylin Nunez and her 18-month-old daughter Cecilia Nunez enjoy a morning out at Queens Park.Credit: Penny Stephens
“I don’t get out of here,” she laughs, echoing a common refrain from locals. After a new cinema opened up in Puckle Street, there’s almost no reason to leave.
Like most suburbs, Moonee Ponds has a divide between haves and have-nots; there are grand multimillion-dollar mansions on streets like Ardmillan Road and Park Street, while rough sleepers ask for change in the central shopping area.
And despite the suburban idyll, there is an undeniable historic link with organised crime in Moonee Ponds. It’s the hometown of the gangland Moran family, and it has also been caught up in the current tobacco underworld war – a Young Street tobacco shop linked to ex-bikie Sam Abdulrahim was torched three times last year.
The changing face of downtown ‘MoPo’
The beating heart of Moonee Ponds has always been Puckle Street – once a 500-metre dirt road, now a busy two-way trafficked street bookmarked by the growling tangle of roads and trams known as the Junction at one end and Moonee Ponds Railway station at the other.
Olga Kenny in her children’s wear shop in Puckle Street.Credit: Penny Stephens
Perhaps no one has seen as much change in Moonee Ponds’ centre as Olga Kenny, who’s been selling children’s clothes at Paulene Maree Kidswear on Puckle for more than 40 years.
“I’ve got first, second and third generations of people coming in here to buy for their grandchildren,” says Kenny, who is also president of the Moonee Ponds Chamber of Commerce.
The COVID years were hard for the strip, and some point to the emergence of $2 shops and pawn brokers on the strip as a sign of hard economic times. But unlike nearby Mount Alexander Road where there numerous vacant shops, there’s barely a “for lease” sign on Puckle Street.
Kenny says the newly opened Palace Cinema and Brunetti Classico opening up in Penny Lane Arcade brought fresh excitement to the strip – the area hadn’t had a cinema for 58 years.
When asked about the changing face of the suburb, many locals point to the example of the old Moonee Ponds market, which operated for 21 years between 1975 and 1997 before it was bulldozed.
After its closure, the building was pulled down and the site sat empty for at least 15 years before multiple controversial high-rises were built on the site – including the largest named Rise at 29 storeys. They were completed around 2020.
The historical society’s Hayden Williams said the plethora of new apartments that have sprung up around the central business area have had a major impact on parking, traffic and crowds on public transport.
“You can’t have increased population without increased transport facilities and we don’t have them. It’s going to be a big issue,” he says.
But Rob Furness, whose family has run Sims Sports since 1935 (when it was an old-fashioned sporting store selling fishing gear, bullets and tobacco), says the new high-rise residents have been a saving grace for the shopping area.
Rob Furness from Sims Sport Shop in Puckle Street in Moonee Ponds. He says high-rise apartments have been a boon for the shopping strip.Credit: Penny Stephens
“There’s a lot more people around now, a lot,” he says. “It’s amazing the amount of people – they’re all full [the apartment buildings]. A lot of young people moving out of home, I know people who have downsized and live there now. They just love it.”
The focus of the Moonee Valley council is now turning to dealing with the implications of the high density on open space. Its current Moonee Ponds Activity Centre plan has identified a number of lots, including a current Woolworths car park in Pratt Street, as potential sites for in-fill parks and open spaces for those in apartment buildings to stretch their legs.
Moonee Valley Mayor Pierce Tyson and ward councillor for Moonee Ponds Rose Iser overlooking the Pratt Street Woolworths car park that council would like to place underground and turn the area into public open space.Credit: Simon Schluter
The state of the area’s roads – particularly Mount Alexander Road (referred to as Mount Road by locals) – is a constant headache for residents. It was last year voted the most dangerous road in Melbourne, according to a survey of drivers conducted by the RACV.
IT consultant David Uber, 30, says the proximity to the city is the biggest drawcard of the area, and says Moonee Ponds is spoilt for public transport with the Craigieburn train line, three tram lines (the 57, 82 and 59) and multiple bus routes.
But as an avid cyclist and member of the Moonee Valley Bike Users Group, he laments the delays in installing bike paths along Mount Alexander Road.
David Uber from the Moonee Valley Bike Users Group on a stretch of Mount Alexander Road that’s been slated for a bike lane for years and still doesn’t have one.Credit: Penny Stephens
“I think Moonee Ponds suffers from a high level of state arterials which have trams and parking that kind of push for competition and road space,” he says.
The Planning Department wouldn’t say if the Queens Park bike lanes would ever eventuate, but said planning was under way for “potential upgrades” to two major intersections along Mount Alexander Road at Napier and Keilor roads known as “meat grinders” by locals.
‘A bit silly, a bit weird’
Councillor Rose Iser, whose ward takes in Moonee Ponds, says there’s a distinctive youth shift happening in MoPo, noting 25 per cent of the suburb’s residents are aged between 20 and 35.
“There’s a kind of subsonic pulse in MoPo, making it more diverse, a bit edgier,” she told a council meeting this week.
That edginess is well-encapsulated by the online cult phenomenon of the Instagram meme account Eye on MoPo, which popped up in late 2022. It’s run by an anonymous 29-year-old graphic designer and boasts 3500 followers.
Stickers referencing the fabled “Mole Man of Moonee Ponds” - a long-running in-joke between locals online.Credit: Rachael Dexter
The account posts about the trials and tribulations of life in Moonee Ponds with a tongue-in-cheek affection for the mundane and suburban minutiae of the place: the pigeons inside the KFC at the Junction, the drama within the vertical village of the suburb’s high-rises, the “lash and brow industrial complex” of the suburb, which seems to boast an unusual concentration of beauty services.
Keen-eyed observers will have seen Eye on MoPo stickers appearing around the suburb, relating to a fictitious 500-year-old Mole Man – a creature which according to legend dwells beneath the train station that has become a long-running in-joke for locals and perplexing to outsiders.
“It’s definitely 50 per cent sincere, 50 per cent piss take,” says the account’s creator, who spoke to The Age on condition of anonymity. “I really love Moonee Ponds – I genuinely do – but you know it’s got its naff moments, it’s a bit silly, it’s a bit weird and I like to make fun of it.”
At the races
For non-locals, the most defining feature of the suburb is the home of the Cox Plate – the Moonee Valley Racecourse, established in 1883 by William Samuel Cox on what was known as Feehan’s Farm.
Currently, massive cranes hang over the course, as it undergoes two separate redevelopment projects that will deliver 2000 homes built on the periphery of the site, a new grandstand building, and the infield of the racecourse opened up to sports clubs and the public.
Apartments are being built at the Moonee Valley Racecourse.Credit: Penny Stephens
Just this week the Racing Club revealed the AFL is among at least eight organisations vying for coveted open space in the infield area as part of the development by 2027. Unlike the Flemington and Caulfield racecourses, Moonee Valley is not public land.
The redevelopment is happening in stages: 500 homes have already been completed (including townhouses on Feehan Street and one six-storey apartment building on Thomas Street), while two more apartment buildings of 10 and 11 storeys are under way, with 330 more apartments expected to be completed by September 2025.
The current grandstand building will come down in the first half of 2026, replaced by two more apartment buildings of 14 to 18 storeys.
The plans have been controversial among some pockets of locals, who are concerned about the placement of the new grandstand on the northern boundary closer to homes and traffic implications.
Despite heavy hitters bristling to take up tenancy in the infield, opening access to the racecourse to locals with community spaces is also still baked into the plan, said Moonee Valley Racing Club CEO Michael Browell.
“It’s been a precinct where the general public hasn’t had access outside of race days or different event days,” he said. “We’re looking forward to welcoming the community into the precinct once the redevelopment is completed.”
Going downstream
Meanwhile, away from the cranes and skyscrapers, there are big visions and grand plans for the actual Moonee Ponds Creek – for which the suburb is named.
Once a chain of lush ponds and bushland, between the 1940s to the 1980s, Melbourne Water (then the Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works) poured concrete along eight kilometres of the Moonee Ponds creek from Oak Park and Strathmore in the north right down through Brunswick, Moonee Ponds and Flemington in an attempt to control flooding.
After decades of campaigning by locals and environmentalists, work has begun by Melbourne Water to remove tonnes of concrete panelling in a bid to regenerate the creek and restore its ecosystem.
The first section in Strathmore is now complete, with a pond still under construction. Five kilometres downstream in Moonee Ponds, there is hope “the drain” in this suburb could also one day be restored, according to Chain of Ponds collaboration lead Rachel Lopes.
“We’d never say never, we have big dreams,” she says. The specific stretch that falls within Moonee Ponds has been earmarked in the past as a possible area for revegetation in the 2019 masterplan for the creek.
The concept idea involves lowering sports fields in Ormond Park and Holbrook Reserve to reclaim the flood plain, and allowing more concrete channel removal further south.
“That whole space has potential,” Lopes says.
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