This was published 11 months ago
Oakleigh and Clayton were outer suburbs. They are about to transform into a new CBD
By Melissa Cunningham and Patrick Hatch
Every morning, Gregory Liakatos drives to Eaton Mall in Oakleigh, in Melbourne’s south-east, where he sips Greek coffee and soaks up the scent of grilled gyros.
Liakatos is in good company, surrounded by Greek migrants like him. They play cards on outdoor tables. They eat cake. Some rotate Greek worry beads, known as Komboloi, with their fingertips.
Mostly, they chat about everything from their grandchildren to the motherland.
“I’ve known him since he was eighteen months old, from back in the village,” 79-year-old Liakatos says, pointing to his lifelong friend James Kaloumeris, who is sitting smiling at him from across the table.
“Like everybody, we came here many years ago on a promise. We were told we were coming to a very promised land.”
Liakatos spent 33 days travelling aboard a ship, called Patris, from Greece to Port Melbourne in 1960, as a 14-year-old boy. His family were crammed alongside thousands of other migrants. He was seasick, excited and anxious. But the riches of the promised land have been plenty.
“I meet a beautiful lady in 1966,” the self-taught chef and grandfather says, proudly holding up a photo of his wife, Aspasia, on his smartphone. “I worked hard, ran my own business. I have had a wonderful life.”
But Liakatos, who has lived in nearby Mount Waverley since 1972, senses great changes are on the horizon for Melbourne’s Greek heartland and the city’s south-east.
Liakatos says his generation, many of whom meet each day at Eaton Mall, are ageing. Older European migrants, who built modern Australia, are dying. The adult children of these migrants have left the nest, and are spread out all over Melbourne.
New people and cultures are moving in ahead of a projected population boom and change will only accelerate from here. High-rise apartments will soon dot the skyline, a world away from the post-war migration of wide roads and modestly designed, flat-roofed houses that filled the tree-lined streets when Liakatos moved in.
Gregory Liakatos shares a Greek coffee with lifelong friend James Kaloumeris at Eaton Mall in Oakleigh.Credit: Joe Armao
However while much this pocket of Melbourne has changed over recent decades, it will pale in comparison to what is slated to happen next.
The wider City of Monash area is set up to boom into an employment and population hub that – if it comes to pass – will rival Melbourne’s CBD today.
Two things will drive that: first is the nearby Monash University precinct, which is already the busiest employment cluster outside Melbourne’s CBD.
Home to the Monash Medical Centre, Children’s Hospital, Victorian Heart Hospital, the CSIRO, the Australian Synchrotron and a growing number of biotechnology companies and start-ups, the precinct is attracting highly skilled and highly paid professionals to the area, including many migrants.
And second is the state Labor government’s Suburban Rail Loop East, a 23-kilometre underground railway between Cheltenham and Box Hill.
Three of the $34.5 billion project’s six stations are within the City of Monash: at Clayton, Monash University and in Glen Waverley.
Underpinning the project is a plan to decentralise Melbourne by creating new commercial and residential development around each station, shifting jobs away from the CBD and redirecting population growth away from the city’s outer suburbs.
The Suburban Rail Loop Authority has seized planning controls over large areas of these precincts and will rezone them to allow higher and denser development, including buildings of up to 20 storeys in parts of Clayton.
The rail loop business case forecasts that Clayton’s population will more than double from around 22,000 today to 55,000 by 2056, while the number of jobs based there will grow from 21,000 to 57,500. That would make it a similar place to Collingwood today, in terms of population and jobs density.
Nearby, around the new Monash station, the population will jump from about 14,000 to 30,500 by the middle of the century, and the number of jobs will skyrocket from 36,500 to 162,000.
If those projections are correct, there will be as many jobs across the combined Clayton and Monash University precinct (219,500) as there are working in Melbourne’s CBD today.
Vanilla Lounge owners Tia Spanos Tsonis (far right) with her two sisters.Credit: Joe Armao
Tia Spanos Tsonis, one of the managers of family owned Greek patisserie and Mediterranean restaurant, Vanilla Lounge, said over the last 15 years Eaton Mall had shifted from being primarily Greek customers to a cultural melting pot of new residents and increasingly international tourists.
“It’s become a destination,” says Tsonis, the daughter of Greek migrants, whose family have been in hospitality for 50 years.
Asked about the changes ahead for nearby Clayton, which is just a five-minute train ride away from Oakleigh, Tsonis says: “It’s fantastic. The more the merrier. But with this rise in population, we have to make sure we are able to accommodate the people moving [in] with the right infrastructure and support for local businesses.”
In the last 30 years, Liakatos has watched Eaton Mall shift around him, too. It has transformed from a couple of cafes and supermarkets, to a sprawling and thriving strip of al fresco Greek restaurants, grocers and delis, that fill him with nostalgia.
“We’ve got lots of other nationalities coming in adding to the beauty of the place,” he says. “Things can’t stay the same forever. This is life. Melbourne has to grow.”
A few kilometres away, Clayton Road provides a snapshot of the evolving cultural diversity of the area. Clayton has emerged as the Melbourne suburb with the highest percentage of overseas-born residents, outside of the CBD.
This growth has been fuelled in part by high numbers of international students, but also a wave of skilled migrants, who are flocking to the medical, technology and research hub around Monash University.
Census data shows that between 2011 and 2021, the City of Monash’s population grew by 30,664 people or 19 per cent – just above the Victoria-wide growth of 18 per cent.
“Things can’t stay the same forever. This is life. Melbourne has to grow.”
Gregory Liakatos
Over the same period, the number of people living there who were born overseas jumped by 26,217. More than half (54 per cent) of residents in the area were born overseas, compared to a 35 per cent statewide average.
The number of Monash residents who were born in China grew from 13,301 to 22,608 people over the decade to 2021, and they now make up 12 per cent of the community.
Indian-born residents almost doubled to 13,517 over the same period, to represent 7 per cent of locals. Sri Lankans grew by a third to 7515 (4 per cent of residents), and a thousand more Malaysians brought their number to 6497 (3.4 per cent of all residents).
And while the Greek community has become relatively less prominent, it’s not going anywhere soon.
In fact, the number of Greek-born residents grew by 365 people between 2011 and 2021, to 4489 people (or 2.4 per cent of the population).
Those claiming Greek ancestry grew by 1300 to 13,221, or 7 per cent of the population, while the number of people speaking Greek at home grew by 169 to 10,247.
Greek is still spoken at home by just over 5 per cent of residents – the second most common non-English language, between Mandarin at 9.4 per cent and Cantonese at 4.5 per cent.
Clayton Road is now bustling with Asian restaurants and specialty shops, including the bright blue and yellow painted Hong Kong Supermarket.
Locals say the supermarket has such a diversity of Asian produce, it rivals the Footscray market. Indian restaurants are also cropping up, a reflection of a surge in families migrating from the subcontinent.
Sunny Shim at her grocery shop in Clayton.Credit: Joe Armao
Sunny Shim is part of Clayton’s great Asian migration and relocated to Melbourne from South Korea in 2003 as an international student.
After living in Armadale for years, she still remembers her friends’ reactions when she and her husband told them they were moving to South Clayton more than a decade ago.
“They said ‘why are you going there? It’s so far, there’s nothing there’,” Shim laughs. “They told us ‘you’re moving to the countryside’.”
But the mother-of-one was drawn to Clayton for its cheaper house prices and perks like Chadstone Shopping Centre and Ikea.
After working as a nurse at The Alfred hospital during the gruelling coronavirus pandemic, Shim was ready for a change. She decided to take over the Top Mart Korean Grocer two and half years ago, so she could spend more time with her seven-year-old son.
In the last year, she has observed Clayton Road light up at night as more restaurants open up.
While she would like to see more trees and parkland in Clayton, like everyone else The Age spoke to in the suburb this week, she is excited by what is to come for Clayton.
“A higher population is good business-wise,” she said this week in her store, where the shelves are full of specialty produce like roasted seaweed flakes and South Korean rice wine.
“But it is also good for diversity. I have loved watching this suburb grow, and everyone living in harmony.”
Across the road, Nick Mademlis, owner of the Grain Emporium in Clayton, opened his bakery 27 years ago.
In the early years, tables outside were packed full of older Italian and Greek migrants, who favoured fresh bread and cakes.
“Back in the day, Clayton was European city,” he says. “Now it is a younger demographic. It’s dynamic and it is vibrant. A lot of Asians and Indian migrants are flooding in because of Monash University and it has never been busier.”
The Suburban Rail Loop business case suggested that by 2056 Clayton could have a similar population density to the once working class – but now gentrified – Collingwood. The inner-city suburb has experienced an explosion of apartment construction, cocktail bars, pubs, yoga and pilates studios, cafes and tattooed hipsters moving in.
When asked about the prospect of Clayton morphing into the next Collingwood, Mademlis’ eyes widen and he quickly erupts into laughter.
But after pondering it for a few moments, he adds: “You never know. Who would have ever thought Fitzroy, Collingwood or Carlton would be what they are today?”
In many ways, Monash Mayor Nicky Luo represents the area’s changing demographics.
The 41-year-old moved to Glen Waverley from China with her family as a young child. She studied locally and now works in the area as a mental health clinical nurse.
“People come to Monash because of our proximity to the CBD and our incredible education and employment opportunities. There is significant investment driving the growth of knowledge and technology industries,” Luo says.
Melanie Lambrou and dog, Paddy, catch up with Isabelle Foscolos in Oakleigh.Credit: Joe Armao
Luo says the council supports the rail loop and the opportunity it creates for more people to live and work in Monash, but like other councils it is concerned about the Suburban Rail Loop Authority taking over planning controls and what building heights and densities it will permit.
Likewise, she says the state government’s lofty goals for population will demand more healthcare facilities, open space, kindergartens and other services.
“We need genuine conversations with the Victorian government about investing in the community infrastructure to support the population growth,” Luo says.
Back in Oakleigh, a new generation of young people, many of them of Greek descent, are continuing their family ritual of coming to Eaton Mall.
Among them is Mealanie Lambrou, 22, and her friend Isabelle Foscolos, 21, who were enjoying Greek frappes outside Nikos Cakes amid the lunchtime rush on Wednesday.
Foscolos vividly remembers coming to the mall for groceries as a child, and stocking up on red dye to decorate eggs for Greek Easter.
“Now there’s a lot of young people coming here for a bite to eat and things like that,” she says.
“It has changed a lot, but in many ways it’s still the same. It still reminds me of those special memories from my childhood.”
The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up here.