My suburb felt eerie when I first came here. Now, it’s difficult to leave

Imagine, if you will, a hand of God, in addition to assisting Maradona to win the World Cup for Argentina in 1986, coming down from heaven and scooping up a swathe of humanity from the Asian subcontinent in a north-westerly direction over Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and then a final quick dip in far-Western Europe.

Picture that hand scattering these people in one of the fastest-growing residential growth corridors in Australia and you will perhaps grasp something of what Craigieburn is about: this enigmatic suburb you either take a quick rubberneck glance at on your way to Canberra or Sydney, or whose existence you maybe consider as you board a train upon the Craigieburn line and wonder what poor souls have to ride this route all the way to the end.

Previously a land of sweeping plains, farms, and sheep runs, Craigieburn has evolved over the decades to become the suburban love child of Metricon and Lendlease. It embodies aspiration. The median house price is $650,000, and is where anyone and everyone can get their first taste of the great Australian dream. There is a distinct old and new Craigieburn: the former features classic brick-veneer homely residences, while the latter includes an impressive array of rendered and modernist mansions that wouldn’t look out of place in Toorak.

In 2010, I was living in Moonee Ponds and serving as an honorary chaplain to the Coburg Tigers VFL Club. Highgate Reserve in the less-developed northern region of Craigieburn, with its “MCG-sized oval” was a second home ground to the Tigers. The team travelled up here to play Gold Coast during that quasi-internship season they spent in the VFL. The ground was packed, primarily as NRL code-hopper Karmichael Hunt was pulling on the boots for the first time. Gold Coast were thrashed, and Coburg took in the gate earnings that day, so everyone was happy.

I mention this anecdote, as a central arterial road, Grand Boulevard, literally came to a gravelly stop next to the oval; there were no shops, few homes, no roundabouts, and I simply couldn’t imagine living in such an eerie place.

Fast forward to 2014, however, when I moved up here to take up a post at the local Anglican school for almost a decade: a young, low-fee, rapidly expanding educational centre that now boasts three connected campuses. The Melbourne Anglican Diocese purchased a historic sea-captain’s homestead and acreage that featured in the 1983 film Phar Lap with Tom Burlinson. Incidentally, my office was also originally located in the archaic coach house where the Toecutter gang tried to abduct Mel Gibson’s son in the first Mad Max film, but that is another story ...

We moved to a newer housing area called Highlands, which features a very agreeable man-made lake and a Saturday morning Parkrun around it. I decided that I probably lived in one of Australia’s most multicultural streets. In order, my neighbours were: Pakistani Muslims, Iraqi Christians, Turkish Alevis, Turkish Sunnis, Afghani Hazaras, Chaldean Catholics, Indian Sikhs, Punjabis and Hmongs, with a smattering of Anglos, Filipinos and Pacific Islanders in the multiethnic mix.

Craigieburn is part of the gargantuan 3064 postcode. Its population of over 65,000 in 2021 made it Australia’s second-largest suburb, after Point Cook. We are so big, in fact, that in 2020, we were declared special enough to have our own tailored lockdown. These were indeed dark days for many of the multi-generational abodes in the area, and the cutely named exercise of “remote learning” was somewhat strained in an area where two-thirds of residents speak a language other than English at home.

Remarkably, people largely get along up here, despite differences that might make folks retreat to their own cultural corners. What keeps the local police busy, I’m guessing, would-be burglaries and illegal dumping on vacant blocks; the former crime affecting my own family in 2019. The rubbish issue was even specifically addressed by a former mayor of the City of Hume in an impressive letter drop to all residents several years ago, pleading for us to use our five free visits to the Hume waste transfer station.

I get the impression that the councillors genuinely want this area to flourish and not merely exist. To that end, we are often treated to regular cultural festivals, which provide a convenient excuse to infuse the shared air with delicious aromas and legal fireworks. Speaking of fireworks, the best place in Victoria to stand and watch at midnight every new year is atop the local Mount Ridley lookout, a dormant volcanic hill peak that boasts killer views, killer Antarctic gales in winter and the occasional killer burnout after midnight when the moon is full.

We have a well-resourced library up here – actually, a Global Learning Centre – and both an aquatic centre and athletics track delightfully named Splash and Sprint, respectively. Sports lovers can also use the well-designed hockey ovals, a golf course, the recently refurbished basketball stadium courts and various skate parks, while the Hume Tennis Centre and its umpteen courts also provide an ideal location each year for international wheelchair matches.

A particular communal highlight is an erected cenotaph in the dutifully named Anzac Park, which draws the crowds in remembrance each April 25.

Leisurely strolls along the well-developed network of footpaths in the cool of the evening are a favourite pastime, as is visiting the moss-coloured behemoth on Saturday that is Bunnings Warehouse, a place I am yet to visit and leave only with what I originally came to buy.

There is also a massively nondescript building next to the train station, designed to be as uninteresting as humanly possible. Not many people have been into it, but we all have a vested interest in it: the Note Printing Australia factory that produces all our polymer bills and passports.

As alluded to earlier, you would never get away with hosting an atheist convention here. At the last census, just 14.8 per cent of us declared we had no religion, compared with 37.2 per cent for Greater Melbourne.

If there is one place that truly gathers the tribes on the weekend, it is Craigieburn Central, with its helpfully colour-coded quadrants, big retailers, speciality shops and every type of cuisine.

Like all growth corridor suburbs, however, it is often easier to get in than out. On weekdays, if you haven’t hit the exit road by 7am, then face the wrath of the destroyer of all commuter sweet dreams, the Hume Freeway. It desperately needs to be duplicated, but pity the council functionary who dares lay the first orange bollard and divert all traffic into a solitary lane.

As the suburb continues to absorb new Australians, there’s the question of what unites disparate people: a commitment to the country? The lure of a permanent address? A place of social peace? Opportunities for the younger generation that were denied to the older? The destiny of 3064 is truly multifaceted.

I’ve always felt that a suburb has truly “arrived” when it has developed trees growing among the residences. In that sense, both old and new Craigieburn have now been well and truly established.

But it’s not finished yet. As the landowners cash in and the excavators rumble, and homes, schools and businesses continue to multiply, the Craigieburn story is a case of onwards and upwards; or
perhaps more accurately, outwards and outwards.

Peter Waterhouse is a former teacher and sports chaplain who works as an Anglican school chaplain. He was also previously an Auskick and Little Athletics coach in Craigieburn.

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