Brunswick and Coburg - the land, its people and industry

Over 40,000 years before European settlement the land between the Yarra and the Maribyrnong Rivers, today known as Brunswick, was vast native grasslands, strewn with gums, paperbarks, bottlebrush and tea- trees. This was the original landscape which provided water and food for the native Werundjeri-wirram people. The native name for this area is Iramoo.

Water was plentiful, with the Moonee Ponds Creek and floodplains which stretched across the Merri Creek. Food included a native root-vegetable called murnong, which resembled a carrot and tasted like turnip. Hunting was a main source of food. Native fauna included kangaroos, wallabies, emus, dingoes, bush-turkeys, snakes, waterfowl, native birds, possums and platypusses.

Eight chieftains sold Iramoo to John Batman, founder of Melbourne, in the Treaty of Iramoo. The Treaty of Iramoo was subsequently disallowed, because of the concept of Terra Nullius.

Squatters overran Iramoo, claiming all the main camping grounds of the white gumtree clan of the Werundjeri people. The members of the white gum tree clan were sent to Coranderrk station, an Aboriginal detention centre in Healesville, outside of Melbourne.

The land was deemed ideal for grazing and farming by the early European settlers. The original flora and fauna were lost as a result. Only the possum and water-rat remain. However, with replanting of native vegetation, native birds are returning to Iramoo.

The original owners of Coburg were the Woiworung people. The land of the Woiworung stretched far beyond today's boundaries of Coburg, to the waters of Port Phillip Bay, and included hunting grounds in nearby grasslands and ranges.

Robert Hoddle, who planned Melbourne, surveyed Coburg's lands in 1837. By 1839 Coburg was divided and and sold for farming. The village was named Pentridge in 1840.

The first settlers of Coburg grew wheat until Melbourne's unpredictable weather conditions, now notorious, became known. Industries in market gardening and bluestone quarrying followed. Convicts worked in the quarries and laboured to make the Sydney Road. Around this time, in 1850, villagers requested that the area be named Coburg.

In the 1920s Coburg became the fastest growing area in Melbourne. Three houses were completed every day and residents enjoyed a higher than average home-ownership rate.

Knitting mills were introduced in the '20s which tided Coburgites through the Great Depression on the 1930s. Having survived the Depression better than other working class suburbs of Melbourne, Coburg experienced a second housing boom in 1945 when immigrants settled from Europe, and much later from Asia.

Brunswick and Coburg today

Brunswick and Coburg share much of the same history and today most of this area is joined both by local and state government boundaries. Moreland City Council covers the suburbs of Brunswick, Coburg and what was southern Broadmeadows. The state government electorate of Coburg includes: Coburg, parts of Brunswick, Pascoe Vale and a small part of Preston.

Coburg is known for its diverse range of people coming from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds. With its diverse people come diverse shops, food, industry and arts. Famous for its ethnic flavour is Sydney Road which starts in Brunswick and joins the Hume Highway all the way to Sydney. Sydney Rd is studded with Turkish, Greek, Italian and Spanish restaurants and cafes, clothing factory outlets with outrageous bargains, fruit shops, grocers and a great deal of shouting, traffic and carrying on. Even the pubs play ethnic music and sell coffee and snacks.

Coburg is also known for its arts. Immigrants from Europe and Asia Minor brought, among other things, a great breadth of music and folk art.