Happy Centenary Rowville!
On the 20 December 1905 the Rowville Post Office was officially opened with Nick Bergin, the local blacksmith, as postmaster. Nick had successfully applied to have a post office established and when asked the name of the destination for the incoming mail he decided to use the name of the area’s leading family (and Nick’s best customer) the Row family of Stamford Park. To “Row” Nick added “ville”, the French word for town, and so our district received its fourth but most distinctive name.
The general area in the early days of white settlement was known as Narree Narree Warren, an aboriginal term meaning “no good water” referring, it was believed, to the fact that for three months each summer the local creeks when the Reverend James Clow took up the Corhanwarrabul Run in 1838, it was not until Nick Bergin’s initiative in 1905 that Rowville as a separate entity was named.
From 1905 to the 1950s there was very little change in the Rowville landscape. The construction of the Army/POW camp in 1942 had brought a limited reticulated water supply to about as far as Timbertop Drive but when the camp was closed in 1946 all of its infrastructure was rapidly removed. In 1953 when Stewart Finn was trying to create the Rowville Cricket Club there were only 16 families in Rowville and in the first game only six of the players were Rowville residents.
The opening of the Seebeck, Stamford and Twin Views housing estates in the early 1960s saw a steady stream of new residents move out to the attractions of the open spaces that Rowville then offered. However, for many years the best way for these new residents to indicate to family and friends the location of their new living place was to say “we live near the Stamford Hotel”. Everybody in Melbourne, it seemed, knew where the Stamford Hotel was, but nobody had heard of Rowville.
The trickle of new residents in the 60s became a torrent from the 1970s and, as we all know, there is now very little undeveloped land remaining in a Rowville that has become a Melbourne suburb.
As this centenary year draws to a close I must pay a warm tribute to the Rowville Centenary Committee that, under the chairmanship of Cr Emanuele Cicchiello and with the full support of Knox City Council, has enthusiastically co-ordinated the many celebrations that have occurred throughout this special year in our history.
May the next century be a prosperous and happy one for all who live here.
Bryan Power