Important Sunbury Dates

Earliest residents were the Gunung-Willam-Balluk people, a clan of the Woiwurrung who named the locality “Korra Korracup”.

1802 – Matthews Flinders maps Port Phillip Bay.

1824 – Hume and Hovell expedition passes through the area.

1835 – John Batman climbs Sheoak HillS now Jackson’s Hill.

1836 – Pioneer George Evans settled at Emu Bottom. Evans was a founding father of Melbourne who arrived on the Enterprise in 1835 and became the first permanent settler.

1836 – Samuel and William Jackson arrive in the district and called the area Sunbury after Sunbury-on-Thames, Middlesex, England.

1850 – William John Turner Clarke granted Special Survey of 31,373 acres.

1851 – Sunbury village surveyed.

1859 – Railway reaches Sunbury.

1860 – Sunbury Court of Petty Sessions declared.

1866 – Shire of Bulla proclaimed.

1874 – The foundation stone at Rupertswood mansion was laid.

1906 – Town water supply established.

1909 – Electricity supply to the town replaced gas lighting.

1975 – Sunbury designated a ‘Satellite Town’.

1992 – Closure of Caloola, formerly the Sunbury Hospital for the Insane.

1994 – Victorian University Sunbury Campus on Jackson’s Hill opens on the former Asylum site.

1994 – Shire of Bulla merged with City of Broadmeadows to form the City of Hume.

1999 – Closure of Sunbury Primary School No.1002 and relocated to Jackson’s Hill.

2001 – Heritage Plaques were affixed to historic buildings, churches and bridges, beatured in the Sunbury Heritage Walks brochure.

2010 – Victoria University Sunbury Campus closed in Dec 2010.

2011 – Sunbury acknowledged 175 years of European settlement.