Just where the name “Mooroolbark” came from and what it means is disputed. It was popularly believed to be an Indigenous word for “red earth” or “red bark”, and there’s a Red Earth Community Park close to the town centre. An alternative view is that the Wurundjeri people actually used the term Mooroolbik for the area, with “moorool” meaning great water and “bik” meaning place. And then a third view suggests it means “the place where the wide waters meet”.
Loading
However, we also have the problem of spelling and pronunciation. Every time I give my address, I have to carefully spell out the suburb. I’ve heard it misidentified as Moorabool (north-west of Geelong) and Mooloolaba (in Queensland).
Some call us Mooroolbarkians, but as a dog lover, I think the local soccer team are onto something in calling themselves “the Barkers”. The right way to say it is to enunciate your way through all three syllables, but it has to be said quickly.
When we first made the move, my older son called it “Middle-of-Nowhere” rather than “Moor-ool-bark”; in the years since, my younger son has happily made the area his home with his partner, now his wife, and my older son has come around, irrespective of how the name is pronounced.
Mooroolbark is in some ways a microcosm of Victoria. The average age here is 37 – statewide, it’s 38. We have similar rates of marriage and employment. But there are areas where we significantly differ. Census figures show we have much lower rates of tertiary education (uni graduates are missing an opportunity out here!), and we’re less diverse. However, we do have a large community from Myanmar.
Premiership captain and Brownlow medallist Sam Mitchell grew up here, but to me, our most famous resident was landscape designer Edna Walling, who transformed Australian gardening in the 20th century. She designed hundreds of gardens across Australia, including for the likes of Elizabeth Murdoch, Frank Packer and Nellie Melba, and wrote numerous books and columns, but it all started when she bought eight hectares in Mooroolbark in the early 1920s and developed Bickleigh Vale – her vision of an English village in Australia.
Loading
You can still find her creations in the homes and gardens of 31 surviving properties, 17 heritage-listed, on the narrow, wild-looking streets at the bottom of the Cardigan Road hill. Many of her little cottages under the trees have been expanded to create quite substantial properties and all are privately owned, with the occasional open garden allowing admirers to witness her vision.
Apart from Bickleigh Vale, many of the gardens she designed have been lost. However, even without anyone being aware of Walling, many of today’s gardens still carry her inspiration, featuring plants she commonly used, including rhododendrons, magnolia, crepe myrtle, silver birch, wisteria and eucalypts, along with features such as stone paving and garden “rooms”.
Mooroolbark’s innovation didn’t stop with Walling. Mooroolbark police created the first Blue Light Disco (held in nearby Kilsyth) to entertain the hordes of bored teenagers in 1976. Nowadays, they have all the conveniences of modern suburbia with the nearby Chirnside Park Shopping Centre.
Less successful is Mooroolbark Terrace, which should be a vibrant mini-retail hub, but is a ghost town. Those who say it is the worst shopping centre in Melbourne overlook that very little shopping actually happens there. It’s good to see reports that a long stand-off at the site may be ending and Woolies might move in.
Perhaps the most unusual innovation you’ll find in my suburb is the Mooroolbark Five Ways – a complicated series of three roundabouts that confuses both visitors and locals alike. They were designed in the 1960s to fix an intersection where the parish’s original five major tracks met without resorting to traffic lights, as happened with Camberwell Junction around the same time.
Perhaps you’re a real local when you can approach the Five Ways without trepidation – it certainly took me long enough! Fortuitously, the Mooroolbark Police Station is located at the first roundabout as you head towards the city, encouraging drivers to be far more careful in their approach than they might be without such overt supervision.
While Mooroolbark might seem a distant place to some, it’s a matter of perspective. With easy access to the likes of Healesville Sanctuary, Yarra Glen’s wineries and the brilliant TarraWarra museum, it balances comfortable suburbia and cultural experiences. After a lifetime living across all parts of the city, I’m satisfied that we found the place that is right for us with a mini-tree change that didn’t even require us to leave Melbourne.
Linda Skinner has been a resident of Mooroolbark since 2009.
