My suburb’s confusing road feature separates the visitors from the locals

I sometimes wonder: how did I end up in my suburb when I grew up 50 kilometres to the west in Niddrie, and then 30 kilometres to the north-west in Greensborough?

Nor did I always live out in the suburbs – I also rented in St Kilda East and bought my first home in Richmond. (Back when low prices were guaranteed due to the Burnley abattoirs with their huge blowflies – “butcher’s budgerigars” – and a good supply of two-bedroom single-fronted workers’ cottages with outdoor bathrooms, and I do mean the whole bathroom.)

Not to mention interregnums in Kew and Ashburton – to accommodate a growing family – with an eye on the Camberwell High zone. But when we needed more space, the question arose: “Now where?”

As an animal welfare volunteer, I was taking long drives across the state delivering cats and dogs from dusty pounds to happier times on suburban couches, and was always on the lookout for a place to settle. One day, returning from Yarra Glen to our small triple-fronted cream brick veneer in Ashburton, I found myself in Kilsyth and Mooroolbark, and was reminded of the undeveloped and treed Greensborough of my teenage years. I started searching the area for our new home.

At one point during my search, hopelessly lost and trying to find Mooroolbark’s suburban centre, I chanced upon a large 1950s weatherboard home for sale in the foothills of Mount Dandenong. It had a pool room – instant appeal to two teenagers – and was on a third of an acre, which was perfect for adopted greyhounds who zoom for a few minutes and snooze the rest of the day away.

We moved to Mooroolbark in 2009 and started exploring our new home. It is about 37 kilometres east of Melbourne’s CBD, with an elevation of 93 metres and, at last count, had a population of 23,000. Many contributors to the Life in the ’Burbs series say outsiders have no idea where their suburb is, and Mooroolbark suffers from a similar obscurity.

My answer is to say that we are the second-last station on the Lilydale train line. As a transport route, it’s largely reliable, except for the occasional interruption due to a tree across the track. Nature is a frequent spoilsport in Mooroolbark – in 2021, we were left without power for three weeks after trees fell across electrical wires, which added insult to injury during the COVID-19 lockdown.

The appealing backdrop to the suburb is Mount Dandenong to the east, and the Great Dividing Range to the north, and the rich and varied birdlife (including the laughing kookaburra, king parrot and numerous other parrots) providing a soundscape that makes you question whether this really is suburbia.

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”.

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.

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.