I escaped my suburb on the edge. Now I’ve I found my way back
Idea
Updated ,first published
Updated ,first published
When I was young, my suburb seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. The kind of place you’ll have to escape from.
Today it still feels like you’re living on the edge of town, at Taylors Lakes. It’s one of the first residential visitors to cross the Calder Highway when they arrive in Melbourne, and one of their last glimpses of the suburbs before leaving the city behind. We’re just west of Melbourne Airport, close enough for planes taking off to be part of the background sky. Also filling the sky are the huge power transmission towers that pass through the suburb on their way to Ascot Vale and beyond.
Outsiders tend to stereotype Taylors Lakes as bland, car-dependent or culturally poor, a place you drive by rather than go. But if you stop by, you’ll find long-term residents watching trees, children, and houses grow together. It doesn’t have the same appeal as neighboring Keilor, with its village atmosphere and otherworldly heritage buildings, but it does have a more established feel than the sprawl of later developments.
My family moved here in the late 1990s when Taylors Lakes was at the end of the Sydenham line and they felt like it. But I was three years old and excited to have my own bedroom.
In many ways, I grew up next to suburbia. Taylors Lakes was first developed in the 1980s, at a time when Melbourne’s central suburbs were becoming outdated and slowly deindustrialised. We moved from Deer Park, my parents excited by the promise of a new house on a big block for the price of a rundown weatherboard closer.
In the early days there were very few houses and no fences (or trees), so our backyard consisted of the entire street. We were surrounded by vacant lots and pastures, and apart from the huge piles of rocks we climbed over, we could see the Calder highway and the Keilor Plains. The day they dynamited the rocks to make way for houses, the ground shook and I remember feeling like our playground had been stolen. The grasslands were full of spiders, snakes, frogs, and mice living around (and sometimes in) our home. My mom is very afraid of spiders, so we always knew when one got in.
On weekends I would wake up to the distant hum of V8s coming from Calder Park Raceway. Taylors Lakes was (and still is) a car-dependent place. It wasn’t easy to walk to the old Sydenham station as there were no footpaths yet. I spent a lot of time sitting in unbearable traffic near the “Maccas Roundabout” on the way to school. The roundabout is still there – opposite the old Taylors Lakes Shopping Center (which was once what I thought was Melbourne’s best Chinese restaurant) and I’m lucky enough to still sit in the same traffic, only this time with my own children in the backseat. A small bonus: while others complained about the traffic in Tulla, we had a “back route” through the Keilor market gardens that would get you to the airport in under 15 minutes.
You can tell how long someone has lived in Taylors Lakes by what they call the main road. For long-term travelers, this is the Keilor-Melton Road. Call it the Melton Highway and you declare yourself a newcomer. This road also separates the “old” side of the suburb to the south from the “new” side, which features wider streets and larger ’90s homes, a precursor to the McMansion.
I watched as tiny elm saplings grew into mature trees that now shade most of the streets of Taylors Lakes. The cars on those streets have also changed. In the blink of an eye, where child seats once were, there were L plates, then Ps. Falcons and Commodores were replaced by European luxury models, and many more classic cars remained safely tucked away in garages.
Like Taylors Hill, my suburb is named after pastoralist William Taylor, who owned land here and built Overnewton Castle near Keilor in 1849. The “lake” next to the highway is actually a dam tucked behind a large wedding venue on Taylors Creek. This is the center that people remember most about my suburb. Everyone in Melbourne’s west seems to have some sort of connection; Maybe they went to a wedding, a conference, or a school ceremony there.
Taylors Lakes doesn’t have a main street or much to see, unless you count the massive Watergardens shopping complex that juts into Taylors Creek. The suburb is more of a series of roads and estates, schools, parks and shops, evolving from open pastures into an established suburb. With the construction of Watergardens, King’s Road was copied, the giant junction at Kings Road was replaced by a motorway overpass; Sydenham station closed and was replaced by a modern station at Watergardens. We no longer see kangaroos under power towers, but part of this area has been turned into a popular dog park. It looks like progress is finally upon us at Taylors Lakes.
When I went to college, I moved to the inner and middle suburbs, which my family deliberately avoided; I replaced space and silence with trams and late night noise. Taylors Lakes and the family home became a haven.
Now that I’m an adult, my perspective has changed. Melbourne has continued to spread west towards Melton and Taylors Lakes looks like an established middle suburb by comparison. What once felt distant now feels well connected. Public transportation is frequently used by trains or buses. The new Metro Tunnel means we’ll be taking a train every 10 minutes. This is a big change from the days when I would take a two-hour bus ride home from school in Essendon. There are many shopping areas. Green space is a defining feature, with Brimbank Park and Organ Pipes National Park so close that it feels like an extension of the suburb.
The frustrations of my adolescence have largely been resolved with time and growth. Taylors Lakes stable; the blocks are generous and the streets are quiet. I moved back and now live in a neighboring suburb and raise a family not far from where I grew up. For a long time, I would frown when I told someone I lived in Taylors Lakes. These days, the answer is more of a checkmark.
What I once viewed as a fringe suburb now feels like a place that holds its own as we move around the city.
Aaron Magro is a historian, president of the Keilor Historical Society Inc. and councilor of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria.
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Aaron Magro is a historian, president of the Keilor Historical Society Inc. and councilor of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria.
