I couldn't imagine living in such an eerie area. But my suburb is difficult to leave

The Age

2 days ago

Imagine, if you will, a hand of God, in addition to assisting Maradona to win the World Cup for Argentina in 1986, coming down from heaven and scooping up a swathe of humanity from the Asian subcontinent in a north-westerly direction over Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and then a final quick dip in far-Western Europe.
Picture that hand scattering these people in one of the fastest-growing residential growth corridors in Australia and you will perhaps grasp something of what Craigieburn is about: this enigmatic suburb you either take a quick rubberneck glance at on your way to Canberra or Sydney, or whose existence you maybe consider as you board a train upon the Craigieburn line and wonder what poor souls have to ride this route all the way to the end.
Previously a land of sweeping plains, farms, and sheep runs, Craigieburn has evolved over the decades to become the suburban love child of Metricon and Lendlease. It embodies aspiration. The median house price is $650,000, and is where anyone and everyone can get their first taste of the great Australian dream. There is a distinct old and new Craigieburn: the former features classic brick-veneer homely residences, while the latter includes an impressive array of rendered and modernist mansions that wouldn't look out of place in Toorak.
In 2010, I was living in Moonee Ponds and serving as an honorary chaplain to the Coburg Tigers VFL Club. Highgate Reserve in the less-developed northern region of Craigieburn, with its 'MCG-sized oval' was a second home ground to the Tigers. The team travelled up here to play Gold Coast during that quasi-internship season they spent in the VFL. The ground was packed, primarily as NRL code-hopper Karmichael Hunt was pulling on the boots for the first time. Gold Coast were thrashed, and Coburg took in the gate earnings that day, so everyone was happy.
I mention this anecdote, as a central arterial road, Grand Boulevard, literally came to a gravelly stop next to the oval; there were no shops, few homes, no roundabouts, and I simply couldn't imagine living in such an eerie place.
Fast forward to 2014, however, when I moved up here to take up a post at the local Anglican school for almost a decade: a young, low-fee, rapidly expanding educational centre that now boasts three connected campuses. The Melbourne Anglican Diocese purchased a historic sea-captain's homestead and acreage that featured in the 1983 film Phar Lap with Tom Burlinson. Incidentally, my office was also originally located in the archaic coach house where the Toecutter gang tried to abduct Mel Gibson's son in the first Mad Max film, but that is another story ...
We moved to a newer housing area called Highlands, which features a very agreeable man-made lake and a Saturday morning Parkrun around it. I decided that I probably lived in one of Australia's most multicultural streets. In order, my neighbours were: Pakistani Muslims, Iraqi Christians, Turkish Alevis, Turkish Sunnis, Afghani Hazaras, Chaldean Catholics, Indian Sikhs, Punjabis and Hmongs, with a smattering of Anglos, Filipinos and Pacific Islanders in the multiethnic mix.
Craigieburn is part of the gargantuan 3064 postcode. Its population of over 65,000 in 2021 made it Australia's second-largest suburb, after Point Cook. We are so big, in fact, that in 2020, we were declared special enough to have our own tailored lockdown. These were indeed dark days for many of the multi-generational abodes in the area, and the cutely named exercise of 'remote learning' was somewhat strained in an area where two-thirds of residents speak a language other than English at home.