Global soul drives Dandenong through highs and lows

Sydney Morning Herald

02-05-2025

'As I was living in the UK, we could see some sort of prejudice,' says Steve Khan, who runs an Indian grocer. But in Dandenong 'we all have a sense – if I see another person, I know he too has migrated. We don't have that prejudice.'
Racial conflict is often fuelled by fears new immigrants will take jobs or resources. But rather than fear, many locals see hope of a new, better future. Migrant entrepreneurs line the streets.
Makonese tells me she felt she had to buy her shop because she could see so many other migrants buying up property.
'Walk into any of these shops and ask them about their story,' says Jim Memeti. 'They would have come here with nothing. And they have established themselves now.'
Memeti is a case in point. By 19 he had his own poultry shop – eventually he would own 20. Now he's the mayor. 'Australia has been a really good country for me and my family,' he says.
He is one of the rare mayors who does not complain about crowded local roads or infrastructure delivery. 'We're pretty happy, actually,' he says with a laugh. The city is well served for transport. The recently widened Monash Freeway runs straight into the city, and EastLink offers an orbital route. There is a large train and bus interchange.
'It's so close to everything,' says Louise Noy, who has sold pet goods at the market for 24 years. 'You've got your hospitals here. You've got all your services here. Why would you not want to go here?'
The ability to buy a slice of the Australian dream surrounded by a white picket fence is a major draw. Dandenong remains relatively affordable to rent and buy in compared with other nearby areas, but prices continue to grow. The average house price rose from $475,000 in 2016 to $734,000 in 2025. Average weekly rents have climbed more steeply, up from $395 in 2023 to $530 – an increase many can't afford. The city is now a hotspot for homelessness and rough sleeping.
A global suburb
Dandenong is a global suburb, so it is exposed to the tides and eddies of the global economy, for good and ill. The long postwar boom ended in the '70s, and the federal government's move to slash tariffs exposed local factories to competition from low-paid foreign workforces. International Harvester went broke, the GM factory closed in 1991 and Heinz in 2000.
Working-class families reliant on those jobs, who could once afford to buy homes and cars and whitegoods, found themselves pushed into poverty. Unemployment at Doveton, a social-housing estate that neighbours Dandenong, reached 19 per cent in 1991; poverty rates jumped from 10 per cent to 37 per cent.
This once comfortably middle-class suburb is now stuck in the poverty trap. Unemployment hit 21 per cent there in 2015, almost four times higher than the national average.
'In Doveton we have the third generation of a household that does not have a job,' says Gabrielle Williams, the state MP for Dandenong. 'That's extraordinarily concerning' and very hard to fix, she says.
Refugees face a different problem – many are prevented from working because of the conditions of their visas. Eventually, the kindness of friends and family runs out and many find themselves homeless. The local Asylum Seeker Resource Centre is directly supporting 160 refugees, and a further 400 people use its food bank.
Poverty can foment criminality. In the early '90s Dandenong became pockmarked by urban blight: dying retail strips, vacant buildings, smashed storefronts. Dandenong still has the 12th highest rate of offences per head of population of any Victorian postcode. Most locals say they don't feel safe walking around the suburb after dark. It is Melbourne's most disadvantaged local government area.
News Corp christened it the 'the worst place in Melbourne' in 2015. Then came media focus on gang violence and the Apex Gang, a group of young men based in Dandenong who were responsible for a wave of carjackings and burglaries across the state (despite the police saying no such gang existed).
Cameron Prins, local area police commander for Greater Dandenong, says: 'Certainly that is the history. But greater Dandenong is a safe place to live and to visit – and that's an important message the community need to understand.' But disadvantage is not the driver of local crime, he says. 'We look at it from the perspective of the community being a little bit more susceptible,' he says.
Steve Khan was one of those who lost his job in the early '90s recession. With few other options, he agreed to go into business with a family friend. Their first shop, on Mason Street, 'had been vacant for god knows how many years – not a single windowpane was intact', he says.
They sold Indian groceries and rented videos, across from another store selling Indian sweets. One store on a deserted street is a risk, but two is a sign of success. Soon, more Indian stores came, selling Punjab suits and sarees, biryanis, gulab jamun and mustard oil. By the late '90s, Little India was thriving (Khan is now vice president of the traders' association).
Their success seems to have sparked a new identity for the suburb. Little India now abuts a thriving Afghan precinct in Thomas Street, where nearly every trader would have once come as a refugee, the mayor says. An inaugural Ramadan Night Market in April was so successful the council plans to bring it back for a whole month next year.
At Shams Restaurant, my table is soon laden with chicken and lamb smoky from the charcoal grill, maunto dumplings stuffed with meat and spices, and cups of green tea sweetened with small fruit candies.
'In my community, I know lots of people, they are looking for shops to rent or to buy,' owner Murtaza Khoshiwal tells me over the food. 'They want to invest in Dandenong. Last week, one of my friends, he bought a house. I said, 'It's very old.' But he said, 'It does not matter because the location is good.''
Perhaps most important is that the state and federal governments embarked on a huge redevelopment program in 2006 to address urban decline and to try to turn Dandenong into a second CBD. Government and private investment totalling more than $1 billion has beautified the suburb's public spaces. The market and town hall have been redeveloped, there's a new theatre, community hub, library and public square, and a new $122.5 million pool is coming soon.
A private developer has been tapped to deliver a $600 million redevelopment, turning a slice of the suburb into a mixed-use development of apartments, retail and businesses – a process that requires demolishing Little India. Unemployment is now down to 6 per cent, only a couple of points higher than the national average.
That redevelopment has been slower than many stakeholders wanted, and remains incomplete. 'But my goodness, I wish we had more – the scale of investment in Dandenong outweighs almost anything else that's been done in Victoria,' says Dr Hayley Henderson, an Australian National University researcher who has studied Dandenong's rebuild. 'We haven't seen a comprehensive revitalisation program like it since.'
And that's the story of Dandenong, really. One of rebuilding, one of striving for something better.
Aman Najimi has lived in Dandenong for 25 years and runs the Sadaqat Halal Butcher on Thomas Street for 18. 'When we first came to this street, it was only one shop,' he says from behind the meat counter. 'People were scared to walk in this street. But now … all the shops are open. Since Afghan people came to this street, to Dandenong, everything has been good.'