No one knew where my suburb was. Then one store changed everything

The Age

30-06-2025

There is some dispute about the name of my suburb and its five siblings. Some say a cattle farmer who arrived in the area in the 1830s took the name from a property in Forfarshire, Scotland. Some say it derives from a Gaelic word for 'plenty'. Others point to evidence that it comes from an Aboriginal word for 'brackish water'.
But you might say that my suburb finally found its way onto the map due to a hi-fi store.
My family's journey here began as part of the wave of English and Irish migrants who settled in Melbourne's inner west after World War II. When their children – Boomers like me – came of age, many looked further west. Instead, we looked north, to Keilor East.
Whatever the exact origins of the name, there are now six Keilor suburbs – Keilor, Keilor East, Keilor Downs, Keilor Park, Keilor Lodge and Keilor North. (Some say Kee-la, but it's Kee-law, Queen's English). Keilor and its village centre was, and still is, the bee's knees because of its location and hills. Wedged between the Maribyrnong Valley and the market gardens along the Maribyrnong River, it reeked of history with its old bridge and heritage buildings. Horseshoe Bend holds magnificent views over Brimbank Park, Keilor and beyond.
We moved to Keilor East in 1972 before the birth of our first child; it was a promising area for young families, even if its undulating plains made it the poor relation to the village-like Keilor. The new residents of the area worked hard at factories across the industrial west and were proud of their backyard crops. The Yarraville and Williamstown that our family had left behind were mainly Anglo and the food bland – all meat and three veg – so it was a delight to be introduced to the flavours of Italian and Greek families who were only too keen to share their food and culture.
I'd known no such thing as broccoli, and spaghetti came from a can of Heinz. Keilor East meant exposure to the homemade passata that was like a religion in March and April, following the tomato season. Tomatoes were plentiful as most of the houses were modest and built on quarter-acre blocks with lots of space for planting, unlike the castles on subdivided blocks that you find today.
Hidden away between the Maribyrnong River, Steele Creek, and two freeways, Victorians at this time knew nothing about Keilor East. But that changed in 1974, when local man John Barbuto transplanted a hustle selling speakers and records from his garage to the nearby Centreway strip. That music store, with a name taken from Barbuto's initials, and handwritten price tags inspired by Barbuto's time working in local green grocers, was the original JB Hi-Fi.
Perhaps Melburnians still didn't know anything else about Keilor East, but they knew how to get to the wildly popular electronics shop. From the recently extended Calder freeway, turn right, left, then right, and you'd arrive at Centreway, our shopping strip surrounding a small park. You couldn't miss JB and its yellow signs, which soon spread out across three shops. After growing into the massive chain it is today, the original Keilor East store closed in 2011, and is now a restaurant, a laundromat and a takeaway, with a massage studio next door.