Know Your Place #2 - Eaglemont Dairy

Nearly 4000 people call Eaglemont home.  How much do you know about this area, its history, its people?

What matters to you about what stays, what goes in our neighbourhood as it inevitably evolves?

And just what is "neighbourhood character", and is it worth protecting?

Eaglemont Dairy

No physical evidence of our very own milk processing plant and milk brand exists today.

We know the site, we have the photographs, we know the name of the last milk round horse.

The last milko's horse in Melbourne was Rosie from the same Eaglemont dairy. Did the mural artist capture her image or just paint a generic cart horse?

At its height Gillies Eaglemont Dairy had 15 horses, all with individual stalls.

Milk was home delivered 7 days a week - but Sundays were dependent on football-playing milkmen not getting injured on Saturdays!

When we last published an article on Rosie it brought nostalgic responses from readers:

LIVING NEXT DOOR TO........ROSE!
John,

I enjoyed the piece on ‘Rose”.
I grew up sleeping next door to Rose, and even went on
one of her rounds helping to deliver the milk with my brother, who did a milk round while starting his own business. Rose certainly knew the round. Parked cars were sometimes her downfall as she often did not miss rear-vision mirrors. She would not have coped nowadays with parked cars, and was definitely the last milk-horse in Melbourne. (And it is Robina Road where they were stabled).

Jeff L

The Heidelberg Council allowed a milk processing and distribution business to be built outside the commercial zone of Eaglemont - jobs and investment trumped residential planning by-laws.

Residents nearby were canvassed and did not object.

Some horse-drawn deliveries were still taking place in 1982, and it was still trading as a dairy beyond 1985.