Sep 15, 2023 2 min read

Know Your Place #9 Eaglemont & Ivanhoe

Protect our heritage, retain our neighbourhood character.

Bell Street now; coming to your street next? Social housing is good - so is the Ivanhoe, East Ivanhoe and Eaglemont neighbourhood character that we have collectively created over 150 years, and love now.

The astute correspondent to this august chronicle, one Nilss of Innsbruck, once lived in Oldenwald Road Eaglemont.

Should a boy, as is the habit of boys, have climbed a convenient tree or onto the house roof to gain a better vantage point to better survey his 1970s domain, he could look westward toward Ivanhoe, a mile or so distant.

Ivanhoe from Eaglemont, thought to be around 1920, with the Maltravers Road and Ashby Grove junction mid-ground.

A boy might imagine the past of this realm; a boy might try to imagine its future.

Eaglemont from Ivanhoe, thought to be 1920s. Ravenswood to the right, the Eaglemont sign at the tree-line top left.

Plenty of land, plenty of room for parks, playgrounds, a community hall etc - if only some foresight was shown.

Skip forward a 100 years from these photos and we have the prospect of the era of family homes on individual blocks of land - roses & lawn in front, fruit trees, chook shed and clothes line out back - ending, as 5 story multiple occupancy soul-less dwelling blocks intrude.

The Righi Reserve circled - high rise will no longer identify just the CBD.

Our community is still fighting for parks, playgrounds, a community hall or its modern equivalent.

The last public space bought by your local government with your rates was The Righi Reserve - a single house block - in 1940.

The Heidelberg Council promised "priority" purchase local park (1980 vintage) for Locksley Road is yet to materialise.

Pre-European elevated woodland becomes grazed farmland becomes comfortable, genteel suburbia becomes any other overcrowded multi-storied residential suburb residents aspire to flee from.

But where will the desired comfortable, genteel suburbs be?

Hobart, Launceston, Adelaide, Auckland - maybe Ballarat or Bendigo or Wangaratta or Daylesford?

Not Melbourne for much longer.

Presently Banyule Council is reviewing its Heritage Strategy. This is a planning & zoning device to lay out for VCAT & the courts the obstacle course that developers must negotiate (oops, best say navigate) to have their avaricious way with our history and heritage.

Different things history and heritage I am told. Heritage is a still-existing artefact.

We all need to step up and act while our heritage of bungalows, verandahs, rose gardens, gravel driveways and woven wire front fences survives.