Sparks to Sunbury

We start the month at Sunbury station, which was in the final days of being a station only served by V/Line trains.

Upgraded as part of the Sunbury Electrification Project, the new overhead wires had been installed, but Metro Trains had yet to take over the operation of the rail service.

But at Diggers Rest station the toilets were locked up tight – a ‘closed due to staff shortage’ sign a forerunner of the complete abandonment of the station building when it was handed over to Metro.

The first electric trains carried passengers to Sunbury on Sunday 18 November 2012, with the country platforms at Southern Cross receiving ‘Sunbury trains depart from platform 11’ signage to redirect passengers who previously had to catch V/Line services.

However Sunbury passengers were still allowed to use V/Line trains to travel to Melbourne, as an exception to usual V/Line travel rules, which was withdrawn in 2015, only to be backflipped on soon after.

Forgotten trains

One warm autumn evening I captured a Hitachi train heading through Ascot Vale bound for Craigieburn.

It took until December 2013 until the last one was finally withdrawn from revenue service.

And on a hot Sunday afternoon I made my way to the dustbowl that was the old Rockbank station…

Waiting for sixty year old V/Line locomotive A62 to lead a 10 car long train of similarly aged carriages from Melbourne to Bacchus Marsh, ready to form two commuter trains the next morning back to Melbourne.

These now 70 year old locomotives were eventually retired from V/Line service, but the carriages are still in use today, including occasional trips to Shepparton, Warrnambool and Swan Hill thanks to incompetent V/Line management.

But one upside – Rockbank got a modern new station in 2019.

The Myki rollout drags on

My 10 years ago series keeps on bringing up the extended saga that was the Myki rollout, and this month is no different.

One morning I was greeted by every single Myki gate at Flagstaff station being completely dead, forcing passengers to trudge through the pair of remaining Metcard ‘Frankenbarrier’ gates.

Defective Myki readers onboard trams were an even more common sight – this one was stuck in a reboot loop, giving a stack trace from the open source ‘log4net‘ library.

But still the rollout pressed on – ‘Myki Mates’ deployed to CBD tram stops to assist passengers making the switch from Metcard.

And ‘Myki is the only ticket you can use from 29th December’ posters covered the public transport network.

Thankfully in the decade since these drams are mostly forgotten, as the system “just works”.

Ding ding on the trams

I paid a visit to Preston Workshops, where I found an aging W class tram parked outside the sheds.

The entire complex has since been redeveloped as New Preston Depot to run services on route 11, 86 and 96; but the W class trams haven’t been as lucky – they’ve just been dumped in a paddock at Newport Workshops.

I also wandered down to Ascot Vale for Stakes Day at Flemington Racecourse, and found a row of stabled trams at ‘Showgrounds Loop’, awaiting the flood of drunken racegoers wanting to kick on in the city.

Special trams continue to service major events at Flemington Racecourse and the Melbourne Showgrounds, but the service levels leave something to be desired.

Meanwhile on Sydney Road I found a pitiful scene – a high floor tram on route 19 stuck behind slow moving cars, fenced in by parked cars, a ‘dooring zone’ bike lane, and no platform stops.

The only difference today is you might find a low floor tram along Sydney Road – but with no platform stops on the 5.5 kilometre stretch between Brunswick Road and the Coburg North terminus, the service is just as inaccessible as ever.

And something different

Who remembers Melbourne Bike Share?

After years of little love from the public, it finally closed down in November 2019.

And finally, we close the month with a train ride on this dinky little train.

It’s running on the Kerrisdale Mountain Railway, a 2ft narrow gauge tourist railway running up a hill in the Tallarook Ranges outside Seymour.

Footnote

Here you can find the rest of my ‘photos from ten years ago‘ series.

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The confusion starts

In June 2021 a BP service station on the Western Freeway was reported as an exposure site.

New exposure site
BP Service Station- Westbound (outbound)
Address: 1789 Western Freeway, Truganina, VIC
Date: 13/07/2021
Time: 7:15am – 7:50am

Tier 1 – Get tested immediately and quarantine for 14 days from exposure #COVID19VIC

— VicExposureSiteBot (@ExposureSiteBot) July 17, 2021

But when you put the address into Google Maps, it shows that the service station is nowhere near Truganina – it’s north of the next suburb over, Ravenhall.

aha! so it's google maps that's wrong. pic.twitter.com/f6TRPurzJc

— ken tsang (@jxeeno) July 16, 2021

Yet Google Maps also lists the service station’s address as being in Truganina.

Google maps has it as truganina…? pic.twitter.com/3fd1U8N0JS

— Patrick Malone (@pattymalone2000) July 16, 2021

So what gives?

So where is Truganina?

To get a definitive answer on the suburb’s boundaries, I turned to the Victorian Register of Geographic Names. Turns out Truganina is a massive suburb, covering 56 square kilometres.

Stretching 15 kilometres from the Western Freeway, Rockbank station and the Ballarat railway line in the north.

Down to Hoppers Crossing and Williams Landing in the south – almost reaching the Princes Freeway and Werribee railway line.

So time to explore!

The southern end of Truganina is cookie cutter housing estates just like any other growth area of Melbourne.

The selling point being the (relatively!) low prices for land.

And V/Line trains to Southern Cross Station, which use the Regional Rail Link route opened in 2015.

Westbourne Grammar School also has a campus here, opened back in 1977 when the area was just paddocks.

But residential development continues creeping north over what was once grazing land.

Then we meet fields of tilt slab concrete warehouses, home to over 1,500 registered business, both large and small.

Then we reach the centre of ‘old’ Truganina – the local cemetery.

Located next door to a pony club.

Unlike Tarneit the only high ground is a handful of road-over-rail bridges, which provide a view of the Melbourne CBD, located 20 kilometres away to the east.

But it is massive warehouses that dominate the skyline of Truganina.

Towering over the railway lines.

The biggest being a pair of 43 metre tall automated cold storage facilities, capable of holding 225,000 pallets of frozen goods.

But hidden between them is something much smaller – the Truganina Munitions Reserve, established during the Second World War to store explosives in what was then an isolated area, but now abandoned and vandalised.

We now head out into the countryside.

A few farm houses still remain.

The roads now full of traffic, used by motorists taking a shortcut from the Western Freeway.

We skirt the massive rubbish tip located at Boral’s quarry in Ravenhall.

And find high voltage power lines bound for Geelong.

And some even bigger power lines bound for the Portland aluminium smelter.

Until we eventually reach the Ballarat railway line.

Here we find Truganina’s second front of urban development.

Moving south-east from Rockbank station.

With new houses taking shape.

On roads stained by red dirt.

Filling the paddocks between Mount Atkinson and Mount Cottrell.

Fifteen kilometres from where we started – no wonder nobody knows where Truganina is!

Footnote – border changes

Truganina falls between the City of Wyndham and City of Melton, but the name has a long history – the local post office opened on 12 June 1878, closed in 1895, reopened in 1902 and closed again in 1942.

In 1992 southern boundaries were formalised by the then-City of Werribee, with public consultation showing concern that the historic value of the Truganina, Tarneit and Mount Cottrell names may be lost if they were absorbed into neighbouring localities.

Victorian Government Gazette 1 July 1992

The boundaries for the southern half of Truganina again gazetted in 1998, and are still in place today.

City of Wyndham locality names and boundaries – Version 5.7 August 2021

However the northern boundaries in the City of Melton have seen some change, since Ravenhall and Truganina gazetted as suburbs in 2006.

Shire of Melton locality names and boundaries – Version 4.4a August 2006

The boundary being moved north in 2017, when the City of Melton created eleven new suburbs to cater for urban growth in formerly rural areas.

City of Melton locality names and boundaries – Version 4.6 February 2017

The changes were minor – but made Truganina even bigger!

The northern boundary will extend along the Western Freeway eastbound from Clarke Road to Troups Road North. The western boundary will align with Troups Road North southbound from the Western Freeway to Greigs Road. The boundary continues westbound along Greigs Road to Troups Road South, extending southbound along Troups Road South to Boundary Road.

The southern and eastern boundaries remain unchanged.

The area now being developed was added to Melbourne’s Urban Growth Boundary in 2010 following the passing of Amendment VC68.

Delivering Melbourne’s newest sustainable communities

So the failure to split out the northern half of Truganina in 2017 as a new suburb seems quite odd – it’s not like the new housing estates were a sudden change.

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While a competing property developer says “don’t pay a premium for facilities you may never use”.

You’ll find the water park at ‘Jubilee‘ estate – located on the very edge of Melbourne at Wyndham Vale.

Between Ballan Road and the Regional Rail Link tracks.

The $10 million water park features water slides, a splash zone for children, leisure pool and 25m lap pool.

While the cheaper ‘New Gardens‘ estate is in the dirtbowl between Rockbank and Melton.

They promote a ‘future train station’ on their masterplan.

But trains won’t be stopping there any time soon – so you’ll need to drive 3.5 kilometres down the road to the recently opened Cobblebank station instead.

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Going back to the gold rush

A check of land titles in the area suggested that the roads once connected.

And when I turned to the Melway, I got another clue – ‘Historic Display – Cobbled Roadway’.

I looked it up on the Victorian Heritage Database – H7822-2334:

The site consists of a representative sample of the most intact section of a former alignment of Greigs Road. This section of road is 120m long and 4m wide, although the cartilage of the listing is 20.5m wide to match the width of the delisted section. The track includes a slightly raised embankment, approximately 0.2m above the surrounding floodplain, cobbled road surface and road edging.

And learnt that Greigs Road dated back to the gold rush.

Prior to the 1850s inland travel was generally along cart tracks but, following the gold rushes, the road to Mount Macedon and Ballarat was a busy thoroughfare of diggers passing on their way to the goldfields and was one of Victoria’s most important inland roads.

Swamp land around Rockbank made the route along Greigs Road the most practical early route to the Ballarat and later Blackwood (Ballan) diggings.

The route followed the Greigs Road alignment (at that time known as Exford Road) and across Strathtulloh property to Toolern Creek, then south to the Werribee River crossing at Exford. From here it went along Exford Road to rejoin the main road at Ballan.

This section of road was once part of the Greigs Road alignment but, following realignment of Greigs Road, is now part of the Meskos Road reserve.

With a 2013 report on Rockbank’s cultural heritage detailing the early years of European settlement.

William J T Clarke obtained a Special Survey of 140 square miles with a right to depasture stock on an equivalent area of Crown Land in 1852.

The initial survey’s were conducted by Wedge and Darke in about 1838, defining the country into a regular grid of 640 acre blocks (one mile by 1 mile), except where provision had to be made for natural features and existing travelling routes. Natural features are rare in this district, Kororoit Creek providing the only relief, and the previous route identified on the early plans as a track ‘from Upper Werriby (sic) and Pentland Hills to Melbourne’ ran roughly parallel to the existing highway, but about a kilometre to the north.

When the Crown Survey was undertaken, two roads were reserved to Ballarat, branching at Hopkins Rd. One became the present highway through Melton while the other went south along Greigs Road through Exford and on to the Bacchus Marsh. This Greigs Road route appears to have been the main route in the 1860s, and its exceptional width of about 60 m or three chains, was intended to accommodate droving livestock.

A major change to Rockbank occurred in the 1880s when the North Western Railway was constructed linking Sunshine to Ballarat through Melton and Bacchus Marsh. This meant the creation of a railway reserve, through the existing Crown Allotments and eventually forcing the realignment of the eastern end of Greigs Road to avoid an extra level crossing.

But when was Greigs Road realigned?

I thought the removal of a level crossing would be easy to find among railway records, but this time around I came up blank.

My copy of “Weekly Notice Extracts 1894-1994” by Alan Jungwirth and Keith Lambert came up blank, as did a check of Andrew Waugh’s history of signalling on the Ballarat line.

Was the realignment linked to the construction of the nearby interchange between the Western Freeway and Hopkins Road in 2001?

The intersection of Hopkins Road (Melton-Werribee Road) with the Western Freeway at Rockbank was improved using Black Spot Program funds in 1989 and 1991, but a long term solution to the congestion and crashes at this location is an elevated interchange. The $13.1 million interchange is proceeding. A sum of $3.30 million will be spent in 2001-02.

The interchange is expected to improve dramatically the safety for drivers travelling between the highway and Hopkins Road – the main route from Melton to Werribee.

The project incorporates a highway overbridge and a series of on and off ramps to cater for interruption-free traffic movements through the intersection. Under the proposal, Hopkins Road traffic will be carried on an overpass above the Western Freeway, linking to Neales Road West. A roundabout will be built where this elevated roadway intersects Government Road and on-off ramps installed to the freeway. Existing accesses to the Western Freeway from Deanside Drive, Sinclairs Road and Hopkins Road will be closed.

Seems that it didn’t – a check of the 1999 Melway shows Greigs Road already avoids the level crossing.

And going back further in time in the Melway doesn’t give me an answer – Map 357 didn’t appear until 1993, and the road was still in the current alignment.

Switching to the less detailed Map 255, the 1987 Melway shows Greigs Road as a sealed road avoiding the railway.

When the year before it was a unsealed road crossing the railway line.

Which matches this 1962 aerial photo.

Which suggests that Greigs Road was moved onto the new alignment in 1986, as part of the reconstruction of a dirt track as a sealed road .

And to the future

Right now Greigs Road passes empty grassland.

But will soon be part of the massive ‘Mt Atkinson’ estate being developed by Stockland.

The excavators have moved in.

With more than 4000 houses to occupy the estate once completed in about 20 years time.

Complete with a new town centre that will relocate Greigs Road for a second time.

Melton and Melbourne – you’ll be connected by suburban sprawl soon enough!

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