City of Darebin Heritage Study Volume 1 Draft Thematic

DAREBIN HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 2This was the major period of urban expansion for Reservoir when most of the remainingfarmland was converted into housing estates, including some large Housing Commission ofVictoria estates in the east and north. Between 1949 and 1954, 2,500 new private houses werebuilt in Preston (Carroll & Rule, 1985:189) in addition to the thousands of HousingCommission houses outlined below. In this period an industrial precinct was also commencedin the north west of Reservoir, and the Broadway shopping centre developed. In the northernpart of Reservoir new residential development is still taking place on land formerly used forpsychiatric institutions.As mentioned in Chapter 2 a large number of immigrants from Britain and continental Europesettled in the area, to take up the plentiful jobs in the local factories. They were followed byfollowed by people from the Middle East and Asia, who established new places of worship andcultural institutions.Desmond Jervis moved to Keon Park in 1946, when it was ‘a fully country area, with dairyfarming’.They were just starting to build houses when we came here. … It was pretty constant from about1949, and started to fill in. All those original neighbours they’ve gone now, most of them, butthey all started to come in around the same time after the war. The nearest shop was in EppingRd, or High St, two-thirds of the way to Reservoir. There was a grocer’s shop, a hairdresser’s anda milk bar. (Jones 1994: 93-6)As noted in Chapter 3 train travel was made more convenient in 1959 with the duplication ofthe line between Reservoir to Lalor and in 1963 when the long stretch of line betweenReservoir and Keon Park was broken by the new Ruthven Station (Carroll & Rule, 1985:143).However, as people began purchasing cars they were no longer tied to public transport routesand suburban development moved out beyond the tramlines into northern Reservoir aroundEdwardes Lake and along Cheddar Road. Here the brick veneer houses set in neat gardens onquarter acre blocks continue to express the ‘Australian dream’ already encapsulated in Preston’sstreets.Meeting post-war housing shortagesHowe (1988:69) notes that there was an acute housing shortage in Victoria at the end ofWorld War Two and well into the 1950s. This shortage was caused by a number of factors thatextended back to the 1920s and included the curtailment of housing construction during the1930s depression, the failure of the building industry to make up the shortfall of the late1930s, and the restrictions on housing construction enforced by the Commonwealth duringWorld War Two. Victoria’s high rate of post-World War Two population growth, the largestof all Australian states and a shortage of building materials compounded the problem (Howe,1988:70).Faced with this dilemma the Commission and other government agencies involved in theprovision of housing sought solutions to the crisis. For the Commission this involvedconcentrating on providing low-cost housing for ‘as many families in as many centres as fundsand materials would allow’ (Howe, 1988:69). The Commission restricted its slum reclamationprograms and for the decade after the war the Commission devoted all available funds to theconstruction of houses and flats. During 1945-60 the Commission constructed approximately15% of all units completed in Victoria.To meet the housing shortage the Commission developed methods for producing low-cost prefabricatedhousing. One project involved the importation of 2,700 prefabricated timber housesin an attempt to accelerate the rate of construction. An estate of houses provided by ThermoInsulated Units London was erected at East Reservoir in the late 1940s.76