The history of Brunswick, the 'most inspiring suburb in Australia'
- jeskarees
- Apr 16, 2024
- 3 min read
Brunswick is today one of Melbourne’s most vibrant inner-city suburbs, 5km north-west of the CBD. Ralph Rashid recently called it the most inspiring suburb in Australia, for its freedom, its diversity and its can-do attitude. It certainly has its advantages: in the 2021 census, household income was around 20% higher than the national average, and education attainment of a bachelor’s degree or above was more than double the national average. Its proximity to Melbourne means high demand for housing, and in 2022, the cost of Brunswick housing was 46% higher than the state-wide average.
Prior to British invasion, the area was cared for by the Wurrundjeri people for tens of thousands of years. The Wurundjeri lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and used natural resources to find food and craft goods. They were displaced by the arrival of British colonists to the area in 1836. More detail on the history the Wurndjeri can be found here.
The area around modern-day Brunswick was ‘sold’ by the British government at land sales in 1839 and 1840. Brunswick was named by early settler Thomas Wilkinson, whose ‘Brunswick Estate’ was bordered to the east by the Merri Creek, to the west by the narrow strip of land running north-south set aside for a thoroughfare (now Sydney Road), and to the north and south by thoroughfares that he named Victoria Street and Albert Street. (The fact that Sydney Road was surveyed to be only one chain wide has resulted in a common experience for travellers through Brunswick: trams and cars crawling in a single lane, often overtaken by pedestrians on the sidewalk!)
In 1851 the gold rush began and Brunswick became a stopping point on the road north. The huge injection of wealth from the Goldfields fuelled Melbourne’s rapid expansion in the 1860s and Brunswick was no exception, with land continuing to change hands among speculators and buildings beginning to crowd the major roads. Early industries included bluestone quarrying and brick-making, drawing on the natural clay on which Brunswick was situated.
The introduction of trains in 1884 and trams in 1887 connected Brunswick to Melbourne more effectively, and market gardens were established to provide fresh food to Melbourne until the 1920s.
The suburb steadily built its civic and community structures, including Council buildings, free library, Mechanics’ Institute, public baths and medical services. By 1900 Brunswick was home to 24 000 people. Infrastructure often came later: there was no sewerage system until 1910, and electricity supply commenced four years after that.
Further subdivision of land during the 1920s provided more housing. Brunswick was now home to significant communities of Italians, Greeks, Lebanese, Turkish and Irish families, making for a city that centred around food, family and – in the words of one local historian – Sydney Road, ‘the road of excess’.
Manufacturing declined as the key sector in Brunswick after 1945. Pollution controls, automation, and an influx of white-collar workers taking advantage of the area’s centrality meant that the brickworks and textiles industries had disappeared by 1960. Property prices increased and household size decreased, leading to a stabilisation of population to around 55 000 people.
Brunswick was a key centre of counterculture in the 1960s and 1970s, and the establishment of CERES on council land in 1982 has meant that there has consistently been a focus on sustainability, community and open space.
Housing in Brunswick
Brunswick contains notable examples of housing built during the Victorian, Federation, Inter-war, Post-War, and Modern periods. Major periods of expansion commenced in the 1860s and 1870s, leading to the construction of several grand residences in the Victorian style. Other popular housing styles associated with population growth include Edwardian/Federation styles from 1900 to 1910, and the California bungalows of the 1920s and 1930s - see our Taranaki Avenue project for a great story behind one of these. The Victorian Heritage Register contains seven residential properties in Brunswick, of which six are registered with the National Trust.
Further reading:
Barnes, Les, It happened in Brunswick, Brunswick City Council, 1987.
City of Moreland, City of Moreland: thematic history, 2010.
Folk-Scolaro, Francesca, The street names of Brunswick: the story behind the sign, Brunswick Community History Group, 2013.
Penrose, Helen (ed.), Brunswick: one history, many voices, City of Brunswick, 1994.
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