Chadstone

Chadstone, a residential suburb 13 km south-east of central Melbourne, is best known for having metropolitan Melbourne's largest super regional shopping centre. (Highpoint, Maribyrnong, is the other super regional centre.)

The name comes from Chadstone Road, which was laid out in 1912-13 in Malvern East. The road name probably came from the Chadstone church, north of Malvern Hills, England. The stone church came about by St Chad ordering the seventh century King Wulf to build a stone church to expiate his guilt for murdering his two Christian sons.

Boundaries

Chadstone was an early postwar suburb bounded by Belgrave Road, Dandenong Road, Warrigal Road and Gardiners Creek. Before being named Chadstone it was known as Carnegie North. Because of changes to postcode boundaries ‘Chadstone’ doubled in area by extension east of Warrigal Road to Huntingdale Road by the early 1970s. By the 1990s the Chadstone postcode was restricted to east of Warrigal Road, absorbing areas previously better known as Holmesglen and Jordanville. The original Chadstone was thus put in the Malvern East postcode, satisfying many residents who preferred the cachet of Malvern being applied to their houses, with implications for improved values.

Settlement

The railway line was extended along Chadstone's northern edge in 1929-30, and there was land subdivision on its western side (near where the unsuccessful Outer Circle Railway had run), and in the south-eastern corner near the original Oakleigh township. In the middle of all this, however, the Convent of the Good Shepherd (1883) held extensive paddocks on which cattle grazed until the mid-1950s. There were also a Catholic primary school and a teachers’ college.

As the western subdivision filled with postwar housing a primary school was opened in 1953, and by the mid-1950s house construction was occurring east of Warrigal Road in the Jordanville Housing Commission areas.

Drive-in shopping

The Myer department store, Melbourne, undertook overseas studies of shopping trends and by 1953 Kenneth Myer was convinced that retailing's future lay in the American style of drive-in shopping centres. Myer first acquired land well out of Melbourne at Burwood East, but advice from the American Larry Smith Organisation concluded that the optimal growth area was in the south-eastern suburbs. The Convent of the Good Shepherd was positioned on a green fields site that had the added advantage of being surrounded by a middle class catchment with a propensity for family shopping. Myer purchased the Convent's open land and in September 1960 opened the shopping centre with 33,000 square metres of floor space. In 1983 the Chadstone shopping centre was purchased by the Gandel Group, a cinema complex was added in 1985 and by 1996 it had 94,000 square metres of floor space. It had a department store, two discount department stores and 325 other shops. Expansion involved acquisition of the convent and St Anthony's school.

Chadstone shopping centre is styled as Melbourne’s fashion capital, and in 2011 had about 530 outlets. Plans were afoot for further expansion. Once a place of religious worship, the Good Shepherd’s rolling acres are dedicated to mammon.

Suburb

On a local suburban scale the Chadstone high school was opened in 1962, and a neighbourhood shopping centre in Chadstone has shown how a local centre satisfies residents' shopping needs when it offers convenience over a long walk to the car park at the super regional centre.

The remaining Catholic institution, Christ College, became a campus of the Australian Catholic University from 1991 to 2000. By the early 1990s Chadstone had completed a cycle of postwar family growth, and the high school was closed in 1991.

Chadstone, east of Warrigal Road, is bisected by the South Eastern Arterial Road. Its northern and southern boundaries are the railway line and the Scotchmans Creek linear park and public golf course. It has a campus of Salesian college, (1956) built on land donated by Louise Moroney, a descendent of one of Oakleigh’s first settlers. Moroney’s Hill was once a well known landmark for unsupervised play and motorbike scrambles. There are also a Catholic primary school (1955), and a TAFE energy training centre on a former SEC linesmens’ school.

When part of Chadstone was Holmesglen a prominent landmark at the corner of Warrigal and Waverley Roads was the Nicholas Aspro factory (1957). The site is now a drive-in shopping and services centre. East of there, at the corner of Waverley and Huntingdale Roads there was Waverley high school (1956). It too, has gone, closing in 1996.

Chadstone’s census populations have been:

At the 2011 census there were significant numbers of residents from overseas: