Oak Park

Oak Park, a residential suburb 11 km north of central Melbourne, is immediately south of Glenroy. Its western border is the Moonee Ponds Creek. It was gazetted as a suburb in 2003 and before then was part of Glenroy.

John Pascoe Fawkner acquired land in the Oak Park area in 1839 at a Government land sale. Consisting of 316 hectares, it ran eastwards from the Moonee Ponds Creek to today's Pascoe Vale. The Sydney Road (now Pascoe Vale Road), ran through the land. Between 1840 and 1855 Fawkner lived there, naming it Belle Vue of Grand View Park, near the Oak Park primary school. A stable in Oak Park Court is thought to date from Fawkner's occupation.

When the property was bought from Fawkner's widow in 1879 the new owner renamed it Oak Park. His heritage listed two storey mansion possibly incorporates Fawkner's original single storey brick house.

When the railway line went through the area in 1872 no railway station was provided at Oak Park. When the line was electrified in 1921 the stations were confined to Pascoe Vale and Glenroy, and the Oak Park station was built in the mid-1950s after housing came to the area.

Being without a railway station, housing subdivisions did not occur until after World War II. The 1950s and 1960s saw the area's quickest growth. The primary school was opened in 1954, the high school in 1960 and the Catholic primary school in 1961. Seedling oaks were planted in the high school's grounds, taken from trees on the Oak Park property. By 1970 the area was nearly filled with housing, although the Oak Park mansion had a 600 bird poultry shed in its grounds when it was sold that year.

There is a shopping centre near the railway station and two reserves with ovals at the Moonee Ponds Creek. In 1997 the Oak Park high school was closed, ending its role in a four campus secondary college which had served the Glenroy area. Oak Park primary school had 411 pupils in 2014.

Oak Park's census populations have been: