Keilor is a suburb in

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada * Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory * Victoria, Seychelle ...

, Australia, north-west of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the Cities of Brimbank and Hume local government areas. Keilor recorded a population of 5,906 at the 2021 census. Whilst most of the suburb is contained within the City of Brimbank, the northern section of Keilor, north of the

Calder Freeway Calder Highway is a rural highway in Australia, linking Mildura and the Victoria/New South Wales border to Bendigo, in North Central Victoria. South of Bendigo, where the former highway has been upgraded to freeway-standard, Calder Freeway li ...

, is within the City of Hume. This section of the suburb is located on the flood plain of the Maribyrnong River, and is home to many market gardens. The suburb is mainly residential with large industrial developments in adjacent suburbs. There are several shopping centres in the area including Keilor Shopping Centre and Watergardens Town Centre approximately 5 km away.

History

Keilor is a township in a basin of the Maribyrnong River. James Watson from

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...

was the first land-holder in the district and also gave the suburb its name. Keilor in the early times of the gold diggings was a noted camping place for bullock teams to and from the diggings at Castlemaine and Ballarat. Spanning the river was a wooden bridge which was replaced by an iron bridge in 1868. About 1 million years ago lava covered the previous landscape and created

basalt Basalt (; ) is an aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the surface of a rocky planet or moon. More than 90 ...

plains. Over time, the Maribyrnong River carved itself through the basalt plains.

Australian megafauna The term Australian megafauna refers to the megafauna in Australia during the Pleistocene Epoch. Most of these species became extinct during the latter half of the Pleistocene, and the roles of human and climatic factors in their extinction are ...

including 3-metre high

kangaroo Kangaroos are four marsupials from the family Macropodidae (macropods, meaning "large foot"). In common use the term is used to describe the largest species from this family, the red kangaroo, as well as the antilopine kangaroo, eastern ...

s and Diprotodons were found in the area until extinction about 13,000 years ago at the end of the

ice age An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and gre ...

. The Wurundjeri

Indigenous Australians Indigenous Australians or Australian First Nations are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples ...

inhabited the area for approximately 40,000 years. It is one of the oldest inhabited sites in Australia. In about 1838-39 the first European settlements were established by pastoralists James Watson and Alexander and John Hunter. James Watson is thought to have named their home station after a farm called Keillor in Forfarshire, Scotland, one of four which his father, Hugh Watson, tenanted. One of the earliest settlers in Keilor was William Taylor (1818–1903) who in 1849 bought 13,000 acres in the district and built a house which he called Overnewton. He transformed this building in 1859 into a Scottish Baronial mansion known today as Overnewton Castle. In the 1850s people would stopover at Keilor during their travels from Melbourne to the Bendigo goldfields. Keilor saw an influx of new settlers who intended to cash in on this new market. Keilor Post Office opened on 2 March 1854 and a general store, blacksmith, hotel, police station, courthouse and bridge were all built during this time. The area became an agricultural district and remained so until after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

when the suburb saw a rapid increase in population due to cheap land and the establishment of large industries in surrounding suburbs.

Sport

Keilor Football Club, an Australian Rules football team, competes in the Essendon District Football League. Golfers play at the Keilor Public Golf Course on the Calder Highway in the neighbouring suburb of Keilor North.

Facilities

Keilor Fire Station Keilor Fire Station is the first in a series of three fire stations in suburban Melbourne, Victoria designed by Edmond and Corrigan. It is located in Milleara Road, Keilor East. Founded in the late 1970s, Edmond and Corrigan are widely recognise ...

is a Melbourne suburban fire station.

Notable people

Mark Viduka Mark Antony Viduka ( ; born 9 October 1975) is an Australian retired football player who played as a centre forward. He captained the Australia national team to the Round of 16 at the 2006 FIFA World Cup which remains their best ever performance ...

, English Premier League player and former captain of the Australian National Football Team, grew up in Keilor. *

Dante Exum Dante Exum (born 13 July 1995) is an Australian professional basketball player for Partizan of the ABA League and the EuroLeague. He chose to bypass college and was ultimately selected by the Utah Jazz with the fifth overall pick in the 2014 N ...

, NBA basketball player, played for Keilor * Brendan O'Connor (politician), former federal minister, lives in Keilor.

References

External links