Some residents refer to Blackburn as a suburban oasis. A slice of paradise, where you wake up to the laugh of kookaburras and the smell of gum leaves.
Efforts since the 1960s to plant native trees and destroy weeds have paid off – in some corners, there’s a distinct feeling of being in the bush here, 17 kilometres east of Melbourne’s CBD.
“I love the area. It’s like the country, but you’re close to all the facilities,” said long-time resident Rob Weiss, who lives in the heavily treed, full-of-birdlife series of streets called the Bellbird area, which is less than one kilometre south of Blackburn railway station.
“When you come home at night, it’s like walking into paradise. It’s fantastic.”
Locals also praise the village feel of Blackburn’s main strip of mostly one- and two-storey shops in South Parade, opposite the station.
But for how long? Change is looming now that the state government has pinpointed this relatively low-rise and low-key suburb in its citywide push for denser, higher-rise housing.
“There’s a feeling of uncertainty,” said Weiss. “And some people are catastrophising, and saying the whole place is going to be destroyed.
“I personally don’t think that. But it could still have some dramatic effects.”
The state government has earmarked Blackburn to be among its next tranche of 25 suburbs that will have activity centres, aka “train and tram zones”.
Public transport users near Blackburn’s low-rise South Parade shops.Credit: Joe Armao
The City of Whitehorse, which includes suburbs like Blackburn, Box Hill, Burwood and Mitcham, has been set a target of creating 76,500 new homes to help ease the housing crisis.
While details for Blackburn’s activity centre aren’t out yet, indications – based on the recently announced 25 suburbs in the scheme – are that buildings of up to 16 storeys will be allowed in areas closest to trains.
And townhouses and low-rise apartment blocks are permitted in a wider footprint around these hubs.
Referring to the Bellbird area, Weiss believes the new planning regime “if it allows higher-density developments here, will basically destroy the ambience of the whole place”.
He said the current height limit of houses in his area was two storeys, but he feared it could go to up to six storeys.
Buildings could now cover up to 25 per cent of a block, “which allows the rest for trees, but this could increase to buildings taking up most of the block”, he said.
Local volunteer Anne Payne has helped restore Blackburn Lake Sanctuary since the late 1960s.Credit: Joe Armao
“We recognise that there is need for new housing, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of the existing dense canopy cover, when the government is trying to increase canopy,” Weiss said.
Anne Payne, who since 1968 has lived in Central Road east of the station, opposite the 30-hectare Blackburn Lake Sanctuary bush park, reckons a house like hers – single-storey, 1940s weatherboard on a big block – could be demolished in the future and units built on the land under the new rules.
“It’s really sad,” she said. “I guess we won’t be here to see it, but our children will.”
Payne and her husband, Ian, have volunteered for more than 50 years to preserve the sanctuary, a wildlife haven that was regenerated from farmland.
“I see a beautiful bushland area that’s so precarious, in the middle of suburbia,” Payne said.
A kookaburra resident of the Bellbird area of Blackburn.Credit: Joe Armao
The sanctuary was protected, but the greenery amid housing around it was at risk, she said.
“The housing around the area that should be the corridor for birdlife is becoming more and more concrete,” Payne said.
Payne said “a lot of tree canopy” had already been lost “and the council’s and residents’ ability to change that, or have any say in that, is diminishing rapidly with the new housing policies”.
Payne, a member of Whitehorse Historical Society, said that before European settlement, Indigenous people had moved through the area seasonally.
In 1889, housing developers dammed Gardiners Creek to create Blackburn Lake to irrigate orchards and farms.
The coming of the early coach route from Melbourne to Lilydale along Whitehorse Road then the railway line in 1882 led to shops and houses being built, and Blackburn Lake became a popular picnic destination.
Frederick McCubbin painted classic artworks including Bush Idyll beside the lake.
Payne said there was a surge in new housing after World War II. In the 1960s, “there was a big drive to have bushland settings and to try and grow indigenous plants” – not just in public parks but in the yards of houses.
The Blackburn and District Tree Preservation Society, which Payne joined in 1969, and of which she is now secretary, lobbied council to plant native trees along median strips, and members did their own planting.
Payne, who with Ian raised three daughters in Blackburn, loved how they could walk 400 metres from her house in Central Road to the South Parade shops.
In the 1970s, there were two fruit shops, three butchers, three milk bars, a Supa Valu supermarket, a shoe shop, baby-wear shop, women’s clothing shop, the Blue Moon bakery, three banks and Raftis fuel merchants.
“My girls would say, ‘Mum, when we go down to the shops, you’re not to talk to anyone’. Because everyone knew each other.”
Today, there is one milk bar, no supermarket, no banks, lots of eateries, plus real estate agents, gift shops, a chemist, a newsagent and one chain store – a Subway.
However, the strip has “always been referred to as Blackburn village” and Payne still runs into people she knows.
Long-term business owner Cortney Wise, owner of Pride Lane hairdressing salon in South Parade, also has serious concerns about the government’s activity centre plans.
“I feel like it’s going to completely change the landscape of Blackburn, in a negative way,” Wise said.
Wise’s shop has been a hairdresser for at least 60 years. Wise has owned the salon for 11 years, and her mother, Kerryn Pride, ran it for 11 years previously.
Hairdresser Cortney Wise, owner of Pride Lane salon, is concerned about future development of Blackburn.Credit: Eddie Jim
Wise said she, and many of her clients were “very scared, very worried” about the new plans.
She feared she would have to close the salon, and that outlets like the two-storey shop she rented would make way for 20-storey buildings. Taxes could soar due to re-zoning and redevelopment and current tenants would be priced out.
Wise said that while areas near Blackburn station needed an upgrade, the “activity centre” as she understood it was not the answer.
Richard Welch, the Liberal member for the North-Eastern Metropolitan Region, has started a Save Blackburn campaign.Credit: Joe Armao
Wise feels that the state government has put an arbitrary “stamp” on locations around Melbourne such as this, “without consideration for Blackburn’s unique identity”.
On Wise’s salon wall, there is a poster saying Save Blackburn: No Activity Centre. It is authorised by Richard Welch, the Liberal upper house member for the North-Eastern Metropolitan Region.
Welch, whose office is in Blackburn, believes there will be up to 20-storey towers built near Blackburn station, creating “canyon” and wind-tunnel effects, and that further from the station, six-storey apartment blocks will replace family homes.
Welch’s campaign website, inviting comments he will pass on to parliament, has had 3000 responses.
Young nature lovers at Blackburn Lake Sanctuary.Credit: Joe Armao
He said “the overwhelming response” was that people didn’t want this level of high-rise or high-density housing, for reasons ranging from insufficient parking to mature trees being felled due to developers building-out to land boundaries.
He said “moderate and proportionate development” near the station would be more sensible, meaning three- to six-storey buildings, rather than “overwhelming” the area.
Welch said businesses would be forced out, due to rezoning that raised building values, triggering windfall tax gainsfor the government. Landlords wouldl either have to sell to developers, or be forced to raise rents.
Welch said Blackburn was known for its pleasant lifestyle. “People choose this area because the want to live in an environment like this. This will radically change the equilibrium.”
But the Labor state member for Box Hill, Paul Hamer said the Liberals were running a scare campaign.
“Consultation will open soon for the Blackburn train and tram zone, and I encourage everyone in Blackburn to have their say,” Hamer said.
“Planning Minister Sonya Kilkenny recently joined me for a local walk in Blackburn with a representative of the Blackburn Residents Action Group for the minister to see the qualities that make Blackburn unique.”
Referring to the Bellbird area, which currently has council landscape protection controls, Hamer said: “Landscape overlays that apply south of the station will continue to apply under any possible planning changes that may be considered as part of the program.
“Liberal scare campaigns are just that and are not based on fact,” Hamer said.
According to the state government, the first round of consultation for the next 25 activity centres, including Blackburn, will open in the coming months.
Feedback from this round would inform the development of draft maps, including draft heights and boundaries, which will go back to the community for further input.
A government spokesperson said it would “work closely with the community on our plan to deliver more homes where we need them most”.
“We are building more homes in Blackburn because it is well-connected to public transport – with the Lilydale Line level crossing-free, and Belgrave and Lilydale lines running services every five minutes during peak times.
“Too many people are locked out of suburbs where they grew up or want to live, and we’re on their side – that’s why we’ve introduced bold reforms to boost housing supply in areas where Victorians have been locked out for far too long.”
Kieran Simpson, an independent City of Whitehorse councillor for Cootamundra ward, which covers Blackburn, and who is a Labor Party member, said: “My position is that we need to wait and see what the plans say.”
Simpson acknowledged that some people were fearful, however, he said: “I believe that’s because there is a narrative being promulgated at the moment that’s designed to scare people.”
City of Whitehorse councillor Kieran Simpson says he doesn’t believe there will be 20-storey buildings in Blackburn.Credit: Joe Armao
He said Box Hill’s development “isn’t a comparison to what we’re going to get, due to different zoning” and he didn’t see Blackburn as having the same level of density as Box Hill in future.
“Some residents are opposed to any densification, and I respect their point of view,” he said. “I cannot deny that there will be some increased densification in the area. But I do not believe that we’re going to see 20-storey towers.”
One new Blackburn resident, Angus McLay, moved with his partner days ago into a rented apartment on the sixth floor of a seven-floor block, built two years ago in Whitehorse Road. “We’d been looking for our first home for a while, it’s a nice area, there’s a train station nearby, lots of facilities around.”
Angus McLay has just moved into an apartment in a seven-storey block, built a few years ago in Whitehorse Road, Blackburn.Credit: Joe Armao
His balcony has a view of Box Hill’s cluster of apartment towers, three kilometres away.
McLay, 25, a structural engineer, said he liked Blackburn’s leafiness but added: “I don’t mind the idea of more high-rises. I definitely understand it.
“I don’t want it to get to the stage of Box Hill, though, when it’s almost that there’s too many.”
Tess de Vries, a doctor aged in her 30s who rents a house in southern Blackburn, said she was “torn” about the proposed planning rules.
Tess de Vries has lived in a house in the south of Blackburn for three years.Credit: Eddie Jim
Increased density of housing was needed to accommodate the growing population, but it shouldn’t compromise “the integrity of the suburb”.
de Vries feels that allowing 16-storey high-rises “might be a little bit too much” in changing the feel of the suburb.
Having three or four-storey apartment blocks further out would “depend on how they plan it”.
She called for “smart planning” that would preserve gardens.
“I’m torn because there is going to be development. We can’t stop it. I just want it to be done in a way that is sensible and preserves the character of our neighbourhoods around Melbourne,” de Vries said.
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