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 Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

, north-west of Melbourne's

Central Business District A central business district (CBD) is the commercial and business centre of a city. It contains commercial space and offices, and in larger cities will often be described as a financial district. Geographically, it often coincides with the "city ...

, located within the Cities of Brimbank and Hume

local government area A local government area (LGA) is an administrative division of a country that a local government is responsible for. The size of an LGA varies by country but it is generally a subdivision of a State (administrative division), state, province, divi ...

s. 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 The Maribyrnong River is a perennial river of the Port Phillip catchment, located in the northwestern suburbs of Melbourne, in the Australian state of Victoria (Australia), Victoria. Course The Maribyrnong River draws its headwaters from near ...

, and is home to many

market garden A market garden is the relatively small-scale production of fruits, vegetables and flowers as cash crops, frequently sold directly to consumer A consumer is a person or a group who intends to order, or uses purchased goods, products, or s ...

s. 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 Watergardens Town Centre is a super regional shopping centre located in Taylors Lakes, 24 kilometres north-west of Melbourne, Victoria. It opened in 1997, and is owned by the Queensland Investment Corporation. History The site was purchased by t ...

approximately 5 km away.

History

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

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

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 Ballarat ( ) is a city in the Central Highlands (Victoria), Central Highlands of Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia. At the 2021 Census, Ballarat had a population of 116,201, making it the third largest city in Victoria. Estimated resid ...

. 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 aphanite, 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 planetary surface, surface of a terrestrial ...

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 gre ...

s and

Diprotodon ''Diprotodon'' (Ancient Greek: "two protruding front teeth") is an extinct genus of marsupial from the Pleistocene of Australia, containing one species, ''D. optatum''. The earliest finds date to 1.77 million to 780,000 years ago, but most speci ...

s 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 gree ...

. The

Wurundjeri The Wurundjeri people are an Australian Aboriginal people of the Woiwurrung language group, in the Kulin nation. They are the Traditional Owners of the Birrarung (Yarra River) Valley, covering much of the present location of Narrm (Melbourne ...

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 Bendigo ( ) is a city in Victoria, Australia, located in the Bendigo Valley near the geographical centre of the state and approximately north-west of Melbourne, the state capital. As of 2019, Bendigo had an urban population of 100,991, makin ...

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 opposin ...

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 The Keilor Football Club, nicknamed the Blues, is an Australian rules football club located in Keilor, Victoria, north west of Melbourne. The club originated in 1877, formed at a general meeting at the Waggoner's Arms Hotel. In 1926, the club b ...

, an

Australian Rules Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an oval field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by k ...

football team, competes in the

Essendon District Football League The Essendon District Football League (EDFL) is a professional Australian rules football league competition based in Essendon, Victoria, consisting of teams based in the north-west suburbs of Melbourne. Founded in 1930, the men's competition c ...

. 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) Brendan Patrick O'Connor (born 2 March 1962) is an Australian politician who has served as Minister for Skills and Training since 2022. He is a member of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and has served in the House of Representatives since 20 ...

, former federal minister, lives in Keilor.

References

External links