Albion is a suburb in

Melbourne Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/ or ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victori ...

Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Queen Victoria (1819–1901), Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India * Victoria (state), a state of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, a provincial capital * Victoria, Seychelles, the capi ...

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, west of Melbourne's

Central Business District A central business district (CBD) is the Commerce, commercial and business center 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 wit ...

, located within the

City of Brimbank The City of Brimbank is a Local government in Australia, local government area located within the metropolitan area of Melbourne, Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia. It comprises the western suburbs between 10 and 20 km west and nor ...

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 federated state, state, province, division (politica ...

. Albion recorded a population of 4,334 at the . Albion is bordered on the north by

Ballarat Road Ballarat Road is a major urban arterial road in the western suburbs of Melbourne, Victoria, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Victoria, Australia. Route Ballarat Road commences at the interchange with Western Highway (Victoria), Western Freeway ...

, the south by Forrest Street, the west by Kororoit Creek and the east by Anderson Road. The suburb is completely surrounded by other parts of

Sunshine Sunlight is the portion of the electromagnetic radiation which is emitted by the Sun (i.e. solar radiation) and received by the Earth, in particular the visible light perceptible to the human eye as well as invisible infrared (typically per ...

except for Ardeer, which lies to Albion's due west across Kororoit Creek.

History

The area was originally called Darlington, from at least 1860 to about 1890. The area originally known as Albion was directly west of Duke Street, as can be noted by the many streets there named after English counties and placenames –

Albion Albion is an alternative name for Great Britain. The oldest attestation of the toponym comes from the Greek language. It is sometimes used poetically and generally to refer to the island, but is less common than "Britain" today. The name for Scot ...

being an ancient name for the island of

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-west coast of continental Europe, consisting of the countries England, Scotland, and Wales. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the List of European ...

. Albion station opened on 5 January 1860 as ''Albion and Darlington'' but closed a year later.VICSIG Infrastructure – Albion
/ref> It was not until 1919 that a new station was opened on the same site with the name ''Albion'' station. In March 1885 the ''Albion Quarrying Company'' began its operations in the area. The disused Albion quarry, accessed from Hulett Street in Albion, was the location for

AC/DC AC/DC are an Australian rock band formed in Sydney in 1973. Their music has been variously described as hard rock, blues rock and Heavy metal music, heavy metal, although the band calls it simply "rock and roll". They are cited as a formativ ...

's Jailbreak music video.Evans, Mark, ''Dirty Deeds: My Life Inside/Outside of AC/DC'', Bazillion Points, 2011 It was H. V. McKay of

Sunshine Harvester Works The Sunshine Harvester Works was an agricultural equipment factory in Melbourne, Australia. It was founded by industrialist H. V. McKay, and engineering development was headed by H. B. Garde. History Early years Having established an agri ...

fame who bought land to develop a residential community for his workers in first decades on the 20th century. His concept for Sunshine was the ''Sunshine Estate'': a community designed with superficial similarities to garden cities of the early 20th century. This area was mainly in what is now called Albion. McKay's own residence, ''The Gables'', was in Talmage Street (where the

cul-de-sac A dead end, also known as a ''cul-de-sac'' (; , ), a no-through road or a no-exit road, is a street with only one combined inlet and outlet. Dead ends are added to roads in urban planning designs to limit traffic in residential areas. Some d ...

The Gables now is) until it was consumed by fire and subsequently demolished.

Today

Albion has many period homes such as

California bungalow California bungalow is an alternative name for the American Craftsman style of Residential area, residential architecture, when it was applied to small-to-medium-sized homes rather than the large "ultimate bungalow" houses of designers like Green ...

s and 1940s weatherboard houses. In the eastern parts of Albion, many of the oldest homes were built by H. V. McKay as part of his '' Sunshine Estate'', a housing community built according to the influential early 20th Century

Garden city movement The garden city movement was a 20th century urban planning movement promoting satellite communities surrounding the central city and separated with Green belt, greenbelts. These Garden Cities would contain proportionate areas of residences, i ...

. Kororoit Creek provides the western border for Albion. Along it runs the Kororoit Creek Trail which runs all the way southwards to meet the Federation Trail in

Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...

. Stony Creek lies on the eastern edge of Albion, close to Anderson Road. , the creek's environmental state west of Anderson Road is very poor as it has long been converted to nothing more than a concrete

stormwater drain A storm drain, storm sewer (United Kingdom, U.S. and Canada), highway drain, surface water drain/sewer (United Kingdom), or stormwater drain (Australia and New Zealand) is infrastructure designed to drain excess rain and ground water from impe ...

for this particular section of its course. A notable landmark of Albion is the red brick John Darling and Son Flour Mill built in 1922. It is just to the south of Ballarat Road, next to Albion train station.

Transport

Albion railway station is on the

Sunbury line The Sunbury line is a commuter railway line in the city of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Operated by Metro Trains Melbourne, it is the city's fifth longest metropolitan railway line at . The line runs from Flinders Street railway station, Fl ...

and lies in the

Public Transport Victoria Public Transport Victoria (PTV) is the brand name for public transport in the Australian state of Victoria. It was previously the trading name of the Public Transport Development Authority (PTDA), a now-defunct statutory authority in Victo ...

zones 1+2 overlap. Metropolitan buses service the suburb and Albion station. These include: *215 Caroline Springs – Highpoint Shopping Centre via Albion station, Burnside Shopping Centre (every day). Operated by Kinetic Melbourne. *400

– Laverton via Deer Park station, Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, Metropolitan Remand Centre, and

Port Phillip Prison Port Phillip Prison is a maximum security prison located at Truganina, Victoria, Australia. It is Victoria's largest maximum security prison, able to accommodate up to 1117 prisoners. The prison is privately operated on behalf of the Governme ...

(every day). Operated by Transit Systems Victoria and

CDC Melbourne CDC Melbourne is a bus operator in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It operates 55 bus routes under contract to Public Transport Victoria. It is one of the brands of CDC Victoria, which is in turn a subsidiary of ComfortDelGro Australia. As a ...

. *422

– Brimbank Shopping Centre via Deer Park station (every day). Operated by Transit Systems Victoria. *426 Caroline Springs –

via

. Operated by Kinetic Melbourne. *456

– Woodgrove Shopping Centre (Melton) via Albion station, Burnside Shopping Centre, Caroline Springs, Melton (every day). Operated by Transit Systems Victoria. Cyclists in Albion are represented by BrimBUG, the Brimbank Bicycle User Group. The Kororoit Creek Trail runs along Albion's western perimeter.

Facilities

Education

Albion Primary School

St Theresa's Catholic Primary School
* Albion Kindergarten

Sports

The Western Eagles are the local

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 Football player, players who almost exclusively use their feet to propel a Ball (association football), ball around a rectangular f ...

team. Formed in 1950 by

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Polish people, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken * Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin ...

immigrants as KS Polonia, the club has been champions of

on 3 occasions. They currently compete in the Victorian State League Division 2 N/W, the 5th tier of the Victorian soccer pyramid. Other sports clubs include: * Albion Thunder FC * Community Soccer Hub * Sunshine Baseball Club * Sunshine Bowls Club * Polish Recreation & Sports Centre * Sunshine United Cricket Club * Ace GoKarts * Albion Tennis Club

Religious sites

* St Theresa's Catholic Church * Slovakian Baptist Church * Assemblies of God Church * Yen Ming Tang Buddhist Meditation Centre

References

{{City of Brimbank suburbs Suburbs of Melbourne Suburbs of the City of Brimbank