Kalkallo is an outer suburb of

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 ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

, north 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 Hume The City of Hume is a Local government areas of Victoria, local government area located within the metropolitan area of Melbourne, Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia. It includes the outer north-western suburbs, including the major cent ...

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 ...

. Kalkallo recorded a population of 5,548 at the 2021 census. Located on the

Hume Freeway The Hume Highway, including the sections now known as the Hume Freeway and the Hume Motorway, is one of Australia's major inter-city National Highway (Australia), national highways, running for between Melbourne in the southwest and Sydney in ...

, Kalkallo had, until the 2010s, a few streets, a service station and a

pub A pub (short for public house) is in several countries a drinking establishment licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term first appeared in England in the late 17th century, to differentiate private ho ...

. It was formerly surrounded by

farms A farm (also called an agricultural holding) is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops; it is the basic facility in food production. The name is used fo ...

that were not yet consumed by the

urban sprawl Urban sprawl (also known as suburban sprawl or urban encroachment) is defined as "the spreading of urban developments (such as houses and shopping centers) on undeveloped land near a city". Urban sprawl has been described as the unrestricted ...

of Melbourne.Cloverton
/ref>

History

The Kalkallo area is located on the traditional lands of the

Woiwurrung The Woiwurrung, also spelt Woi-wurrung, Woi Wurrung, Woiwurrong, Woiworung, and Wuywurung, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Woiwurrung language group, in the Kulin alliance. The Woiwurrung people's territory in Central Victoria ex ...

people. It is believed that the clan which occupied land including the South Morang area, was the Wurundjeri-willam. The name Kalkallo originates from the language from the

indigenous people There is no generally accepted definition of Indigenous peoples, although in the 21st century the focus has been on self-identification, cultural difference from other groups in a state, a special relationship with their traditional territ ...

, but its meaning is obscure. European colonisation began in Victoria in 1835, and there were land sales in the Parish of Kalkallo in 1840. An example of an early rural town settlement, Kalkallo, originally called Kinlochewe and then Donnybrook, has many natural and cultural heritage sites of significance, including churches, hotels, monuments, bridges, waterways and grasslands. In 1848, residents began requesting a post office for the township, and Kinlochewe Post Office was opened on 1 November 1850, located in the Robert Burns Inn on Summerhill Road and

Sydney Road Sydney Road (in its northernmost part also known as the Hume Highway) is a major urban arterial in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Geography Sydney Road starts at the northern end of Royal Parade at the boundary of Par ...

. In 1854, it was moved and renamed Donnybrook, then renamed Kalkallo in 1874, before eventually closing in 1971. During the

gold rush A gold rush or gold fever is a discovery of gold—sometimes accompanied by other precious metals and rare-earth minerals—that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, ...

years of the 1850s, the township boomed as travellers made their way along the

and there were seventeen accommodation houses, a police station, jail and court house. In the 1870s, the opening of the

North East railway line The North East railway line is a railway line in Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia. The line runs from Southern Cross railway station on the western edge of the Melbourne Melbourne City Centre, central business district to Albury rail ...

saw a decrease in passing road traffic and the town's population declined.

Environment

Kalkallo is located amongst the large Gilgai plain. Located near Donovans Lane, north-west of the town centre, is the Bald Hill

volcano A volcano is commonly defined as a vent or fissure in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most oft ...

that last erupted over a million years ago.

Merri Creek Merri Creek is a waterway in southern parts of Victoria, Australia, which flows through the northern suburbs of Melbourne. It begins near Wallan and flows south for 70 km until joining the Yarra River at Dights Falls. The area where th ...

runs through Kalkallo, to the east of the area. The Kalkallo Grasslands are remnants of a large area of grassland which is home to many threatened species of plants, amphibians and reptiles.

Flora

* Gilgai Brown Grass * Small Pepper Cress *

Dianella amoena ''Dianella amoena'', commonly known as the matted flax-lily, is an endangered, herbaceous, perennial plant endemic to Australia. It belongs to the family Asphodelaceae, subfamily Hemerocallidoideae. It has long grey-green leaves which grow in cl ...

* Prasophyllum frenchii * Pussy tails * Narrow-leaf new holland daisy * Chaffy bush-pea * Smooth rice flower * Plains Yam Daisy

Fauna

* Growling grass frog * Red-chested buttonquail * Plains froglet * Common spade foot toad * Cunningham's spiny-tailed skink * Bougainvilles skink * Lowland copperhead * Australian Smelt * Water Rat * Engaeus Quadrimanus * Eastern three-lined skink * Tussock skink * Little whip snake * Southern lined earless dragon * Striped legless lizard

Planning

Kalkallo has been a focus of a number of town planning ideas since colonisation, but remained largely undeveloped until the 2010s. Since then, a number of housing developments have been planned and built.

Garden City

As part of the publication ''We Must Go On: A Study of Planned Reconstruction and Housing'', Oswald Barnett, along with Walter Burt and Frank Heath, focused on improvement of housing in Australia and Melbourne after

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. Barnett and Burt played a significant role in the Housing Investigation and Slum Abolition Board, set up in 1936, and the

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 ...

was a key concept in plans to solve the slum problem in Melbourne. Frank Heath, an architect, produced town plans based on garden city principles, and plans for Kalkallo as a garden city were printed in ''We Must Go On''. The book did not detail the motives for the plans and they were never implemented. As a result, Kalkallo remained a small township.

Urban Growth Boundary

In 2010, Melbourne's

urban growth boundary An urban growth boundary (UGB) is a regional boundary, set in an attempt to control urban sprawl by, in its simplest form, mandating that the area inside the boundary be used for urban development and the area outside be preserved in its natural s ...

was extended to include Kalkallo. In 2012, it was designated as part of the Urban Growth Zone. Urban sprawl is a divisive topic in Melbourne, as it is claimed to ease housing affordability, but can have significant impacts on the environment, as well as social impacts such as isolation due to a lack of transport infrastructure. The

Victorian State Government The Victoria State Government, also referred to as the Victorian Government, is the executive government of the Australian state of Victoria. As a parliamentary constitutional monarchy, the State Government was first formed in 1851 when Vic ...

has expanded the Urban Growth Boundary several times since 2002 as a result of the

Melbourne 2030 Melbourne 2030 is a Victoria State Government strategic planning policy framework for the metropolitan area of Melbourne, Australia intended to cover the period 2001–2030. During this period the population of the metropolitan area is expected t ...

plan (later known as Melbourne@5million).

introduced the notion of creating a limit on urban expansion. However, since the implementation of Melbourne 2030, the boundary has been extended, which is contradictory to a key objective. Plan Melbourne, established in May 2014 highlighted the need for the Metropolitan Planning Authority to establish a permanent urban boundary to replace the urban growth boundary, and restrict further expansion.

Today

Until the 2010s, Kalkallo was a small town serving the highway trade and surrounding agricultural district. Current community infrastructure includes: * Kalkallo Common (a 9.8 ha crown land grassland reserve managed by Hume City Council) * Kalkallo Cemetery * Kalkallo CFA * John Laffan Memorial Reserve (an 8ha reserve containing two ovals)

New housing developments

As a result of the urban growth boundary expansion, there have been a number of new housing developments established: * Merrifield – Merrifield is an 880 hectare $8 Billion

mixed-use development Mixed use is a type of urban development, urban design, urban planning and/or a zoning classification that blends multiple uses, such as residential, commercial, cultural, institutional, or entertainment, into one space, where those functions ...

located on the corner of Donnybrook Road and the Hume Highway. Merrifield has been planned as an integrated mixed use development with capacity to provide 20,000 new jobs and homes for up to 30,000 people. * Cloverton – Located around the Ball Hill area, plans include a large metropolitan activity centre and a future train station north of Donnybrook. Clovertown will eventually house 30,000 residents. *Kallo – A smaller development north of Donnybrook Road that will border Merri Creek, close to the existing Donnybrook railway station. Master plans outline 730 homes with 2000 residents with facilities such as a community centre, primary school, open space, nature reserve and town centre. *The Woods – Mickleham

Transport

Bus

Two

bus routes A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a motor vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van, but fewer than the average rail transport. It is most commonly used in ...

serve Kalkallo: * : Donnybrook station – Mandalay ( Beveridge) via Olivine ( Donnybrook). Operated by Broadmeadows Bus Service.511 Donnybrook Station to Mandalay via Olivine
Public Transport Victoria * : Donnybrook station – Craigieburn station via Mickleham. Operated by

Dysons Dyson Group of Companies, operating as Dysons, is a bus and coach operator in Victoria, Australia. The oldest of its subsidiary companies is L.C. Dysons Bus Services, which was founded in June 1952 and is based in Bundoora, Victoria, Bundoora ...

.525 Donnybrook Station to Craigieburn Station via Mickleham
Public Transport Victoria

Train

The nearest railway station is Donnybrook station, served by regional

V/Line V/Line is a statutory authority that operates Regional rail, regional passenger rail and Intercity bus service, coach services in the Australian state of Victoria (state), Victoria. It provides passenger train services on five Commuter rail, ...

trains on the

Seymour Seymour may refer to: Places Australia *Seymour, Victoria, a township ** Seymour railway station * Electoral district of Seymour, a former electoral district in Victoria * Rural City of Seymour, a former local government area in Victoria * Se ...

and

Shepparton Shepparton () (Yorta Yorta language, Yortayorta: ''Kanny-goopna'') is a city located on the floodplain of the Goulburn River (Victoria), Goulburn River in northern Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia, approximately north-northeast of Mel ...

lines.

Education

Kalkallo has three primary schools: * Gilgai Plains Primary School (opened 2022) * Banum Warrik Primary School (opened 2024) * Hume Anglican College (Kalkallo Campus)

References

{{authority control Towns in Victoria (state) Hume Highway City of Hume