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I’m in the northern suburbs. It’s late and raining, and public transport home doesn’t feel an attractive option. A cab is loitering near the function centre. I wave and he gives an almost imperceptible nod.
Bingo! I jump in and say, “Glen Huntly, please.” He’s still fiddling with the GPS. “No mate, not Glen Iris, Glen Huntly,” I say. A chat ensues. “Near the Caulfield Racecourse.” Still a quizzical look. “Near Carnegie.” And we’re on our way, weaving through the late-night traffic.
This typifies Glen Huntly, a suburb where the biggest recent drama was not over a skyscraper or retail complex, but the correction in the naming of our newly rebuilt (and somewhat grandiose) train station: from Glenhuntly to Glen Huntly, a correction that alleviated a stone-in-my-shoe niggle that had annoyed me for years. Welcome to the highlights of this blink-and-you’ll-miss-it slice of urban tranquillity in Melbourne’s south-east. But for me, its relative anonymity is one of the best things about the suburb.
The other has to be its stellar access to all forms of public transport. It was this that drew me to Glen Huntly more than 25 years ago. Sick of train strikes, line work, and cancelled late-night services, Glen Huntly was the closest suburb in the south-east I could afford that was on a tram line. So, when the rail gods frowned, I could jump on the 67 tram and rattle my way to Melbourne, some 50 stops later.
It’s a small suburb. At just 89 hectares, it is dwarfed by bigger and better-known neighbours, Carnegie and Caulfield. It’s a quiet place. Among the biggest crowds I’ve seen here are when the train watchers gather, on camp chairs holding cameras, for the annual passing of a steam train as it puffs toward Frankston, heralding its arrival with a blast of its whistle.
A walk down the Glen Huntly Road shops reveals its gentrification, such as a green energy store jostling with a small bootmaker, who has been trading for 45 years. Most of the shops are family businesses, with a distinct lack of franchises. There’s a supermarket selling Indian groceries that has stretched out across three shopfronts; across the road is a store dedicated to Indian sweets, and there are numerous Indian restaurants nearby, as well as two Asian grocers, a Nepalese grocery store and a small Woolworths.
The suburb is cleft by the Frankston railway line, with mostly units, townhouses and flats on the eastern side, and houses on the west. The brutalist Z-class trams trundle down Glen Huntly Road from Carnegie to Melbourne University. Woe betide any traveller who doesn’t touch on, as ticket inspectors invariably board at the Glen Huntly Road tram depot and catch out the chancers. At night, the patrolling PSOs are up for a friendly chat in the station forecourt. The 623 bus between Chadstone and Luna Park is popular, full of students and those seeking their shopping fix.
The suburb has been shaped by waves of renting students who attend the nearby Caulfield campus of Monash University. They help guarantee a good number of cheap and cheerful local eating options.
Our small suburb hosts only half of Glen Huntly Primary School. The school has two campuses dissected by Grange Road – one campus in Glen Huntly and the other across the road in Carnegie. Tiny Glen Huntly shares its 3163 postcode with both the much larger and better-known suburbs of Carnegie and Murrumbeena.
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In my memory, some houses closer to the Caulfield Racecourse had stables; in the early morning, the racehorses would trot across for track sessions and return with their flanks steaming. Unfortunately, this sight is no more, after the stables at Caulfield moved to Cranbourne. Glen Huntly also has a less salubrious connection to racing with the failed shooting of legendary racehorse Phar Lap, in Manchester Grove in 1930.
The name Glen Huntly has ignominious origins dating back to an emigrant ship from Scotland in 1840. Declared a fever ship after an outbreak of typhus, it was quarantined at Point Ormond in Elwood. The track to the temporary quarantine station was named after the unfortunate vessel, and so was the subsequent suburb.
The area was largely market gardens before more housing was built between 1910 and the 1920s. As a result, many houses are of the Edwardian, California bungalow, and art deco style. Many older homes that have reached the end of their life now fall to the bulldozer, replaced by townhouses and apartments.
For many years, the concrete walls of the long-decommissioned Caulfield Service Reservoir occupied a block on Booran Road. It was for years expected that the site would be transformed into public open space. With three young children we were excited, as Glen Huntly lacks public parks. Unfortunately, glacial progress meant our children, now adults, didn’t experience what has become a massively popular park. One of my favourite events there is the annual Diwali Festival — a riot of colour, street food, and joyful children.
One thing that Glen Huntly lacks, compared to its larger neighbours, is a community centre or a library for local gatherings. As a kind of proxy, I’ve seen the development through the hard work of local community members of an impressive reflection garden. It stretches for about 100 metres alongside the railway line. In the evening, people often sit and chat among the twinkling fairy lights and clunking bamboo wind chimes. A number of once-overgrown laneways have also been transformed by residents with native plantings and a small outdoor art gallery to support local flora and culture.
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Like many established suburbs close to the CBD, Glen Huntly is undergoing enormous change. The state government has declared the area a Major Activity Centre, due to its proximity to infrastructure and public transport. It will be a fine balancing act to welcome development while retaining the attributes that make Glen Huntly so liveable.
My partner and I have had many long conversations about downsizing from our large and largely empty family home. But we always get stuck on where else we’d rather live. And we keep circling back to a location that replicates exactly where we are now.
Maybe that’s Glen Huntly’s ultimate cachet: slightly anonymous, but close to everything you need.
John Dodson is a former HR manager and avid traveller who has called Glen Huntly home for 27 years.
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