Ashburton, Victoria

Ashburton is a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, southeast of Melbourne's Central Business District. Its local government area is the City of Boroondara. At the , Ashburton had a population of 7,751.
Ashburton is known for the Ashburton Village shopping strip, the Ashburton Community Centre and the Ashburton Library on High Street, along with the Ashburton Pool and Recreation Centre on nearby Warner Avenue.
Ashburton, a mostly postwar residential suburb, is 12 km south-east of central Melbourne. The locality's name arose when the station on the Outer Circle railway line (1890) was named Ashburton, at the suggestion of a former local councillor, E. Dillon who had lived in Ashburton Terrace, Cork, Ireland.
An unrealised objective of the railway line had been to stimulate residential development, but the locality was best known for the Ashburton forest, overlooking Gardiners Creek, as a site for picnics. The Outer Circle railway, originally from Oakleigh to Melbourne via Fairfield, was abbreviated to spur lines from Camberwell within a few years, northwards to Deepdene and southwards to Ashburton, and no other fixed rail transport was provided for Ashburton. The residential development of Ashburton awaited Melbourne's postwar metropolitan expansion and increased car ownership.
In the 1920s Ashburton had a few shops, orchards and market gardens, supporting sufficient population for a primary school to be opened in 1928 (549 pupils, 2014). There was a public hall in High Street near Johnston Street where Catholic and Presbyterian church services were held in the late 1920s. In 1948 the railway line was extended by one station to Alamein, a postwar suburb with almost entirely wartime street names such as Victory Boulevard, Benghazi Avenue and Tobruk Road. Much of the housing was built by the Housing Commission.
Ashburton extends south to Gardiners Creek. As well as containing Alamein, it also includes the locality of Solway in its south-west. Sparsely settled until the early postwar years, the Solway school opened in 1950 with the name Darling East. It was renamed Solway in 1956 after the Postmaster-General's Department opened in Solway post office near Solway Street.
Ashburton has an active strip shopping centre along High Street near the railway station. Nearby is a large Catholic church, St Michael's. The Ashburton Catholic parish was separated from Glen Iris parish in 1946 and a Catholic primary school opened that year. The present church was built in 1955. Ashburton Park and Warner Reserve have modern indoor and outdoor swimming pools and associated facilities. Along Gardiners Creek there is the Malvern Valley golf course.
The small shopping centre in Victory Boulevard, Alamein, was reduced to one convenience store by 1997. Opposite the shops the Alamein primary school (1950) had been closed, and the land given to housing. The new houses are in colonial, federation and modern two-storey styles, offering a contrasting opulence to the functional postwar Commission housing.
In 1987 the median house price in Ashburton was 30% above the median for metropolitan Melbourne and in 1996 it was 36% above the metropolitan median.
Ashburton's census populations have been:
CENSUS DATE POPULATION
2001 6741
2006 7173
2011 7586
Further Reading
History.
The rail line was electrified in 1924, and the Ashburton Post Office opened on 15 December 1927. Another office was opened at Solway (in the south-west of the suburb) and operated from 1954 until 1978.
Today.
Ashburton features a retail area around High Street, has two train stations (Ashburton and Alamein) and contains a branch of the Boroondara Library.
The suburb contains student housing (operated by the Ashburton Baptist Church) due to its proximity to the Holmesglen Institute of TAFE, Monash University (Caulfield and Clayton campuses), Deakin University (Burwood campus) and Swinburne University (Hawthorn campus). The Ashburton Baptist, Catholic and Anglican Churches also run the Ashburton Asylum Seeker Support Group.
Education.
Ashburton is served by three primary schools: St Michael's Parish School is a Catholic co-ed primary school located on High Street. Solway Primary School and Ashburton Primary School are government primary schools located on Winton Road and Fakenham Road respectively.
Recreation.
Ashburton hosts the following recreational interests: