In the western suburbs of metropolitan Melbourne, wedged between Spotswood, Altona North, Newport and Yarraville, lies 12 narrow streets, a blend of new-built townhouses and post-war brick homes. Welcome to South Kingsville, the smallest suburb in Melbourne’s west.

Fifteen years after Melbourne was founded in 1835 by settlers from Tasmania, the city’s population had grown to around 20,000 people. During this time small communities emerged and formed what we know today as suburbs.

Now, nearly 200 years later, metropolitan Melbourne has nearly 1025 suburbs that follow no logical shape or boundary. Nor are they consistent in size. Suburbs like Truganina cover areas of about 65 square kilometres, while suburbs like Gardenvale only cover 0.26 square kilometres. The varying sizes of suburbs means that some, such as Camberwell have up to five train stations and others have none.

Speaking of logic, not only is South Kingsville tiny, but it is a ten-minute drive from Kingsville proper. It does not share any direct borders with Kingsville and isn’t even in the same council.

So, why does this rather small suburb have its own name? And can 12 streets even have enough of an identity and community to warrant being its own place?

Professor David Nichols at the University of Melbourne, who specialises in urban history planning, tells upstart that there’s no defined structure of how a suburb is created or zoned. In Australia, they were usually just “sort of outposts” that formed. Natural landscapes like rivers and creeks have been large determinants of borders for suburbs, especially when colonisers first landed.

“When those places are initially settled by colonisers, they’ll want to grab a big bit of land going all the way down to the creek so that they can have a constant supply of water,” he says.

But geography isn’t the only factor behind a suburb’s creation or borders. 

South Kingsville only became a suburb after World War II. Before this, it was first called Birmingham Estate and later called West Spotswood. Raquel Onofretchook moved to South Kingsville from nearby Spotswood after buying her first home 31 years ago. She says not many people knew of the suburb when she was growing up. 

“It was kind of like, what is this little pocket?” Onofretchook says. 

An obvious question is why is it called South Kingsville if it doesn’t share a border with Kingsville? Nichols says the names of suburbs are quite complicated, and often for no rhyme or reason. 

“There’s a different story for every suburb you can think of,” he says. “It’s just something that sticks.”

Historically it’s also been quite common for residents of suburbs whose names have had negative overtones to appeal to councils to change them. Coburg was originally called Pentridge, but after Pentridge Prison was built in 1851 and became the largest prison complex in Victoria during the 19th century, residents embarrassed by the association petitioned to change the suburb name.

Nichols can see why this might have been the case for residents of South Kingsville, formerly West Spotswood, given that Spotswood was home to Melbourne’s first centralised sewage system, until it closed in 1965.

“They probably didn’t want to be associated with Spotswood because of the sewage,” Nichols says. “That’s kind of what Spotswood was known for until whenever those closed down.”

“Whereas South Kingsville, what an impressive name.”

South Kingsville may have a regal name, but that doesn’t mean the suburb is free from a stigma that has sometimes existed around suburbs in Melbourne’s west. Since the early nineties, western suburbs like Yarraville and Footscray have become gentrified and are lauded as quirky multicultural havens. Yarraville was even named the fifth coolest neighbourhood in the world in 2020. Yet, before this Melbourne’s west was seen as an industrial playground and home to large groups of immigrants from Macedonia, Vietnam, Greece, and Italy, among others. 

Onofretchook remembers a disdain associated with growing up in the Western suburbs of Melbourne, and the passing comments made. 

“People used to say ‘oh, that’s where all the factories are’,” she says. 

“And it was always those little digs. You know ‘the west, that’s where the no hopes are’.” 

The west of Melbourne was at the forefront of the manufacturing boom post WW2, with factories such as Kinnears Ropeworks in Footscray or CSR in Yarraville employing migrants and people from all corners of the west. 

Many of the west’s migrants came to Australia in large numbers after World War 2, Nichols says.  

“And they were associated with factories, because these were often people with limited English. Even if they were highly skilled in something, their qualifications might not have been recognised.”  

Immigration caused even more contempt towards the west from Anglo-Australians. 

“Part of that stigma perpetuates through the inevitable racism that follows the introduction of new people to Australia,” he says. 

Despite how Melbourne’s west was viewed back then, these days a three-bedroom home in suburbs like South Kingsville can set a family back more than $1.1 million.  

But given its history and size, does South Kingsville actually feel like its own suburb or is it just an extension of one of its neighbouring suburbs?

Real estate agent and Ray White Williamstown director, Dean Stanley, doesn’t really think so. Not in real estate terms, anyway.

“South Kingsville is marketed the same as its neighbouring suburbs,” he says. 

Stanley, a real estate agent since 1994, has long been familiar with South Kingsville, having grown up nearby in Williamstown. He has sold homes in the area for years. 

“For a number of years, it was a little bit of a disregarded suburb, being the poorer relation to Newport and Spotswood, which both have the 3015 postcode,” he says. 

In 1994, when Onofretchook arrived, South Kingsville had only just joined the Hobsons Bay council, after leaving the City of Footscray. The suburb was the exact same in size, but a lot less built up. The shopping strip on Vernon Street was much more vibrant back then, too. Onofretchook remembers it having most of the essentials she needed for her weekly shop back then. 

“There was a butcher, there was obviously the chemist. There was a lot more there.” 

Today, the strip hosts a few small businesses, but only a few appear to thrive. Lacking essentials, it struggles to compete with two nearby shopping centres that are just a six and eight-minute drive away, and which both offer all the same services as Vernon Street and more.  

Many shops open briefly, before closing their doors. In the past year alone two businesses have shut down and another switched ownership. 

Recently, younger families have moved into the area, replacing the older residents. In 2001, nearly 14 percent of residents were aged 65-years-old and older, compared to 8 percent in 2021. Did the older residents form a more close-knit community in the past? Onefretchook thinks so. 

“My elderly neighbor, who used to live here, would definitely have said, back in her day, yes, it was that way,” she says. 

“Joyce saw my house built. She moved in the 1940s, it was all paddocks and things when she first came.” 

While Onofretchook feels that the suburb may have lost the small sense of community it once had, Stanley believes this could begin to change with the growth of hospitality spaces. 

“Over the last five or six years we have seen South Kingsville grow with the emergence of more cafes,” he says. 

“I think this will also increase with the big new developments happening at either end of Blackshaws Road,” he says, referring to a main road that passes along the suburb. 

For Onofretchook, the suburb still needs a local meeting spot. A place to gather like the football club in Spotswood.

“I think that’s what’s missing here,” she says. 

“That brings a community to a meeting place.”

Article: Joshua Grobbelaar is a second-year Media and Communications (Journalism) student at La Trobe University. You can follow him on Twitter @josh_grobbelaar.

Cover photo: Supplied by author.

Photos in article: 1. By Mick Stanic. 2. By David Jackmanson. All images used under a Creative Commons license and have not been modified.