Comment on Discussion Thread: Tuesday, 4 March 2025
RustyRaven@aussie.zone 10 hours agoRingwood would have still been nearly rural at that time! They were probably there when they moved the clock tower! My family would have moved to the area not long before you moved out. Now every time I look at the older houses I’m going to wonder if it has a garage lined with shipping container!
TheWitchofThornbury@aussie.zone 8 hours ago
It was. There was still a cattle/sheep/horse/pig market in Croydon, the Ringwood one had closed recently for large animals but you could still get goats and chickens there. Actually, we pre-dated moving the clock tower - which was opened by my granddad and there’s still a plaque on it with his name. We even pre-dated Eastland! The first version of that was built while I was in secondary school. My grandparents moved there in the early 1950s after my grandad left the army, and bought a large house on Warrandyte Road which is still there. The house was built in the 1910s for the manager of the antimony mine in Burnt Bridge, and it had a circular carriage drive, carriage house and stables, a hutch in the whacking great kitchen for bread and milk & meat deliveries, a huuuuge bath with a mahogany surround - and outside toilets. One for the gentry, and another one for the servants. And I think from memory about 6 bedrooms, though some of those had been re-purposed as the library etc. Great place for a family to grow up, but suburbia covers all eventually.
RustyRaven@aussie.zone 7 hours ago
Funnily enough my family moved to the area (Croydon Hills) after my dad left the army. Not quite so fancy a house for us, and Eastland (in its early brown brick square format) was already there. I had a look at some records and we moved in '82, and I’ve mostly been in the area since then. Suburbia is definitely covering everything, and in higher density than ever before too.