Moving to my suburb was a no-brainer – but first someone had to die

March 9, 2026 — 7:00pm

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Moving to my suburb was, in the early ’90s, a no-brainer. We had rented in inner-city suburbs such as Footscray and Carlton and wanted a place of our own. But first, it turns out, we needed someone to die.

We had stumbled across a suburb that was close to the CBD and was virtually Footscray, but so much cheaper – even by prices of that time. We bought the first house that looked like it wasn’t about to collapse, while ticking a few other boxes, such as being on a quiet street with off-street parking, (I was sick of the inner-city street-parking grind).

We had been randomly steered into south West Footscray (SoWeFo), an area split off from the older heart of Barkly Street-centred West Footscray (WeFo) by the railway lines, “Mount Mistake” (the name locals gave the brutalist Geelong Road bridge, miffed that the railway lines hadn’t been put in a trench), and by a phalanx of industrial buildings along Sunshine Road.

To the north, the historical centre of WeFo lies west of Summerhill Road and has a distinct suburban character. Businesses interspersed with period houses along Barkly Street lend a more relaxed family feel to the suburb compared with the older, higher-density Footscray end of the street. And West Footscray period housing is younger too – larger blocks with off-street parking are more common, reflecting aspirations of early 20th-century home owners. To the south, SoWeFo felt distinctly different again. It took time for us to realise why.

Being “south of the tracks” in the 1990s meant being out of sight from the rest of the suburb, intertwined with legacy heavy (and smelly) industries nearby, like the Graham Campbell Ferrum Co Iron Founders on Geelong Road, which was still operating all guns blazing. Its huge foundry jobs occasionally sprawled out onto the service road, a practice accepted as normal while necessitating that pedestrians skirt around giant sand moulds and other industrial kit, with glimpses of large hanging crucibles of glowing molten iron and other curiosities.

Under northerly winds, the Footscray Olympic Tyre Factory (which operated until 2001) north of the rail line sent acrid rubber smells direct to SoWeFo, relieved only by wind changes that brought alternative aromas from the south-west – linked to the abattoirs, skin-rendering businesses, smelters and open rubbish dumps of 1990s Brooklyn. But it was also apparent the smelliest industries wouldn’t be around much longer.

SoWeFo had developed from paddocks during the inter-war years, much of the initial development by builder/developer Anders Hansen. The local names reflected his modesty: Anders Street, Hansen Street, Hansen Reserve, Nesnah Street (Hansen spelt backwards) and Sredna Street (yes, you guessed it: Anders spelt backwards).

The houses Anders and co built are mostly modest Australian reimaginings of Californian bungalows – boxy double-fronted weatherboards with a side driveway, and garnished with a choice of art deco fittings dependent on the buyer’s budget.

We bought an Anders house as a deceased estate. It had barely changed from the day it was built. We discovered this was the only real way in – most of our neighbours had bought their houses off the plan from Anders himself, and they weren’t selling! Now retired and in their 80s, they were polite but cautious – we were just about the first new arrivals in the community for half a century.

Life in the ’Burbs interactive map of Melbourne – find your suburb

Patrick O'NeilAge Opinion Editor

Unlike long-established and churned Footscray, and to a lesser extent NoWeFo (shots fired from the south!), the waves of postwar European immigration and 1970s Asian immigration had largely missed SoWeFo. Our feeling of being interlopers was confirmed not long after our arrival when local rag the Brimbank Advertiser ran a front-page article about the “Yuppie invasion of the west!” including a memorable quote from a long-time resident who said: “I felt sick when I saw it!” while explaining her first sighting of a yuppie in real life. I liked to think that yuppie was me.

Our new elderly neighbours were keen for us to see the original Anders Hansen handbook that had been issued to new home owners. Hansen was pictured in his well-fed glory in an opening-page engraving. The book extolled the virtues of his houses and his 1938-style principles, and our neighbours still lived by his advice.

Under the heading: “Instructions for the woman of the household”, he advised: “… when your husband returns home from a hard day’s work he doesn’t want to hear about your day or your trifling troubles. He’s tired. What he needs is to relax in a Hansen living room while you ready him a delicious meal in the efficient Hansen kitchen …” I’m not making this up.

Today’s SoWeFo is both the same as and totally different to that of the 1990s. The original inhabitants have gone, along with the smells and sounds of those local industries. A thousand Hansen houses live on, solid art deco canvasses for a range of modern reimaginings. Taken as a whole, WeFo is now modern, mobile and diverse. These days the noises are more likely to come from weekend rave parties in the magnificent reimagined art deco Wool Store buildings on Sunshine Road.

SoWeFo’s Stony Creek is gradually re-emerging after a century of mistreatment. Whole new housing estates and commercial centres have arrived, usually from redeveloping light industry sites. NoWeFo, always dominated more by housing, has already become cool with its quiet streets that intersperse modernised period homes with ultra-modern builds. Restaurants and other businesses keep popping up along the main drag.

Where north and south come together is at our railway station. Some legacy heavy industry remains, adding more interest to the suburb than it takes away, but its days are probably numbered. WeFo is too close to Melbourne’s CBD for it not to continue its residential evolution, especially with the upgraded rail station now the western terminus for Metro Tunnel services.

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Gigantic data centre redevelopments of former heavier industry sites such as along Indwe Street and Sunshine Road are forging a brave new digital identity for SoWeFo in particular, albeit with some concerns for amenity, including over the huge water supply consumption of these businesses.

One thing seems certain – that mix of inner suburban and light industrial that defined WeFo’s creation looks set to live on in this modernised form, along with the associated tensions.

Ross Cayley is a geologist and resident of West Footscray.

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