Broadmeadows

Broadmeadows is a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 16 km (9.9 mi) north of Melbourne's central business district.

Broadmeadows is a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 16 km (9.9 mi) north of Melbourne's central business district. Its local government area is the City of Hume. At the 2016 Census, Broadmeadows had a population of 11,970.

Broadmeadows is a sub-regional centre within the northern suburbs of Melbourne, and is often used as a reference for the suburbs around it, although this may be due to its former status as a municipality.

The Broadmeadows area, home to the Wurundjeri Aboriginal nation prior to European settlement, was settled by pastoralists in the 1840s.

The original Broadmeadows aka "Old Broady" is now known as Westmeadows, which lies to the west of the present Broadmeadows. The first Broadmeadows township was laid out by a Government survey in 1850. Ardlie Street was its commercial centre with a hotel (the Broadmeadows Hotel, now Westmeadows Tavern), the police station and the shire office (the District Roads Board Building, opened in 1866).

Broadmeadows' centre was altered when the railway line and station were opened two kilometres to the original centre's east in 1872. Shire loyalties clung to the old township until new civic offices were built near the railway station in 1928.

Broadmeadows was the site of the main camp for the reception and training of recruits for the AIF from Victoria early in the First World War. Broadmeadows had been identified as a possible site for military training in 1913, but no facilities had been established. The camp was established in August 1914 at "Mornington Park", a property loaned to the government by Mr R.G. Wilson. Early on, Broadmeadows was predominantly a tented camp and conditions were quite spartan. These facilities, combined with wet weather and poor drainage resulted in a rapid increase in sickness among recruits in autumn 1915. Public concern, fuelled by sensationalist press coverage, resulted in a decision in May 1915 to re-establish the main Victorian training camp at Seymour, approximately 100 kilometres north of Melbourne. Broadmeadows Camp remained in use throughout the war, however, with facilities being progressively improved.The Housing Commission of Victoria began the building of a 2,226 ha. estate in the Broadmeadows area in 1949. Not until 1975 did it begin building in the vicinity of the old township, which it called Westmeadows Heights. Between 1975 and 1979 it built over 900 houses in the area.

The first Broadmeadows Post Office (near Mickleham Road in today's Westmeadows) opened on 1 January 1855, was renamed Broadmeadows West in 1955, Westmeadows in 1963 before closing in 1973. The second Broadmeadows Post Office was renamed in 1956 from Broadmeadows East (from 1923 the successor to Broadmeadows Railway Station Post Office open since 1902). It closed in 1968 the day Dallas (located centrally and open since 1966) became the third Broadmeadows Post Office.

This office reverted to Dallas in 1995, when Broadmeadows Square Post Office, on Pascoe Vale Road north of the station (previously named Meadow Fair from 1965 having replaced Jacana Post Office, to the south, open since 1961) was renamed and became the fourth distinct location of the Broadmeadows Post Office.

A later Broadmeadows East office, near Widford Street to the southeast of the station, opened in 1961, was renamed Broadmeadows South in 1969, and also remains open.The City hosted the road cycling event at the 1956 Summer Olympics.