Sunshine

Sunshine is a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, 12 km west of the CBD, located within the City of Brimbank local government area.

Sunshine is a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, 12 km west of the CBD, located within the City of Brimbank local government area. Sunshine recorded a population of 9,768 at the 2016 census.Sunshine, initially a town just outside Melbourne, is today a residential suburb with a mix of period and post-War homes, with a town centre that is an important retail centre in Melbourne's west. It is also one of Melbourne's principal places of employment outside the CBD with many industrial companies situated in the area, and is an important public transport hub with both V/Line and Metro services at Sunshine train station and its adjacent major bus interchange.

The farms and settlements in the area now known as Sunshine first came under the Sunshine Road District (1860–1871) which later became the Shire of Braybrook (1871–1951).From 1860 to 1885 the only railway which passed through the area was the Bendigo line and the only railway station in the area was Albion & Darlington (opened 5 January 1860) at the site of the current Albion station. When the Ballarat line was built through the area, a new station was built at the junction of the two lines: this station opened on 7 September 1885 and was called Braybrook Junction as it was in the Shire of Braybrook.

The area around the Braybrook Junction railway station then came to be known as Braybrook Junction. The Braybrook Junction Post Office opened on 25 August 1890.

In 1904 H. V. McKay bought a factory in the area called the Braybrook Implement Works. He also secured 400 acres (160 ha) of land at Braybrook Junction with the aim of establishing housing to allow his future workers to live in the area, along the lines of a company town. The land became the Sunshine Estate (see below).In 1906 McKay moved his agricultural machinery manufacturing business from Ballarat to his newly acquired factory in Braybrook Junction. The factory was renamed the Sunshine Harvester Works and it became the largest manufacturing plant in Australia.

In July 1907, the train station, the post office, and the shire riding's names were changed from Braybrook Junction to Sunshine after workers and residents had petitioned to do so in honour of McKay's Sunshine Harvester Works.Also in 1907 an industrial dispute between owner H. V. McKay and his workers at the Sunshine Harvester Works led to the Harvester Judgement, the benchmark industrial decision which led to the creation of a minimum living wage for Australian workers.The Sunshine train disaster on 20 April 1908 killed 44 people at Sunshine station.In 1909, the H. V. McKay Sunshine Harvester Works Pipe Band was formed. This is one of Australia's oldest continuously functioning pipe bands and still exists as the Victoria Scottish Pipes & Drums.Prue McGoldrick's My Paddock: An Early Twentieth Century Childhood is a memoir of growing up in Sunshine.

The land that H. V. McKay had earlier purchased to build housing for his workers on was developed by McKay as the Sunshine Estate, a housing estate developed with reference to some of the ideals of the Garden city movement, an influential town planning movement of the early 20th century. Infrastructure and amenities established by McKay for the Sunshine Estate and the rest of Sunshine included electric street lighting, parks and sporting grounds, public buildings, schools, and a library. The town of Sunshine (not a suburb of Melbourne at this point) became regarded as a model industry-centred community. Housing for the McKay's employees swelled the local population and the town of Sunshine was touted as the "Birmingham of Australia".

After WWII, Sunshine increasingly became connected to the sprawling city of Melbourne as car-based travel enabled people to leave the inner city suburbs and move into houses on larger blocks in suburbia. In 1951, the old Shire of Braybrook was abolished and the City of Sunshine was established.Sunshine was not immune when many Australian-based manufacturing industries started winding down during and after the 1970s. In 1992, the Massey Ferguson factory, formerly the Sunshine Harvester Works, was demolished to make way for the development of the Sunshine Marketplace.On 15 December 1994, the City of Sunshine was abolished and Sunshine became part of the newly created City of Brimbank.

Sunshine is now both a low-density residential suburb and one of Melbourne's principal places of employment outside the CBD. Many heavy and light industrial companies are situated in and around the area and it is an important retail centre in Melbourne's west. In addition to Sunshine's street shopping strips there are two shopping centres, the Sunshine Plaza and the Sunshine Marketplace. There is a Village Cinemas multiplex, the "Village 20 Sunshine Megaplex", at the Sunshine Marketplace.Educational institutions in Sunshine include Victoria Polytechnic (the TAFE division of Victoria University). Secondary schools include Sunshine College and Harvester Technical College.