6. Industry
- The Look of the Area in 1946
- Demographic Change
- Planning the New Suburb
- The Pattern of Subdivision
- Education and Community Facilities
- Industry
- Shopping Patterns
- Roads and Perennial Roadworks
- Reafforestation
- Endnotes
In 1946 there was only limited industry in Oakleigh and Clayton, but during the 1950s a number of companies moved to the Oakleigh/Dandenong corridor. Good transport networks, the siting of major firms such as General Motors Holden at Dandenong and land availability all contributed to the attractions of the area. The brick works and abattoir and tomato sauce factory were joined by a concrete plant, Guests Austral Bakeries, Ognens' builders' hardware a snowball factory, Dulux and Cheeseborough Ponds.[42]
The greater availability of sites in Clayton led to a concentration in that area and houses and factories went up together. As Ken Johnson has pointed out in his study of People and Property in Clayton, by 1969, 23% of Clayton was occupied by houses and 26% by manufacturing. Apart from the sand pits around Deals Road, industries associated with GMH in Dandenong were important, including Repco. Volkswagen also began manufacturing in Clayton.[43]
The close association of working class housing and industry allowed for a close association between home and work. Johnson found that one in three working married women walked to work, half went to work by car and only one in ten took the train. Over two thirds of their husbands drove to work, but still one in ten of the men walked and three out of four worked in the local south-east sector of Melbourne.[44]
In Mulgrave, by way of contrast, the 1954 Planning Scheme provided for a much greater separation between housing and industry. Initially, areas zoned for housing were within a mile or so of the Glen Waverley railway. Land zoned for industry, however, was sited with access to Dandenong Road and the Gippsland railway. Subsequent amendments took account of the proposed South East Arterial/Mulgrave freeway as a further transport route. As a result, industry clustered along Wellington Road, particularly near the Springvale Road junction.
The Mulgrave Planning scheme of 1954 specified significant setbacks for factories. Industrial buildings had to be at least 66 feet back from major roads, [45] feet from secondary roads and 25 feet from minor roads. External walls within 20 feet of this building line had to be made of brick, stone, concrete or masonry. These regulations had a major impact on the industrial streetscapes of Waverley, which have a spacious feel, often with significant tree planting screening the factories from the road. Factories in Clayton, along Centre Road, for instance, were built almost up to the footpaths, so that there is considerable contrast between the industrial areas developed in Oakleigh in the 1960s and 1970s and those developed in Waverley during the same period.
During the late 1960s, many of the factories and warehouses in Waverley were built by AV Jennings. In a positive marketing campaign, they sought out customers and built to their requirements, providing buildings for Mercedes, Techtron and Foodland. They also developed the Mulgrave Industrial Estate near VFL Park, where customers included Safeway, Renolds Chains, Miles Laboratories and Ensign Laboratories. During the 1980s, Jennings built the Mulgrave Commercial Park near their HQ on Wellington Road, with thirteen leasehold warehouses and three low-rise office blocks.[46]
Other leasehold developments were built by Slough Estates. In the early 1970s, the company built a group of factories south of Wellington Road. They had landscaped sites and an 'industrial park' image. In the late 1970s the company bought a site on Forster Road from Coates Patons with right of refusal on the rest of the Coates Patons site along Ferntree Gully Road. They built about 39 small warehouse/factory units for lease and another 17 on an undeveloped portion of the Bonds Coates Paton land. Slough bought that larger site after Pacific Dunlop took over Bonds Coates Patons in 1988 and built a further 51 units. By 1996 there were 110 factory units on the Estate leased to a wide range of tenants but with a tendency towards high technology industries that wanted a more modern profile than could be provided by a back street factory in Richmond. The private roads and landscaping created a distinctive industrial precinct.[47]
The overall industrial development in both Oakleigh and Waverley produced a significant number of jobs. By 1971 the City of Oakleigh was clearly a workplace destination with 32,448 jobs, about half of which were for craftsmen and laborers. There were more than twice as many jobs in Oakleigh as resident workers and during the day the area filled up with commuters from Moorabbin, Springvale and Waverley.
In 1971 Waverley was also a significant employment centre. Whereas in 1961 more than twice as many residents commuted to the City of Melbourne as worked in Waverley, by 1971 only about 14% more did so. Although the City was still the single most important work destination (mainly for clerical workers) it provided jobs for less than one quarter of Waverley's workforce.
The vision of the suburb as a dormitory for city centre workers is therefore very misleading. Growth in industry in Waverley and Oakleigh contributed significantly to the changing journey to work patterns and the increasing importance of inter-suburban flows.[48]
An important influence on industrial development in the area was Monash University. The planned emphasis on science and its application to industry took a while to establish, but by the 1990s there were a number of science and research based employers around the university. These included the Monash Medical Centre, incorporating the McCulloch House site on Clayton Road, the CSIRO, Monash Business Centre, Montech Science Park, Telstra Research Laboratories and BHP Research laboratories.
In 1994, consolidation of this 'Monash Knowledge Precinct' into one municipality was used by the Local Government Board as an argument for merging that part of the City of Oakleigh north of Centre Road and the City of Waverley to form the City of Monash.[49]