Development
Farmland around Werribee was subdivided to form new suburbs, mostly north of the railway line. The oldest of these areas is between Market and Tarneit Roads. Houses are mostly privately built and may be timber or brick. The area north to Shaws Road were developed from the mid 1960s onwards, after the purchase by the Housing Commission of Silk Bros "Glen Devon Stud". Cement Housing Commission homes surround Glen Devon Primary School near the river, while brick RAAF homes are more common east of Market Road.
In 1970 a Catholic Secondary College, MacKillop College, was built on what had been part of the grounds of the Corpus Christi Catholic Seminary. In 1973 Corpus Christi was sold to the State Government, and renamed Werribee Park. After 30 years of restoration and development, the property now includes the Open Range Zoo, the State Rose Garden, an Equestrian Centre, the restored Werribee Park Mansion and a luxury hotel.
By the mid-1970s the area's facilities included numerous sports grounds, pubs (hotels serving alcohol and meals), churches, primary and secondary schools and a hospital.
Many students left school at 15. Some continued their studies at local secondary schools, some attended boarding school and many travelled to schools in Geelong or Melbourne. In 1978 the Williamstown Grammar School established what is now its main campus, Westbourne Grammar. Those who went on to university and wished to continue living at home in Werribee had few choices: the University of Melbourne, Footscray Institute of Technology or Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. Travel time could be as much as five hours per day. These difficulties prompted the formation of the first planning committee for a university in the area. However, it took almost 20 years before a campus of Victoria University could be established in Hoppers Crossing.
Construction of the West Gate Bridge over the Yarra River reduced the driving time required to reach Melbourne's central business district to a mere 30 minutes. Werribee's attractiveness as a Commuter City was further boosted when the suburban electrified rail network was extended to Hoppers Crossing and Werribee in 1985. Previously Werribee was only served by less frequent diesel trains.
Werribee, east of Tarneit Road and Hoppers Crossing started to be developed from the 1970s, with modest brick veneer homes predominating. A small shopping centre opened at Hoppers Crossing in the 1980s. There is also extensive light industrial development along the Princes Highway and further east at Laverton North.
In the 1990s many of the research facilities were relocated to other regions and the bulk of the RAAF facilities were moved to Northern Australia. The change impacted Werribee in several ways. Hundreds of RAAF owned homes were dumped on the market, which depressed housing prices for several years. There was less pressure on local schools for a high-quality academic education, and schools changed their curricula to accommodate what were seen as the differing aspirations of the changed population.
Read more about this topic: Werribee, Victoria, History
Famous quotes containing the word development:
“Theories of child development and guidelines for parents are not cast in stone. They are constantly changing and adapting to new information and new pressures. There is no “right” way, just as there are no magic incantations that will always painlessly resolve a child’s problems.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“This was the Eastham famous of late years for its camp- meetings, held in a grove near by, to which thousands flock from all parts of the Bay. We conjectured that the reason for the perhaps unusual, if not unhealthful development of the religious sentiment here, was the fact that a large portion of the population are women whose husbands and sons are either abroad on the sea, or else drowned, and there is nobody but they and the ministers left behind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“America is a country that seems forever to be toddler or teenager, at those two stages of human development characterized by conflict between autonomy and security.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)