Europeans

The area now known as St Albans was part of the open grassy plains that were characteristic of Melbourne’s Western Region before European settlement. Bare flat ground, punctuated by low volcanic hills which were the volcanoes from which lava had spread out to form undulating plains sloping almost imperceptibly from the foot of the Brisbane Ranges and Wombat Forest down to Port Phillip Bay.

In 1803 the first Europeans (Charles Grimes and James Flemming) explored the Maribyrnong River as far as the ford located at what is now Canning St and noted the open grassy plains to the north. In 1824 explorers Hamilton Hume and William Hovell passed through the area on their journey from Sydney.

In the 1830s the first European settlers who were attracted by the grassy plains, arrived with their flocks of sheep. During the gold rush of the 1850s the traffic through the Keilor region grew immensely. The village of Keilor began as a camping place for bullock teams to and from the diggings at Castlemaine and Ballarat.

Some of the gold-seekers chose to stay on the land they passed through. The population in the area grew rapidly. Keilor was declared a township in 1850.

When the discovery of gold started to decline many gold-diggers sought to settle on the land. The government responded with the Closer Settlement Scheme to open up the squatting and pastoral land for the benefit of the small farmer-settler. The land on Keilor Plains became available for selection and in 1868 the land on Keilor Commons, which included part of the area now known as St Albans, was subdivided and sold. Established farmers from the Shires of Keilor and Braybrook were attracted into the St Albans area.

There are few recorded incidents between Aboriginal and European people in this area. Most European accounts suggest that relations between Aboriginal people and European settlers in this area were relatively peaceful. This may be due to the small numbers of Aboriginal people remaining in the area following European settlement.

After the gold rush a land boom developed in Victoria. Alfred Padley, a land speculator and developer, and the Cosmopolitan Land and Banking Company bought many of the small farms in this area and subdivided them for suburban allotments. Padley bought up old farms around the railway line (the Melbourne to Bendigo rail was completed in 1862) and paid to have a station built, naming it St Albans. The “new suburb of St Albans” became the name for the village that was planned around the railway station that was officially opened on 1 April 1887.

The name “St Albans” can be traced to Padley’s wife, Caroline Jeffs, whose family had connections with the St Albans Abbey in England since the 1500s, through the marriages and births registered there.

The district of farming families gradually developed a village identity. They established the St Albans State Primary School in 1889.  The community’s physical and social infrastructure started growing along the railway line: a new primary school (1900), Aylmer’s general store (1903), the Mechanics Institute Hall (1906), St Alban the Martyr Anglican Church (1910), and the Presbyterian Church (1912).

The population of St Albans grew slowly from about 120 in 1900 to about 280 in 1910. It then grew gradually over the next decades and after the second world war, in 1950 around 850 people lived in a semi-rural village surrounded by paddocks on the outskirts of Melbourne. Then the refugees from Europe started to arrive – see the next page Post WW2 Boom.

More information about this period can be found in the following documents.