3336, 2025-ongoing
Before the McDonald’s and the roadhouse, the blank, set back noise barriers appear, expanding for several kilometres along the Western Freeway. There are signs and promises of the new developments behind the wall: “Coming Soon”, “New House and Land Packages Released”. There are banners and totems, already fading, yet illegible from the freeway; closer, they depict masterplan graphics: futures in two-dimensions.
Some of these estate masterplans have already been built; behind the wall, circuits of narrow streets and menu-ordered houses, some single-storey, others double, tranches of townhouse, each with minimally prescribed yards to maximise developer yield. The few street block-sized parks do not register the former farms and agistments, themselves invasions of the native grasslands and basalt plain. At the perimeter of the new estates, several Hindu and Tamil temples have also appeared: demographic signifiers. Some of the temples’ devotees paid deposits on off-the-plan houses three years ago, which still haven’t appeared, much like the delayed shopping and business centre, while their seductive rendered images float on empty-field billboards. Despite being only several years old, some houses are already becoming dilapidated; property damage, garbage-laden empty plots, burnout marks and tags are slowly emerging.
Deanside is a new suburb 24km northwest from Melbourne’s CBD, gazetted only in 2017. It sits within Melton council, one of Australia’s fastest increasing populations. Deanside’s population has grown by almost 14,000 since 2021. While there is a primary school, there is still an absence of a high school or medical clinic. There are still no shops, only the McDonald’s and roadhouse on the opposite side of the highway, beyond the suburb’s postcode. Eventually the suburb will merge into the west’s quickening conurbation: in a decade it will be like any other new suburb, perhaps.
