SATURDAY BREAKFAST #6: BALLARAT ROAD, DEER PARK)

Visited 12 June, 2010

What was I expecting at Deer Park?  What was I expecting of Deer park?

Before the several route changes of recent years the journey to Ballarat, to points further west in Victoria, and to Adelaide, took you along Ballarat Road (the Western Highway), and through Deer Park. Those making that trip passed along the short and one-sided Deer Park shopping strip.  Today was the day to see whether the strip had some places of interest - in particular, whether we could find a breakfast spot nonpareil.

 There are few shops in the strip, and they are a sad bunch – a forlorn assortment, with two novelty/party shops (yes, two), a couple of night-time eateries, and one auto-teller only.  The newsagent was busy with customers collecting their Saturday dailies; and the most interesting business was a large liquor store cum greengrocer cum everything. 

The saddest feature of our brisk walk along and back was the Tattersalls agency - for once not part of the newsagent - where several people were impatiently awaiting its nine o’clock opening.  I doubt they were lined up to collect their winnings, more likely lined up to add to their losings. This gives a clue to Deer Park today. 

The location of Deer Park - some 17 kilometres from the centre of Melbourne and, these days, well within the ambit of the Melbourne suburban zone – takes its name from the deer that once roamed the district courtesy of the Melbourne Hunt Club.  This was until the 1890s; but prior to the Hunt Club and its prey moving further afield a somewhat less recreational activity was established at Kororoit Creek, as the area was then known:  in 1875 the Australian Explosives and Chemicals Co. Ltd began the manufacture of “explosive compounds”.  Eventually, the explosives and fertilizer business became part of the Imperial Chemical Industries world-wide empire; and the massive industrial estate that grew in the Deer Park area was a Melbourne landmark through to1980, for more than 100 years.

With the closure and demolition of the ICI complex significant parcels of land became available for residential development, and such has occurred.  But the stigma could not be erased; and the choice of Deer Park as the location for a prison had a certain inevitability.  The Deer Park Metropolitan Women’s Correctional Centre (later re-named The Dame Phyllis Frost Centre) opened its arms to 260 inmates on 15 August, 1996.

So Deer Park today is a curious mixture of light industrial, old and modest residential, new and overblown residential, the State’s largest prison for females, and a shabby row of shops on what was once the Western Highway.

The morning was cold, and the wind was bleak.  We were glad to pass up the only breakfast opportunity – pre-cooked sausages and cling-wrapped bacon and egg rolls, languishing in a bain-marie – and headed for Newmarket, to a known eatery, where the food and coffee were excellent and thoughts of explosives and fallen women had no place.  There was no venison on the breakfast menu.

Gary Andrews