I couldn’t wait to escape my suburb on the edge. Now I’ve I found my way back

As a teenager, my suburb felt like the middle of nowhere. The kind of place you had to escape from.

Today, it still feels as if you’re living on the edge of the city here in Taylors Lakes. It’s one of the first residential pockets visitors on the Calder Freeway pass as they arrive in Melbourne, and one of their last glimpses of suburbia before leaving the city behind. Just west of Melbourne Airport, we’re close enough that departing planes are part of the background sky. Also filling the sky are the massive power transmission towers that carve their way through the suburb on their way to Ascot Vale and beyond.

Outsiders tend to stereotype Taylors Lakes as bland, car-bound, or culturally thin – a place you drive through rather than to. But stop by and you’ll find long-term residents who have watched trees, children and houses grow together. It doesn’t have the same charm as neighbouring Keilor, with its village atmosphere and otherworldly heritage buildings, but feels more established than the sprawl of later developments.

My family moved here in the late 1990s, when Taylors Lakes was at the end of the Sydenham line, and felt like it. But I was three, and excited that I would have my own bedroom.

In many ways, I grew up alongside the suburb itself. Taylors Lakes was first developed in the 1980s when Melbourne’s middle suburbs were a bit unfashionable and slowly deindustrialising. We moved from Deer Park, my parents drawn to the promise of a new house on a large block for the price of a rundown weatherboard closer in.

In the early days, there were few other houses and no fences (or trees), so our backyard was the whole street. We were surrounded by vacant lots and paddocks, and could see across the Calder freeway and the Keilor Plains – apart from the piles of giant boulders that we climbed on. On the day they dynamited the boulders to clear way for houses the ground shook, and I remember feeling robbed of our playground. The paddocks were filled with spiders, snakes, frogs and mice that lived around (and sometimes inside) our house. Mum is terrified of spiders so we always knew when one had got in.

On the weekends I would wake up to the distant roar of V8s from Calder Park Raceway. Taylors Lakes was (and is) a car-dependent place. It wasn’t easy to walk to old Sydenham station, as there weren’t yet footpaths. I spent a lot of time sitting in excruciating traffic near the “Maccas roundabout” on the way to school. The roundabout is still there – opposite the old Taylors Lakes Shopping Centre (which for a time had what I thought was Melbourne’s best Chinese restaurant) – and I’m still lucky enough to sit in the same traffic, only this time with my own kids in the back seat. One small perk: while others complained about traffic on the Tulla, we had a “back way” through the Keilor market gardens that got you to the airport in under 15 minutes.

You can tell how long someone has lived in Taylors Lakes by what they call our main road. For long-timers, it’s the Keilor-Melton Road. Call it the Melton Highway and you’re announcing yourself as a more recent arrival. That road also divides the suburb’s “old” side in the south, from the “new”, with wider streets and larger ’90s homes that were a precursor to the McMansion.

I’ve watched tiny elm saplings become mature trees that now shade many of Taylors Lakes streets. The cars along those streets have changed too. Where once they had child seats, in what seemed the blink of an eye there were L plates, then Ps. The Falcons and Commodores were replaced by European luxury models, and many more classic cars kept safely in garages.

Like Taylors Hill, my suburb takes its name from William Taylor, a pastoralist who owned land here and built Overnewton Castle in nearby Keilor in 1849. The “lake”, beside the highway, is actually a dam on Taylors Creek, tucked behind a large wedding reception centre. It’s this centre that people remember most about my suburb. Everyone in Melbourne’s west seems to have some kind of connection – maybe they’ve been to a wedding there, a conference or a school formal.

Taylors Lakes doesn’t have a high street, or much in the way of landmarks, unless you count the massive Watergardens shopping complex, which backs onto Taylors Creek. The suburb is more a series of roads and estates, schools, parks and shops stitched together, evolving from open paddocks into an established suburb. Along with the construction of Watergardens, Kings Road was duplicated, the giant roundabout at Kings Road replaced by a freeway overpass; Sydenham station closed, replaced by a modern station at Watergardens. We no longer see kangaroos under those electricity towers, but some of that space has been turned into a popular dog park. It feels like progress has finally reached us in Taylors Lakes.

When I went to university, I moved into the inner and middle suburbs my parents had deliberately avoided, trading space and quiet for trams and late-night noise. Taylors Lakes – and the family home – became a refuge.

Now, in adulthood, my perspective has shifted. Melbourne has continued to sprawl west to Melton and Taylors Lakes seems, by comparison, an established middle suburb. What once felt remote now feels well-connected. Public transport is frequent with trains or buses. The new Metro Tunnel means we get trains every 10 minutes. This is a big shift from the days it would take me two hours by bus to get home from school in Essendon. Shopping precincts are plentiful. Green space is a defining feature, with Brimbank Park and Organ Pipes National Park close enough to feel like extensions of the suburb itself.

The frustrations of my adolescence have largely been addressed by time and growth. Taylors Lakes is stable – the blocks are generous and the streets quiet. I’ve returned, and now live in a neighbouring suburb, raising a family not far from where I grew up. For a long time, if I told anyone I lived in Taylors Lakes it was met with a furrowed brow. These days, the response is more often a nod of recognition.

What I once saw as a suburb on the edge, now feels like a place that holds its ground as the city moves around it.

Aaron Magro is a historian, president of Keilor Historical Society Inc., and councillor of Royal Historical Society of Victoria.

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