Living like a local
The sun is rising in Sunshine, illuminating the Melbourne CBD skyline to the east and the distant Macedon ranges to the north. It’s a crisp autumn morning, and the cool breeze feels good on your skin as you take your beloved four-legged friend for a walk up to The Granary Café. Housed within the former Sunshine Harvester Works, The Granary has friendly baristas who remember your name and don’t sport ironic moustaches.
The Garden City movement
The houses around you are an interesting mix of red brick Federation style, classic Californian bungalows, 1930s Art Deco homes and medieval Tudor-style. What’s not widely known is that Sunshine was one of the first suburbs in Australia to embrace the Garden City movement, an urban planning concept that sought to incorporate the best parts of both country and city living. Hugh Victor McKay, the industrialist who founded the Sunshine Harvester Works, was a strong advocate of the Garden City concept. In 1909, he commissioned the Sunshine Gardens – now known as The H.V. McKay Memorial Gardens – for the recreational use of his employees.
Sunshine’s star on the rise
The irony is that it was a Tudor-style house built to emulate medieval architecture that set a $1.8m house-price record for Sunshine in 2023. The diversity of Sunshine definitely extends to its architecture as well as its people.
Thanks to a $143 million revamp funded by Brimbank Council, the main drag of Hampshire Road is a lively hub with wide walkways, cycle paths, and abundant greenery. The newly constructed Brimbank Community and Civic Centre offers a great view of the famous ‘Man Lifting Cow’ sculpture created by locally-born and internationally-renowned artist John Kelly.
Bursting with life
You pass the two-story library and the suspended yellow Sunshine harvester in the Brimbank Community and Civic Centre. Stallholders are setting up on both sides of Hampshire Road for the weekly Sunshine Street Market, where you can get everything from clothing to jewellery to goldfish. Opposite the library, there’s a brilliantly bright mural featuring a host of Australian native animals, birds and plants. It’s perfect for Instagram but also thought-provoking, as there’s litter amidst the idyllic surroundings. It’s the brilliant work of yet another local artist, commissioned by Melbourne Water and Brimbank City Council in 2021 as part of the water authority’s Litter Action Project.
Blending past and present
Sunshine train station has already received a major upgrade, with a new pedestrian overpass, reconfigured bus interchange and a new ticket office. You go inside the Granary to pay for your coffee, checking out the local art on the walls. The owners used the old tin roof of the Sunshine Harvester Works to construct the café’s counter. It’s a great example of what people in Sunshine do best – take the past and use it to build the future.