Montmorency

Montmorency is a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 18 km (11 mi) north-east from Melbourne's Central Business District.

Montmorency is a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 18 km (11 mi) north-east from Melbourne's Central Business District. Its local government area is the City of Banyule. At the 2016 Census, Montmorency had a population of 8,960.Montmorency was named after a local farm, Montmorency Estate, which in turn was named for the town of Montmorency, Val-d'Oise, where the French Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau lived briefly. Locals of Montmorency often refer to the suburb as 'Monty', and the nickname is incorporated into some local business names.

The first people on the land now known as Montmorency were the Wrundjeri william people.Merchant Stuart Alexander Donaldson (1812–1867), the first Premier of New South Wales, owned the farming property known as 'The Montmorency Estate' until the 1840s. The first evidence of a township was the building of a Presbyterian church in 1917 in the midst of small rural landholdings. Montmorency Primary School was opened in 1922, the year before Montmorency station was opened on the Hurstbridge railway line. Electricity was connected to the area in 1926. Montmorency Post Office opened around September 1923.Whilst there was a residential nucleus from the 1920s, most of Montmorency consisted of orchards, dairying, and poultry farms until after the Second World War. The estimated population in 1922 was 200, including weekenders.In 1950 the estimated population was 600, and facilities extended to two churches, a public hall, a sports ground and a tennis court. By the end of the decade the population had increased fivefold, although still with unoccupied building sites which had fine views. A modern shopping centre and factories had been built.

The suburb had an iconic dairy that was demolished in 2013 to make way for an apartment building which many locals disapproved of at the time as it was the first development of its kind.