Hampton Park

Hampton Park is a residential area immediately east of the junction of the South Gippsland Freeway and the South Gippsland Highway, 6 km south-east of Dandenong and 35 km south-east of central Melbourne.

The origin of the name is obscure, other than to say that after World War I the Hampton Park Estate (40 lots, 5 to 26 acres each) was offered for sale. It was east of the South Gippsland Highway, south of Pound Road and extended east to Hallam Road. The estate was on the former Cranbourne animal pound and was about 1 km from the Lyndhurst railway station at its nearest point. A school was opened in 1922 when the population was about 90 people. The original one-room school is still on-site.

The allotments were offered as being suitable for poultry raising and market gardens. There was a steady increase in population, and in 1956 a Union church (Methodist and Presbyterian) was opened. An Anglican church was opened in 1962, as population growth became more evident. A reticulated water supply (1961) enabled a Housing Commission estate to be built in the early 1970s. A second school, Hampton Park East, was opened in 1976.

During the 1980s Hampton Park expanded east of Hallam Road. A local shopping centre on Hallam Road, partly enclosed, was expanded in 1987, consisting of two supermarkets and 44 shops. (Dandenong regional shopping is reached by car in about ten minutes.)

The shopping centre is in about the middle of Hampton Park, and the Catholic church moved from the western area to a similar location. A Catholic P-6 school was (1990) included in the new site, and the old church building was transferred to the Greek Melkite church. Hampton Park secondary college opened in the 1980s and two primary schools, east of Hallam Road, opened in the 1990s.

Hampton Park is an extensive outer Melbourne residential area of the 1980s-90s. It has several public reserves, particularly along waterways in the eastern area, and most community facilities such as halls, shops and churches are west of Hallam Road. Hampton Park has a resource recovery precinct for recyclables in Hallam Road.

Schools in Hampton Park have high enrolments: Hampton Park primary school had 326 pupils in 2014; the Catholic primary school, over 600; the State secondary college, 1180.

Hampton Park's census populations have been: