Heathmont

Heathmont is a residential suburb 24 km east of Melbourne and 2 km south of Ringwood. Its southern boundary is the Dandenong Creek.

The name appears to have come from the rising land in the locality originally having heath or low shrub like vegetation on it.

A shop was opened in 1923 in the front room of a house, and the Heathmont Railway League began agitation for the opening of a railway station. This occurred in 1926 and a post office was opened in 1929. Heathmont then had arterial transport on both a railway line and on Canterbury Road which crosses near the railway station. Although any significant residential growth did not occur until the postwar years, when it came it was fairly rapid. From two shops and about 600 people in 1953 there were 28 shops and nearly 3000 people by 1958.

The primary school opened in 1952 and another at Heathmont East in 1962. Ringwood Technical School (1960) was in Great Ryrie Road at the north end of Heathmont. The school site was altered to accommodate Heathmont college and Great Ryrie primary school. In 2003 the college moved south to a site next to another primary school. The Heathmont primary school closed.

In 2014 Heathmont college had 496 pupils and Heathmont East Primary school had 463 pupils.

There is a shopping centre in Canterbury Road at the railway station, but more extensive facilities are to be found at Ringwood/Eastland, at The Mall on Mountain View Highway or further south at Knox City Shopping Centre.

Heathmont’s census populations have been: