Kingsbury

Kingsbury is a residential suburb 12 km north-east of central Melbourne, between Reservoir and Bundoora. It was named after Private Bruce Steel Kingsbury, from Preston, who was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for his action at Isuvara, New Guinea, in 1942.

Kingsbury underwent residential development in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The Preston council carried out a vigorous street construction program during that period, to keep up with new housing. The primary school was opened in 1961 and a technical school in 1964. There is also a Catholic primary school (1963).

Consisting of about 30 streets, Kingsbury is relatively small, and is bounded on two of its three sides by Plenty Road and the Darebin Creek with a linear park. There is a neighbourhood shopping area and a shopping centre in Plenty Road across Darebin Creek. A short distance northwards is the large Bundoora Park and across Plenty Road are the La Trobe University and the Preston cemetery. The technical school closed in about 1997 by when it was a campus of Reservoir secondary college. Kingsbury primary school had 201 pupils in 2014.

Kingsbury’s census populations have been:

Among Kingsbury’s non-English speaking populations the leading language groups are Mandarin, Vietnamese, Italian and Greek. The median income of residents at the 2011 census was 66% of the Victorian median.