Monash City

Monash city is a municipality formed on 15 December 1994, by the union of Waverley city and most of Oakleigh city. (The part of Oakleigh city south of Centre Road was absorbed by Kingston city.) The boundaries of Monash city resemble those of the former Mulgrave shire, which included Oakleigh until the Oakleigh borough was severed from it in 1891. Its area is 82 sq km, and its main office is at Glen Waverley.

The name came from Victoria’s second university, Monash (1961), at Clayton which was named after Sir John Monash (1865-1931), soldier, engineer and administrator.

Monash city is south-east of Melbourne, extending approximately from Warrigal Road to the Dandenong Creek, they being 14 km and 30 km respectively from Melbourne, measured along the South Eastern Arterial. In addition to the Arterial, Monash city is traversed by the Princes Highway, the Gippsland railway line and the railway from Glen Waverley to Melbourne.

Monash city has four sub-regional or regional shopping centres. Two are on its Springvale Road axis, one at Glen Waverley (The Glen, 1960s and 1994), and the other at Brandon Park (1970). The others are at Mulgrave (Waverley Gardens, 1977, near the former Waverley Park football stadium), and at Oakleigh (the redeveloped railway yards, 1987).

Monash city consists mostly of postwar urban and industrial development. The last areas to be settled residentially, and furthest from fixed-rail public transport, were Mulgrave and Wheelers Hill, during the 1970s. During the early 1990s, however, the population of the western area of Monash city was becoming aged as the children of first-home settlers moved out and their parents approached retirement age. By the 2011 census, the ageing of the population had moved east, and the western area was the most youthful. The median age of residents in 2011 was Oakleigh 36 years, Mount Waverley 41 years, and Mulgrave 39 years (2011 census).

Monash city’s census populations have been:

At the 2011 census among the languages spoken at home there were:

Greek-speaking residents have their strongest representation in Oakleigh to where migration from inner suburbs began in the 1960s. Residents speaking Cantonese or Mandarin are concentrated in Glen Waverley (21.1%) and Clayton (22.5%), which are in close proximity to Monash University (2011 census).