Essendon North

Essendon North is a residential suburb bounded by Keilor Road, Calder Freeway and Bulla Road. It is 10 km north-west of central Melbourne.

Essendon North has had an anomalous history as a place. When the Anglican Christ church in Mount Alexander Road was opened in 1890 its location was described as North Essendon, about half a kilometre south of the present suburb's nearest point. The emerging suburb in Keilor Road, however, had the boundary between Essendon and Keilor municipalities running through it, for a good part of the time cutting through the Essendon North primary school (1920). Essendon North was put in the city of Essendon in 1992 and gazetted as a suburb in 1998.

A Methodist church and a Church of Christ were opened in 1886 and 1890. A tram service was opened in 1906 from Flemington Bridge to the end of Mount Alexander Road where it joins Keilor Road. An extension along Keilor Road opened in 1923, reaching Essendon airport in 1937. In addition to the churches and the primary school, there were two long-standing institutions on Mount Alexander Road, just outside Essendon North's boundary: the Lincolnshire Arms hotel (1852) and the Essendon hotel (1853), opposite each other and positioned to catch trade from the 1850s gold seekers going to the Mount Alexander and other diggings.

A tram service, school, churches and hotels signalled the building of houses, which proceeded throughout the 1920s-1930s. The school's enrolment went over 500 by 1928 (561 pupils, 2014). In 1944 local bowlers established the Doutta Galla bowls club, using a farmhouse from Diggers Rest as clubrooms. Postwar housing in Niddrie and Keilor swelled the school's enrolment to over 950 in 1953, which was relieved by a school building program in the west.

Essendon North has close access to shops in Keilor Road, Niddrie. Its census populations have been: