Caroline Springs

Caroline Springs is a residential suburb on the Western Freeway 22 km north-west of central Melbourne, on the eastern edge of Rockbank.

Although Rockbank is a flat and treeless area, Caroline Springs was positioned to take advantage of the confluence of small streams, where a linear lake was created. There is parkland along the lake’s shorelines. Caroline Springs is west of the junction of the Ring Road Connection and the Western Freeway.

Caroline Springs was named after Caroline Chisholm, the nineteenth century philanthropist who established a series of shelters for emigrants along the road (now the Western Freeway) to the Ballarat gold diggings.

Caroline Springs was a development by Lend Lease Corporation begun in 1998 with a forecasted population of 23,000. Caroline Springs won Australia’s Best Masterplanned Community Award (2006) awarded by the Urban Development Institute of Australia (UDIA).

There are two central places. The first, near the Western Freeway, has a community centre and three schools. The second, to the north on Kororoit Creek, has the Caroline Springs Square shopping centre (2004), a civic centre, a library and two hotels (c2009). It is approximately in the middle of the suburb, which extends further north where there are more schools. The school campuses are as follows:

The Mowbray college campuses closed in 2012.

The shopping centre is close to Lake Caroline, an excavated wetland near Kororoit Creek. The creek has linear parkland for its entire length.

A notable point of departure from most suburbs in the location of the railway line and the Caroline Springs railway station, south of the freeway, in open landscape. Construction of the station began in 2014, and was scheduled to open in 2016.

Caroline Springs’ census populations have been:

Among the residents’ religious affiliations recorded at the 2011 census, there were: