Plenty

Plenty, a rural district north of Greensborough, is 20 km north-east of Melbourne. The name comes from the Plenty River, which was named by Joseph Tice Gellibrand, member of the Port Phillip Association, in 1835 because the surrounding country had such a promising aspect.

The Plenty district has been larger than its present boundaries. When a school was opened at the Presbyterian church in Janefield, Bundoora, in 1850, it was named Plenty until 1853. Another school, opened in Mernda in 1853, was also called Plenty until 1864.

The area now known as Plenty was opened for selection in 1913. A few years before then Miss Meglin, the owner of a farm with orchards, gardens and pasture, donated her property to be used by Miss Selina Sutherland as a home for neglected children. The Sutherland Homes school was opened in 1912, and served as a school for the Plenty community until 1922 when overcrowding required the building of a new school at the Plenty village about 1 km northwards. The Sutherland Homes school became Meglin Special school in 1969 and the Plenty State school closed in 1993.

By the mid-1920s Plenty also had a church, post office and a social club, and was known as a fruit-growing district. The area's census population in 1933 was 221 persons. It was not until the 1980s that Melbourne's urban growth touched Plenty. A shopping centre was added to the village and a tennis court opened in the war memorial park. Two other churches were opened in what was still mostly rural countryside. The village also has a public hall and a CFA station. The Sutherland Homes were incorporated with the Berry Street Child and Family Care Centre, East Melbourne, in 1994 and transferred to Eltham in 2002.

The western side of Plenty includes a large Plenty Gorge conservation area controlled by Melbourne Parks and Waterways, the area taking in both sides of the Plenty River.

Plenty's census populations have been: