Melbourne

It was. There was still a cattle/sheep/horse/pig market in Croydon, the Ringwood one had closed recently for large animals but you could still get goats and chickens there. Actually, we pre-dated moving the clock tower - which was opened by my granddad and there's still a plaque on it with his name. We even pre-dated Eastland! The first version of that was built while I was in secondary school. My grandparents moved there in the early 1950s after my grandad left the army, and bought a large house on Warrandyte Road which is still there. The house was built in the 1910s for the manager of the antimony mine in Burnt Bridge, and it had a circular carriage drive, carriage house and stables, a hutch in the whacking great kitchen for bread and milk & meat deliveries, a huuuuge bath with a mahogany surround - and outside toilets. One for the gentry, and another one for the servants. And I think from memory about 6 bedrooms, though some of those had been re-purposed as the library etc. Great place for a family to grow up, but suburbia covers all eventually.