Moonee Valley Family & Local History Blog

  Buckley Park is a wonderful green space in Essendon, home to a tennis club, bowls club and the Essendon Doutta Stars football club. But it wasn’t always a space for recreation and has been through many changes- what used to be on the land that we now call Buckley Park? Post European settlement, the land was granted in 1850 to Mr William Hoffman, one of the few Germans living in the area at the time. It was bounded by Hoffmans Road, Keilor Road, Buckley Street and Hedderwick Street. The allotment was later known as Buckely Park Estate and was quite a large bit of land, most of which was used for grazing. Hoffman built his original residence in 1867, and named it ‘Butzbach’ after a town in Germany. It was a lovely large bluestone homestead,  near what is now the corner of Nimmo Street and Spencer Street. A section of the original Doutta Galla County of Bourke Parish Allotments , drawn and reproduced at the Department of Lands and Survey, Melbourne, Victoria. Courtesy of the...

If you have anything more than a passing interest in Melbourne history you’ve probably heard of a man named William Buckley : an escaped convict who lived for years with the Wurundjeri people in what would become the Port Phillip District before reintegrating into white society once Melbourne was established. That William Buckley is a fascinating fellow – but this post is all about a different William Buckley, a man known as “Captain William Buckley” who moved to the Moonee Moonee Ponds District back in 1840. If you look into the origins of the names of Buckley Street and Buckley Park you’ll find they both took their names from Captain William Henry Buckley, a prosperous and prominent early resident of the area who earned enough to fund building a mansion in Ascot Vale by working as a government administrator. So far so dull.  But wait… if he was an administrator – Chief Clerk of the Survey Department at the peak of his career – why is he called Captain? And also, can Chief Clerks...