By Brendan Rees
Graeme Facey remembers the time when milk used to be delivered on a horse and cart in Cranbourne.
“It was a little country town and people still rode their horses up the main street,” he recalled.
The 79 year-old Cranbourne North was one of many residents who attended last Saturday’s celebrations for Cranbourne’s 150th milestone.
He says his family came to Cranbourne back in the early 1860s and now has seven generations of family from the area.
“My dad had moved to Melbourne so I was born in Essendon.”
Mr Facey says he enjoyed travelling to Cranbourne for holidays as a child.
“I spent a lot of time here. Coming here and you could ride the horse – that was something I loved doing.”
He says he moved to Cranbourne in 1950, adding “it was very quiet little place really.”
“In the 1950 they were still delivering the bread in a horse drawn bakers’ cart.”
“Coming to live here, I caught the train every day to go to Oakleigh tech and that was the nearest tech school.”
He said watching the small town turn into a busy, booming suburb was staggering.
“If you look at it all the development of Cranbourne into a huge sprawling suburb it is probably the most notable thing.”
There was still plenty of farm land between Cranbourne and Oakleigh, he says.
“Years ago we would it very difficult to recognise almost any road other than just the geographical shape of it.”
Mr Facey remembers the old Melbourne Hunt club which was located on Narre Warren Road.
“You could ride across all over the district across all the different properties.”
But these days, he cannot believe how everything has altered so much.
He says the amount of traffic and housing is “remarkably different.”
