Endeavour Hills, Victoria
Endeavour Hills is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, south-east of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Casey local government area. Endeavour Hills recorded a population of 24,455 at the . Endeavour Hills is bordered by the Monash Freeway and Dandenong Creek to the west, Police Road and Churchill Park Drive to the north, Hallam North Road to the east, and Eumemmerring Creek to the south. History The land in the area was home firstly to the Aboriginal people and was later settled by Europeans, who came after the 1830s. They mainly used the land for farming and cattle runs. The earliest landowner of the area was Thomas Herbert Power who had owned the area from the 1850s extending from Power Road, almost to Berwick and north to Heatherton Road. The suburb was named after Captain James Cook's ship, 'The Endeavour'. Other suggested names at the time included Pine Hill and Piney Ridge, due to the number of pine trees in the area. In 1970, the name 'Endeavour Hills' was coined in honour of the two hundredth anniversary of Captain James Cook's arrival in Botany Bay. The estate was officially opened in 1974 under this name. In 1974 houses, shops, schools and parks began to be established. The suburb as known today began with the development of a small housing estate named Endeavour Hills. The estate was designed to have its own community services for every-day living, such as its own leisure centre, shopping centre, library, medical centres, child care centres, kindergartens, public and private schools. The suburb was created with plenty of parkland, bike paths, and safe playing areas for children. The developers of Endeavour Hills aimed to attract people by offering families a neighbourly and spacious place to live. The catch phrase was 'a better place to live' where everything looked green and the land looked like a sort of paradise. The original estate sales office was located in what is now the Joseph Banks Medical Centre. A statue of explorer James Cook stood outside; new streets were named around the explorer James Cook, his ship the Endeavour, and fellow sailors and explorers. These include James Cook Drive, Thomas Mitchell Drive, Matthew Flinders Avenue, John Fawkner Drive, Arthur Phillip Drive and others. Endeavour Hills Post Office opened on 5 September 1983. Suburb profile Endeavour Hills is a hilly and leafy residential suburb with many parks, gardens and a variety of trees and birdlife. It has underground utilities (electricity, gas, telecommunications, water) street lighting, wide roads, footpaths and an abundance of native trees have been planted on naturestrips. Many houses have been built on steep land blocks and have distant views of the surrounding suburbs, some as far away as Frankston, Chadstone, Pakenham, Port Philip Bay and in some cases the CBD. Endeavour Hills consists of modern low-density residential housing – single, double and triple level brick houses – built on 1/4, 1/2, 1 or more acre blocks. A meagre of ground-level townhouses and units exist.