Disquiet: Memoir and Murders

Chapter 3: Welcome to Glenroy!

This is a place that has seen generations of Australians come through and start their lives in this country and go on to bigger and better things.” Eddie McGuire.

 My house in Glenroy backed on to the Western Ring Road. Crossing a small bridge on Widford Street, you find that you have moved from Glenroy (near the Jacana end) to Broadmeadows. The celebrity Eddie McGuire grew up in Broadmeadows and thought it was not such a bad place to start out.

But Glenroy is different.

In the 1950s, when it matured from a farming area into a more urban place, it started to be known as “Gunroy”, because of all the shootings that occurred there. Not much has changed since then. There are still regular shootings. A few years ago, I found an online video news report about a shooting in 2011 in which a young woman was being interviewed on her front lawn.

I can just glimpse some houses in the background. I think she may have been in View Street or Daley Street, close to Bindi. She was explaining to the journalist how she had seen a vehicle in the street with someone shooting a rifle out of the window.

She was a pleasant looking girl, young and fresh faced. When she finished her description, she looked at the journalist and smiling, shrugged her shoulders and said, “Welcome to Glenroy!”