Suburb by suburb snapshot Kangaroo Flat

Kangaroo Flat is approximately 18.4 square kilometres and has many parks covering nearly 35 per cent of total area.

The population in 2016 was 10,405 and by the 2021 Census the population had grown to 11,328 people, showing significant growth of 8.8 per cent in the area during that time.

Kangaroo Flat is a large suburb south-west of the Bendigo city centre.

The Bendigo Creek and some of its upstream tributary’s flow through Kangaroo Flat, and it was along the Bendigo Creek about four kilometres downstream at Golden Point that Bendigo’s early gold mining was concentrated.

There are reports of gold workings in Kangaroo Flat early in 1853, and it was the finding of the rich Crusoe gully west of Kangaroo Flat in mid-1853 that started a rush to the district.

The Bendigo district’s largest gold nugget weighing 377 ounces was found near Crusoe Gully in 1861.

The area was first named Yankee Boat Flat, but the pursuit and capture of a kangaroo by miners apparently caused a change of name.

Most mining was alluvial or by puddling machines until several companies began exploiting quartz reefs in 1871.

By the mid-1860s there were Anglican and Wesleyan schools, seven hotels, a railway station on the Melbourne to Bendigo line, and about 25 puddling machines at work.

In 1873 the Crusoe water reservoir was completed in Crusoe gully, an important step towards permanent water for Kangaroo Flat and Bendigo.

There was sustained mining activity throughout the 1870s and 1880s, but the next two decades saw the population fall to about two-thirds of the peak census figure reached in 1881.

Kangaroo Flat continued as a Bendigo outer suburb until the years following World War Two, when post war industries were attracted to it.

A Dunlop belting factory opened in 1948 and Bradford Cotton Mill in 1950, the mill – later Rocklea Spinning Mill – employed 324 workers in 1964 and 230 in 1993.

Kangaroo Flat has three sites on the Victorian Heritage Register: the railway station complex built 1862, the former common school constructed in 1870 and the Coliban water supply system which feeds into the Crusoe reservoir.

CoreLogic data indicates that the predominant age group in Kangaroo Flat is 20-29 years with households being primarily childless couples and are likely to be repaying on average $1300 per month on mortgages.

In general, people in Kangaroo Flat work in a labourer occupation.