Town by town snapshot – Carisbrook

Carisbrook is approximately 122.4 square kilometres in size and has 12 parks covering nearly 4.7 per cent of total area.

The population in 2011 was 1141 people and by the 2016 Census had essentially held steady at 1136 people, showing a minor decline of 0.4 per cent in the area during that time.

Carisbrook is a rural township on the Pyrenees Highway and the old Castlemaine to Maryborough railway line, eight kilometres east of Maryborough.

Reputedly the town’s name came from ‘Carrie’s Brook’, named after Caroline Bucknall, the daughter of E. G. Bucknall, an early local pastoralist.

However, before the town was surveyed in 1851 there was a police camp and lock up named Camp Carisbrook, implying that the name could have had another origin and there were pre-existing Carisbrook’s in New Zealand and on the Isle of Wight.

Carisbrook was toward the edge of the Maryborough goldfields, but a good water supply underpinned its prosperity.

Local landowners Joyce and Simson opened a flour mill in 1856 and the first store opened in 1853 with an Anglican church and school starting in 1855.

There were bakeries, a brewery, four hotels, brickyards and several stores when Carisbrook was proclaimed a borough on 7 August 1857.

A railway station was originally opened when the line was constructed in 1874

Carisbrook competed with Maryborough for a few years for district leadership, but Maryborough’s centrality in the goldfields gave it prosperity that was unavailable to predominantly agricultural Carisbrook.

On 1 October 1915, when the borough’s population was fewer than 1000, it was united with Tullaroop Shire.

The area’s agricultural economy kept the town’s population from falling under 300, and civic works such as tree planting and improvement of reserves took place.

The Housing Commission opened a mobile homes factory in Carisbrook in 1950, and in 1982 the ribbon was cut on a leisure centre – providing a venue for several indoor sports.

In September 2010 and again in January 2011 many parts of regional Victoria experienced widespread severe flooding.

In Carisbrook the town was completely inundated from floodwater in Deep Creek with 800 people evacuated and many homes damaged.

Damage was sustained to Caroline’s Colonial Restaurant, the building established in 1853 as the town’s first grocery store.

CoreLogic data indicates that the predominant age group in Carisbrook is 60-69 years with households being primarily childless couples and are likely to be repaying $1000 – $1399 per month on mortgage. In general, people in Carisbrook work in a labourer occupation.

In 2011, 82.3 per cent of the homes in Carisbrook were owner-occupied compared with 82 per cent in 2016.

 

TITBIT:

The Housing Commission opened a mobile homes factory in Carisbrook in 1950.

 

Population: 1136

Male: 50.1%

Female: 49.9%

Median age: 44

5-year population change: -0.4%

House median value: $401,000

Change in Median Price: (5yrs) is 119.2%

Median asking rent per week: $235

Average length of ownership: 8 years

Owner occupiers: 85%

Renters: 15%

 

House median sale price:

January 2022: $364,000

January 2021: $320,000

January 2020: $310,000

January 2019: $232,500

January 2018: $240,000

 

House sales per annum:

Period ending January 2022: 24

Period ending January 2021: 11

 

Land median sale price:

January 2022: $98,000

January 2021: $82,000

 

Land sales per annum:

Period ending January 2022: 9

Period ending January 2021: 8