Banyule City Council

The 21 suburbs of Banyule City lie on 63 square kilometres between 7 and 21 kilometres north-east of central Melbourne. These suburbs are: Bellfield, Briar Hill, Bundoora, Eaglemont, Eltham, Eltham North, Greensborough, Heidelberg, Heidelberg Heights, Heidelberg West, Ivanhoe, Ivanhoe East, Lower Plenty, Macleod, Montmorency, Rosanna, St Helena, Viewbank, Watsonia, Watsonia North and Yallambie. The Yarra River runs along the City’s south border while the west is defined by Darebin Creek.

Banyule’s landscape is gently to steeply undulating, apart from some relatively flat land in the west and on the river floodplains. Native vegetation flourishes in the east and north-east, while exotic trees and shrubs dominate the City’s southern and western parts.

Banyule is renowned for its open spaces and plentiful parklands, especially along the Yarra and Plenty River valleys. There are 466 hectares of council-owned open space in Banyule, as well as substantial areas of parkland managed by Parks Victoria. These provide a wealth of recreational, environmental and tourism opportunities for the region. There are sites of botanical, zoological, habitat and heritage significance, including aboriginal archaeological sites and scar trees, and points of interest associated with the Heidelberg School of Artists.

The city is primarily a residential area and retaining the character of these individual neighbourhoods is important to the local community.

There are industrial areas in Heidelberg West, Greensborough/Briar Hill and Bundoora, as well as institutions such as the Austin and Repatriation Medical Centre and Simpson Army Barracks. Banyule also has a range of educational, health and leisure facilities.

Banyule is the active resident’s dream place to live, with many excellent community leisure facilities including indoor aquatics and fitness centres at Ivanhoe, West Heidelberg and Watsonia and a 50 metre outdoor pool at Greensborough. Greensborough also has a synthetic athletics track, while a hockey centre and indoor netball stadium can be found at Bellfield and Macleod respectively. There are other playing fields, tennis and bowling clubs throughout the municipality.

Cycling and walking through Banyule is a popular pastime, made enjoyable by the many kilometres of bicycle and pedestrian trails throughout the city, particularly along the Yarra and Plenty Rivers and the Darebin Creek.

For more about Banyule, see Explore Banyule.