Sunbury, Victoria

The Shire of Bulla was a local government area about 40 kilometres (25 mi) northwest of Melbourne, the state capital of Victoria, Australia. The shire covered an area of 422.17 square kilometres (163.0 sq mi), and existed from 1862 until 1994.

Sunbury Downs College is a secondary college located in the north-west regional town of Sunbury, Victoria, Australia. The College is set on a single campus located within the northern Melbourne suburb of Sunbury and caters for students in Years 7–12.

Sunbury railway station is the terminus of the suburban electrified Sunbury line in Victoria, Australia. It serves the north-western Melbourne suburb of Sunbury, and opened on 10 February 1859.The station is also serviced by V/Line services to Bendigo and Echuca. Disused station Rupertswood is located between Sunbury and Clarkefield.

The Sunbury Industrial School located on Jackson's Hill in Sunbury, Victoria, Australia, was a school developed to educate and house destitute children from 1864 until 1879. A 1,000-acre (4.0 km2) site was put aside in Sunbury following the implementation of the Neglected and Criminal Children's Act of 1864. Destitute or orphaned children were sent as wards of the state to learn a trade in the belief that this may then provide them with the skills necessary (once they were old enough), to provide and care for themselves. The school was co-educational although girls and boys were segregated. Boys were expected to learn a trade while girls were expected to handle menial tasks such as washing clothes, cleaning floors and to assist with cooking. The school consisted of ten large, unheated, bluestone buildings arranged in two rows of five. Located on the side of Jackson's Hill, they were called the Hill Wards. The open and exposed position of the buildings led to frequent illness and constant poor health of the children. The children were given rancid food, that they ate in their own rooms that by the time they received it, was cold. The children were given only a little water, no bedding, save for a blanket and many affected by Ophthalmia, went untreated, resulting in blindness. It was estimated that around 10 percent of children died within the first year of operation. This fact alone led to the school gaining the nickname of the Sunbury Slaughterhouse. Eventually, after public outcry, and after numerous Royal Commissions into the Industrial School System, by 1879 the Sunbury Industrial School was closed. The site was used as an asylum for the mentally ill from 1894 until around 1912, the patients were referred to as inmates. By 1914 at its peak, the Sunbury Lunatic Asylum housed 1000 patients. The asylum was renamed a psychiatric hospital and then a mental hospital. By the 1920s the Health Reformation Act came in and improved conditions. By 1968 until 1992, the site was called the Caloola Training Centre for the Intellectually Disabled. Presently, the site is used by Victoria University.

Sunbury Lunatic Asylum was a 19th-century mental health facility known as a lunatic asylum, located in Sunbury, Victoria, Australia, first opened in October 1879. Prior to being opened as an asylum, Sunbury was controlled by the Department of Industrial and Reformatory Schools (VA 1466). When Sunbury was acquired by the Hospitals for the Insane Branch (VA 2863) patients were transferred from the Ballarat Asylum (VA 2844) and the Ballarat Asylum was handed over to the Department of Industrial and Reformatory Schools. Patients were also transferred from Yarra Bend Asylum (VA 2839). Its proclamation as an asylum was published in the Government Gazette on 31 October 1879. Since its establishment, the title of the institution at Sunbury has been altered several times to reflect both the community's changing attitude towards mental illness and the Victorian Government's approach to the treatment of mentally disturbed persons. Despite the changes in designation the function and structure of the agency has not altered significantly, therefore the institution has been registered as one continuous agency. From its establishment until 1905 the institution at Sunbury was known as an Asylum. This title emphasised its function as a place of detention rather than a hospital which provided treatment for mentally ill people who could be cured. The Lunacy Act 1903 (No.1873) of changed the title of all "asylums" to "hospitals for the insane". This Act came into operation in March 1905. The Mental Hygiene Act 1933 (No.4157) altered the title to "mental hospitals". An asylum or hospital for the insane was any public building proclaimed by the Governor-in-Council and published in the Government Gazette as a place for the reception of mentally ill persons. An asylum could also provide wards for the temporary reception of patients as well as long term patients. Up until the Mental Health Act 1959 became operative in 1962 these "short-term" wards were known as "receiving houses" or "receiving wards". The Mental Health Act 1959 (No.6605) designated hospitals providing short-term diagnosis and accommodation as "psychiatric hospitals". However throughout its life Sunbury has been used almost exclusively for long-term patients. Patients could not be retained in an Asylum without a warrant requesting their admission. Prior to 1867 the warrant was signed by the Governor. After this date the Chief Secretary (VRG 26) was responsible for this function. From 1934 the Director of Mental Hygiene (VA 2866) and from 1952 the Chief Medical Officer of the Mental Hygiene Branch (VA 2866) were successively responsible for admission of patients. The Lunacy Act 1914 (No.2539) made provision for the admission of patients on a voluntary basis, i.e. on a patient's own request for a specified period of time. In 1962 under the provisions of the Mental Health Act 1959 (No.6605) Sunbury was proclaimed in the Government Gazette as a Mental Hospital and a Training Centre as it was responsible for mentally disturbed and mentally retarded patients. In 1985 responsibility for Sunbury was passed from the Mental Health Division (VA 6961) of the Department of Health II (VA 2695) to the Office of Intellectual Disability Services (VA 2909), a division of the Department of Community Services (VA 2633). It was used for a period thereafter as a training centre to accommodate intellectually handicapped persons. Victoria University accepted the Urban Land Authorities' offer in 1992 to take over the Caloola site and operated it as a university campus for several years; it closed the campus in 2011 but is still home to a primary and specialist school, 3NRG radio, and the Boilerhouse Theatre Company. In 2013, a group known as the Sunbury Asylum Alliance was established with the aim to reclaim the site for a community, training and tourism hub.

3NRG Incorporated is a community radio station based in Sunbury, Victoria.

Rupertswood railway station was located on the Melbourne – Bendigo railway in the north-western Melbourne suburb of Sunbury in Victoria, Australia. It was the last station in the state that operated only to service school traffic, with services only stopping to pick up and drop off passengers for the adjacent Salesian College.

Salesian College is an independent Roman Catholic, co-educational secondary school located in Sunbury, Victoria, Australia. The College is a member of the Sports Association of Catholic Co-educational Secondary Schools (SACCSS).

Rupertswood is a mansion and country estate located in Sunbury, 50 km north-northwest of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia. It is well known as the birthplace of The Ashes urn which was humorously presented to English cricket captain Ivo Bligh to mark his team's victory in an 1882–83 Test match series between Australia and England. Rupertswood is one of the largest houses constructed in Victoria and, although now subdivided, has significant farm land. The estate also had its own private railway station (until closure in 2004), and artillery battery. It is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register. The foundation stone for Rupertswood was laid on 29 August 1874 with around 1,000 people in attendance. The house was the country seat completed in 1876 for Sir William Clarke a land owner and pastoralist who was one of Australia's wealthiest men and the first Australian-born baronet. It was designed by local architect George L. Browne in the Free Classical style. From 1874 to 1876 Sir William Clarke employed notable landscape designer William Sangster to design and create the surrounding gardens.The estate was sold in 1925 to Hugh Victor McKay, a wealthy industrialist and inventor of the Sunshine Harvester. When McKay died in 1926, Rupertswood was bought by pastoralist William Naughton, and then in 1927 by the Salesian Society, which used the mansion and surrounding property as a male boarding school. The school later became co-educational, relocated into separate premises nearby, and is known as Salesian College, Rupertswood. In March 2006, the Commonwealth Games Queen's Baton Relay travelled to the area, where a re-enactment of the handing over of The Ashes to the English took place in front of a small local crowd. The mansion was restored with the help of interior designer and Victorian architecture specialist Jacqui Robertson and converted into a hotel that was often used for weddings and other formal events until its closure in 2014. The contents were auctioned on site in July 2014 by Glenelg Auction Centre. The building is now used as administration offices for Salesian College.

Buttlejorrk is a parish of the County of Bourke located to the west of Sunbury, in Victoria, Australia and a neighbourhood within the locality of Diggers Rest. It was named in 1839 by the surveyor William Darke. A township developed and was initially known as Aitken's Gap. By the 1890s it had commonly become known as Buttlejorrk. A Post Office opened on 5 September 1856 as The Gap, was renamed Buttlejork (sic) in 1875 and closed in 1919. One of the early settlers in the area was George Millett. George and his wife Suzanne established the Bald Hill Hotel, the first staging stop out of Melbourne on the road to the goldfields at Bendigo. The hotel was licensed in 1853 until 1907. The Aitken's Gap Gaol, now located in the forecourt of the Sunbury Police Station stood beside the hotel

The Electoral district of North Bourke was one of the original sixteen electoral districts of the old unicameral Victorian Legislative Council of 1851 to 1856. Victoria being a colony in Australia at the time. The district's area was defined as: "Bounded on the north by the great dividing range from the source of the River Plenty to the source of the Werribee River on the west by the Werribee River to Port Phillip Bay on the south by Port Phillip Bay to the mouth of the Yarra Yarra River and by that river to the confluence of the River Plenty and on the east by the River Plenty to its head in the great dividing range."From 1856 onwards, the Victorian parliament consisted of two houses, the Victorian Legislative Council (upper house, consisting of Provinces) and the Victorian Legislative Assembly (lower house).

Emu Bottom Homestead is a historic homestead near Sunbury, Victoria, Australia. Built c. 1836, Emu Bottom is the oldest existing farmhouse constructed by settlers in Victoria. It was so named because "it was low lying ground and the haunt of numerous emus." The main homestead and some of its outlying buildings were constructed from "local stone, dry coursed with creek mud."Emu Bottom is also a rare example of early Australian colonial architecture, with its "twelve paned deeply recessed windows ... recalling the old world ... while the homestead (was) also intelligently adapted to the new environment" with its wide verandas and easterly aspect.