Suburb Snapshot: Brown Hill

The size of Brown Hill is approximately 7.9 square kilometres and has five parks covering nearly 10.5 per cent of total area.

The population of Brown Hill in 2011 was 3078 people and by the 2016 Census increased to 3565, showing a population growth of 15.8 per cent.

Brown Hill is a residential and rural/residential suburb about 3km north-east of central Ballarat and was originally a gold-mining hamlet on the Yarrowee River. The place name originated as Brownbill’s Diggings, named after an early gold discoverer, William Brownbill.

A school, named Eureka National, opened at the Diggings in 1853 on the site of a future Methodist church. Four years later the ‘Brown’s Hill’ post office opened. The school’s name changed to become Common School in 1863. The Brown Hill primary school, designed by Henry Bastow and built in 1877, was the most prominent building and has been renamed Caledonian Primary School.

CoreLogic data indicates that the predominant age group in Brown Hill is 0-9 years with households in Brown Hill being primarily couples with children and likely to be repaying $1000 – $1399 per month on mortgage repayments, and in general, people in Brown Hill work in a professional occupation.

In 2011, 70.8 per cent of the homes in Brown Hill were owner-occupied compared with 70.9 per cent in 2016.

Source: Ballarat Times News Group