Strathmore

A historic precinct in the City of Mooney Valley, just to the north of Melbourne CBD, Stanmore was the chosen seat of a number of the landed gentry of the fledgling colony of Port Phillip.

One of those first prominent citizens was the Dublin-trained lawyer Edward Jones Brewster. Brewster, who ended his colonial life as a respected clergyman, was among the colony's first judicial officers and was given the honour of laying the first stone in the first bridge to cross the Yarra River.

Captains of commerce such as Thomas Napier, who constructed a number of 19th century Melbourne buildings, also settled his family atop a hill in Woodlands Street in a grand mansion named Rosebank.

The second, two-storeyed Rosebank is now part of a Catholic convent. The imposing, 42-room North Park Mansion, which still stands today, was built in 1889 for Alexander McCracken, who, at the tender age of 17, was the founding secretary of the Mighty Bombers of the Essendon Football Club.