Lessons learnt and the tale of Tally Ho
Also including: Local events happening during November
Matthew Sims
October 29, 2025
⏱️ The 88th edition of our newsletter is a seven-minute read.
Hi there 👋
Matthew Sims here, your reporter at the Eastern Melburnian.
🐶 🐱 On Saturday, I popped along to the Dog and Cat Lovers Festival at Melbourne Showgrounds and got the chance to pet and say hi to a wide array of big, small, fluffy and scruffy dogs and cats. Here’s a couple of my best pics from the day, including me looking very excited that buses replaced trains in between Box Hill and Parliament station.
📰 In terms of recent news across the east, I’ve been chasing up comments from Monash councillor Elisha Lee on her attendance of the 11th World Korean Politicians Forum last month for about three weeks and received a response from her last week.
❓The main questions I asked were:
What lessons and advice has she brought back from her trip?
And how can they be translated to help Monash residents?
🗣️ Lee’s response said the forum covered practical ideas on how elected leaders and governments could “bridge gaps between migrant communities” through better language access, culturally attuned communication and more partnerships between community groups and their local representatives.
💭 I’m keen to speak more with Lee about how she hopes to implement these learnings into a local context.
🕳️ In another one of my descents into a Google rabbit hole, I took a look into the history of Tally Ho.
🗺️ I’d recently seen it pop up on Google Maps, but hadn’t heard of it before. My research uncovered tales of a publican who was fined five pounds for hiding from his wife and forgetting to lock the door behind him and now, Whitehorse Council’s plan to deliver more development to the locality over the next 15 years.
🗞️ Here’s what the Eastern Melburnian has been up to:
In early September, Monash councillor Elisha Lee attended a four-day forum in Seoul. She told the Eastern Melburnian the trip made her feel “deeply energised to continue serving” Monash and ensuring every resident “feels seen, heard and valued”.
WHAT’S ON THIS WEEK 🎟️
FRIDAY 31/10/25 & SATURDAY 01/11/25, 5-10PM | Haunted Theatre @ Knox Community Arts Centre
FRIDAY 31/10/25, 4.30-7.30PM | Halloween @ Wyreena
📰 RECENT LOCAL HEADLINES
Monash Jells Ward councillor Elisha Lee, who migrated from South Korea to Australia as a child and was the first Korean-Australian person elected as a councillor in the state, recently attended a forum in South Korea alongside politicians from across the globe.
The Eastern Melburnian reached out to the councillor with two questions:
What lessons and advice has she brought back from her trip?
And how can they be translated to help Monash residents?
The South Korean capital of Seoul has a predicted population of 9.6 million people as of last year. In contrast, the LGA of Monash, in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, has an estimated population of a little over 209,000 as of 2024.
Monash is home to the second largest Korean population in the state, while more than 54 percent of its population is born overseas and more than 56 percent speak a language other than English at home.
Lee attended the 11th World Korean Politicians Forum from September 2 to 5, alongside more than 50 councillors and state and federal elected officials of Korean heritage from a number of countries, including New Zealand, the United States, Canada, the UK, China, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.
Lee first discussed her trip during a late September council meeting, in which she described it as a “very interesting” event, where she was able to speak about how to “better engage with the diaspora communities that make up multicultural communities”.
“We discussed topics like affordable housing, maternal child health services and transport planning,” Lee told the chamber. “It was really valuable to gain that intercity comparative perspective and I look forward to drawing on my experience.”
On Tuesday October 7, the Eastern Melburnian reached out to Lee to discuss the potential of an interview via a video call, in person or over the phone.
However, she requested we send questions via email for her to prepare a written statement to be approved by Monash Council’s media team.
The Eastern Melburnian sent a follow-up email requesting a response on October 17 and then called Lee on October 21, shortly after which we received an email statement responding to some of our questions.
Lee said the trip was “fully funded by the Korean Government, via the Overseas Koreans Cooperation Centre, a subsidiary of Overseas Koreans Agency”.
“The funding covered return flights, accommodation, and participation costs,” Lee told the Eastern Melburnian. “I was invited by the Korean Government, through the recommendation of the Korean Consul-General of Melbourne.”
Lee said although engaging with Korean diasporic communities was the key theme of the event, “many of the challenges discussed have broader relevance to multicultural and migrant communities here in Monash”.
“Monash’s thriving multicultural community contributes to our local economy, culture and social fabric, yet often face barriers to fully accessing the services, representation and opportunities available to them,” said Lee.
Attendees spent time discussing practical ideas on how elected leaders and governments could “bridge gaps between migrant communities” through better language access, culturally attuned communication and more partnerships between community groups and their local representatives.
Lee said she had created an “enduring network of leaders” during her time at the event, allowing her to learn about how other communities deal with a number of issues, such as the kinds of family violence initiatives they have in their jurisdictions.
Lee also met with councillors and officials from the Seoul Metropolitan Government, including the City Council’s first female chair, Hojung Choi.
Seoul faces complex issues to deliver housing, transport and family wellbeing services to more than nine million people, and Lee also visited the Seoul Transport Operation and Information Service, where high-pollution vehicles are prohibited from entering heritage and high-density precincts for most of the day.
Other discussions included how Seoul is delivering youth housing developments on city-owned land as well as free health check-ups for parents and financial support for new families.
Lee said she felt “deeply energised to continue serving” Monash and ensuring every resident “feels seen, heard and valued”.
Looking through Google Maps for my next story recently, I came across a name I hadn’t heard of before: Tally Ho.
It didn’t look like a suburb, but then what was it?
And how did it get the name Tally Ho?
The term “tally-ho” dates back to the mid-to-late 1700s, when hunters used it to tell the other hunters that their prey has been caught - based on the French “taille haut” or “swords up!”.
Located on Highbury Road, which divided the former parishes of Nunawading and Mulgrave, Tally Ho began its development when a general store was built at the corner of Blackburn Road and Highbury Road in the 1860s.
However, the name of Tally Ho first appeared in connection to the area in 1877 when the local hotel named itself the Tally Ho Hotel.
A search through the archives brought up a number of newspaper articles referencing the Tally Ho Hotel over the years.
However, the most unusual was on June 17, when a constable entered the bar and found the owner, a James Watson, crouching behind the counter.
The Age reported that when the constable asked Watson what he was doing, he said he was “hiding from his wife” in the hopes of jumping out and scaring her.
Watson received a fine of five pounds for not having all doors leading to the bar locked outside of trading hours.
A race track was built near the hotel in 1898, with the 1899 Easter Monday attracting about 2000 people to spectate foot and horse racing as well as buckjumping events.
The name of Tally Ho was also connected to a boys’ training farm, launched in 1903 by the Central Methodist Mission.
The facilities acted as a farming operation overseen by staff members of the Central Methodist Mission and Wesley Central Mission, with governing councils then formed by the orphan children or wards of the state as young as six who had been in the criminal court system or suffered from parental neglect.
A number of alleged instances of abuse have been reported over the years in relation to the farm, including an incident where the farm manager hit a boy in 1935 and years of alleged abuse.
The facility moved from being a training farm to focus on offering compassionate psychological support before eventually closing in 1986.
Now located around the intersection of Burwood Highway and Springvale Road, the State Government has designated Tally Ho as an “Activity Centre”, with an office park and technology hub providing about 3,750 jobs.
In late 2023, Whitehorse Council started work to prepare a Structure Plan for the Tally Ho Activity Centre, which would outline the land use and development plans for Tally Ho over the next 15 years to 2041.
The council released the draft plan for public consultation from March 11 to April 8.
Councillors approved the final plan during this week’s council meeting, with about $60,000 included in the 2025/26 budget.
SEEN THIS WEEK 🤓
Looking at national news
Here’s a look into the work from Archie Milligan over at our sister publication, The National Account, that piqued my interest.
He recently got the chance to sit down for about half an hour with Environment Minister Murray Watt, with the main topic being Australia’s environmental protection laws.
What piqued my interest was that since the late 90s, the country’s logging industry has been exempt from the national environmental protection laws.
Milligan asked the minister if, as part of his reforms, he plans to change this.
Bringing new life to Boronia Mall
After my piece looking into the history of Boronia Mall and the ever-growing push to promote it, I returned earlier this week to film a piece showcasing some of the workers and owners I chatted with.
It was positive to see it was pretty busy on a Tuesday morning, with the new bookshop in the old Gloria Jean’s site also setting up shop another welcome sight.
What's on across Melbourne's eastern suburbs in November
As the sun comes out and the weather warms up, we have well and truly hit the season of shows, festivals and fetes, with this month’s events lists including the Maroondah Festival on Sunday November 9, the Kilsyth Festival on Sunday November 23 and the Lilydale and Yarra Valley Show on Saturday November 15 and Sunday November 16.
Thanks for catching up with us this week at the Eastern Melburnian. We hope you enjoyed this issue, and we’d love to hear your thoughts. We’ll be back on Friday to shine a spotlight on the under-reported issues in our patch, so stay tuned!
Cheers,
Matthew and the Eastern Melburnian team