How did the Mountain Gate estate come about?
The story dates back to the 19th century, but the suburban area we see today is a product of some determined local residents in the mid-20th century.
When the area that’s now the City of Knox was first sub-divided in the 1860s, the area that became Mountain Gate consisted of two vast Crown Allotments, occupying the whole area between Ferntree Gully Road and Monbulk Creek.
These were purchased by Sir William (‘Money’) Clarke in the 1870s.
Clarke had no intention of building a house or living on the property.
He made his fortunes by land speculation, acquiring huge areas of land all over Victoria to make a profit when the value increased.
The value went backwards in the 1890s with the collapse of the land boom.
The area remained farmland until the late 1950s.
The unlikely progenitor of Mountain Gate was a Russian Jew from Shanghai named Isador Magid (sometimes spelled Magit).
What a Russian Jew was doing in Shanghai is a long story.
In any event, young Isador arrived in Australia in 1948 literally without a penny to his name.
Ten years later, Magid was a millionaire, in pounds, not dollars.
How did he achieve that?
The answer is now literally everywhere: Isador Magid was the man who invented the popular cheese snack, Twisties.
Magid believed that young home-owners in the country that had done well by him should have the opportunity to own their own homes.
With that in mind, Magid developed several sub-divisions on the edge of the city such as Mountain Gate (another was Fountain Gate at Narre Warren).
Blocks of land were made available cheap by cutting back on basic services, such as sealed roads, sewerage, and telephone connections.
Numerous young couples made their home at Mountain Gate, but for years the area was notorious in winter for storm-water overflows, lack of street lighting, and the potholes in the gravel roads were the bane of many a motor-car suspension.
Residents of Mountain Gate in the early 1960s, campaigning for improved services, were instrumental in the separation of the Shire of Knox from the Shire of Ferntree Gully in 1963.
The Shire of Knox became the City of Knox in 1969.
Isador Magid passed in 2004, but before his death he had seen his ideas behind Mountain Gate vindicated.
Mountain Gate is now an integrated part of the Knox community, and also a memorial to the detemination of Isador Magid, and the young Australians who took up the opportunity Magid provided to them.
