Traralgon homes and asbestos, by era

Before the mill: railway cottages and the first subdivisions

Traralgon was a small rail town long before paper or power. From 1903 the railway ran a service depot here with more than 90 workers, and the town pushed past its original 1858 boundaries. Workers' cottages went up south of the line, around what's now Queen's Parade (it used to be Railway Parade). North of the centre, the old Traralgon Park estate was cut up and sold from 1907. That's how Moore Street and Campbell Street, now Gordon Crescent, came to sit beyond Grey Street. In 1933 the whole town was 2,303 people.

The original part of a house this old can predate fibro's heyday; nationally, cement sheet peaked from 1945 to the late 1960s. The catch is ninety-odd years of changes. A back verandah closed in as a sleepout, a bathroom redone in the sixties, a laundry lean-to, a garage down the side. Look at the add-ons separately from the original rooms, because that's where any later sheet would have come in.

The APM years: a thousand company houses

Australian Paper Manufacturers ran a pilot mill at Maryvale in 1936 and 1937, and the main mill was going by 1939. The company then did something that still shapes the town: it built 1,000 houses for its workers in Traralgon. The estates followed garden suburb ideas, with generous open space, and some of the street names honour APM employees killed in the Second World War. Senior staff got six larger houses in Kay, Clarke and Grey Streets. Workers could buy their house, with the rent they'd paid counting toward the price, and the council's heritage study calls these estates a major part of Traralgon's housing today.

Built from the late 1930s through the 1950s, APM houses sit right across fibro's peak years. We couldn't find a record of what share were clad in cement sheet, so don't assume the whole house is. The places to check are the usual ones: the eaves lining, the walls behind the bathroom and laundry tiles, any sleepout, the vinyl floor with its backing, the lining of an old switchboard, and the outbuildings.

Housing Commission: Gordon Street and the post-war rush

In 1945 the Housing Commission took over a large piece of Traralgon Park around Gordon Street and built 199 houses there, finishing in 1952. Private builders were busy too, with estates like the one in Anderson Street, and plenty of big old houses were turned into boarding houses. 'Etheldale' at 15 Collins Street housed APM staff from 1946 to 1954. The town went from 4,384 people in 1947 to 8,845 in 1954 and 12,300 by 1961.

You'll read online that Commission houses were fibro through and through. We looked for a source that says so about Traralgon and didn't find one, so we won't repeat it. What's documented is the timing: these houses went up in the decade cement sheet was at its national peak. Check them, and don't assume either way. Later the Commission built a whole town nearby, in brick; see Churchill.

The Loy Yang boom: brick veneer and the 1970s and 80s

Two Loy Yang power stations were announced in 1967 and construction of the first started in 1977. Tradespeople and SEC workers poured in. Traralgon had 14,666 people in 1971, 18,490 in 1981 and 19,774 in 1991. The old Shire also approved big rural subdivisions on the edge of town and out at Traralgon South, Hazelwood North and Callignee, though the local history society's account doesn't say in which years (see those localities).

This is the brick veneer era. Our sense of the era is that houses of that age typically have fibro eaves, fibro behind the wet-area tiles, a fibro-lined garage or a shed with a super six roof; nobody has surveyed Traralgon to confirm it. Asbestos cement manufacture stopped in 1987, and Latrobe City's homeowner fact sheet draws its line at 1990: a home built before then probably contains asbestos.

A word on the east side. You'll hear older parts of east Traralgon called commission areas. We haven't found a record naming those streets, so take any forum list with a grain of salt. And "Traralgon East" in the Census is a different place again: a separate locality of 1,780 people on the rural-residential fringe east of town, almost all detached houses, not the older east side.

After 2003: the newer estates

Asbestos building products were banned nationally from 31 December 2003, and Traralgon kept growing straight through the change. Victorian Places puts the town at 21,960 people in 2006. The 2021 Census counted 26,907. Most of the estates on the northern and eastern edges went up in those years.

If your house was built after the ban, its building products shouldn't contain asbestos. The exception is anything older on the block: a boundary fence that was there before the subdivision, a shed that came with the land.

What the era tells you, and what it doesn't

A rough guide, by when the house was built. The Census doesn't record build years, so nobody can map this street by street:

• Before 1940: check the add-ons and renovations more than the original rooms.
• 1940s to 60s, APM and Commission years: eaves, wet-area walls, sleepouts, vinyl backing, fences and outbuildings.
• 1970s and 80s: eaves, bathroom and laundry walls, garages, shed roofs, an old switchboard's lining.
• After 2003: building products should be asbestos-free.

Latrobe City Council says about three in four homes in the city are likely to contain asbestos, against roughly one in three nationally. That's a reason to check before you drill, not a reason to panic. Bonded sheet that's left alone and in good condition is rated very low risk by the state's homeowner guidance. A lab test settles what a photo can't; see testing and inspection. For what a job costs, see the cost guide.

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