Division of Bourke
former Australian federal electoral division (1901–1949)
The Division of Bourke was an Australian electoral division in Victoria. The division was proclaimed in 1900, and was one of the original 65 divisions to be contested at the first federal election. The division was named for Sir Richard Bourke, Governor of New South Wales at the time of the founding of Melbourne. After 1910, it was a safe seat for the Australian Labor Party, but was lost to an independent Labor member in 1946.
When the division was first proclaimed, it covered a large area of the northern suburbs of Melbourne, spanning from Essendon in the west, to what was later Watsonia North in the north-east, and to Ivanhoe East in the south-east. The division underwent boundary changes throughout its existence and at one point, also covered Thomastown and Eltham. It underwent its largest boundary change in 1922, when it was significantly shrunk to cover mainly the suburbs of Brunswick and Coburg only, as well as parts of Pascoe Vale. The lost areas were replaced by the expanded Division of Batman and Division of Flinders.
The division was abolished in 1949. It was replaced by the similarly named Division of Burke (named after a different person Robert O'Hara Burke), which also covered the Brunswick area, and the newly created Division of Wills which covered the Coburg area.
“Division of Bourke” enters the record as former Australian federal electoral division (1901–1949). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Division, Bourke and former can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Division of Bourke” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.