Jacana, Victoria
suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Jacana () is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 14 km (8.7 mi) north of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Hume local government area. Jacana recorded a population of 2,187 at the 2021 census.
Jacana is located north of the Western Ring Road, south of Johnstone Street and between the Craigieburn railway line and Moonee Ponds Creek.
History
The name Jacana was applied to an area between Broadmeadows and Glenroy in the 1950s by the Housing Commission of Victoria (HCV). The name comes from Jacana Avenue, to the east of the Craigieburn railway line (therefore, technically not in Jacana itself). Both the street and the suburb are slightly to the north of the Jacana railway station, which was built to service the suburb in 1959. However, Jacana as a built landscape did not spring fully formed under the aegis of the HCV.
The streets in the southern section of Jacana were laid out in 1923, when 861 lots were offered for sale on land which had formerly been owned by Duncan Kennedy, a farmer in the area from the mid-1840s. The Housing Commission retitled some of the streets, including after prominent sports persons who competed in the 1956 Olympics), and built most of the housing stock in this section of Jacana in the 1950s. Only a few houses in Jacana—notably those in Pascoe Vale Road—predate the Housing Commission's arrival in Broadmeadows. In the late 1950s, a picture of the "daily needs" shopping centre in Emu Parade appeared in the Housing Commission's Annual Report of 1958–59, presumably because it represented the progressive and ever-expanding nature of HCV operations.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Jacana, Victoria” is suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Jacana, Victoria and suburb, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q14935170. Authority coordinates are -37.680, 144.912. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2021, 1959, 1923 and 1956.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Jacana, Victoria”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Jacana, Victoria primary sources, Jacana, Victoria archive and Jacana research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Jacana, Victoria”?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Jacana, Victoria” 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.