Broadmeadows is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 17 km north from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Hume. At the 2006 Census, Broadmeadows had a population of 9985.

Broadmeadows is a sub - regional centre within the northern suburbs of Melbourne, and is often used as a reference for the suburbs around it, although this may be due to its former status as a municipality.

History

The Broadmeadows area, home to the Wurundjeri Aboriginal tribe prior to European settlement, was settled by pastoralists in the 1840s.

The original Broadmeadows is now known as Westmeadows, which lies to the west of the present Broadmeadows. The first Broadmeadows township was laid out by a Government survey in 1850. Ardlie Street was its commercial centre with a hotel (the Broadmeadows Hotel, now Westmeadows Tavern), the police station and the shire office (the District Roads Board Building, opened in 1866).

Broadmeadows' centre was altered when the railway line and station were opened two kilometres to the original centre's east in 1872. Shire loyalties clung to the old township until new civic offices were built near the railway station in 1928.

The Housing Commission of Victoria began the building of a 2,226 ha. estate in the Broadmeadows area in 1949. Not until 1975 did it begin building in the vicinity of the old township, which it called Westmeadows Heights. Between 1975 and 1979 it built over 900 houses in the area.

The first Broadmeadows Post Office (near Mickleham Road in today's Westmeadows) opened on January 1 1855, was renamed Broadmeadows West in 1955, Westmeadows in 1963 before closing in 1973. The second Broadmeadows Post Office was renamed in 1956 from Broadmeadows East (from 1923 the successor to Broadmeadows Railway Station Post Office open since 1902). It closed in 1968 the day Dallas (located centrally and open since 1966) became the third Broadmeadows Post Office.

This office reverted to Dallas in 1995, when Broadmeadows Square Post Office, on Pascoe Vale Road north of the station (previously named Meadow Fair from 1965 having replaced Jacana Post Office, to the south, open since 1961) was renamed and became the fourth distinct location of the Broadmeadows Post Office.

A later Broadmeadows East office, near Widford Street to the southeast of the station, opened in 1961, was renamed Broadmeadows South in 1969, and also remains open.