the huge paddocks around the house
Used to be a real estate agent (Lindsay Crapp ? - I rented the premises upstairs) located next to De Marco's pub and he was an aviation enthusiast of note.
Around the walls were numerous photos of the early days at Essendon. Those paddocks were shown very clearly ... the airport was well and truly out in the sticks in the early days.
As a Boeing airports chap told me decades ago .. the general technique is to build an airport in the bush .. twenty odd years later all the housing around results in the usual calls for the airport to be shut down.