In 1887, in addition to the hotels there was also a general store, three or four dwellings and a state school. It took another year for speculators to arrive in the district looking for land and it was about this time that development, and suitable drainage work started on the large swampy land nearby. By 1900 the town included a large produce, livestock and furniture market, opened by Ernest Witton in 1895. And, as the area was becoming more prosperous, a petition was prepared in April 1899 to ask the Bank of Australasia to establish an agency in Bunyip and to send an officer two days a week.