Today it's a grey factory on Bakers Road in Coburg North, some 2?? kilometres south, which looks a bit like the meth lab in Breaking Bad.

Population centre of Victoria: 113-115 Bakers Road, Coburg North. Photo: Jason South

What that says about how we've changed as a society is open to interpretation.

A factory in an industrial estate is a strange setting for the state's population centre - a sort of "centre of gravity" around which the state's population is distributed.

Melbourne's population centre has moved, too, but it's only shifted 1?? kilometres west within the City of Glen Iris from a block of units in Park Road to a hardware store on Weir Street.

Population centre of Melbourne: 15 Weir Street, Glen Iris.

This is the point that is closer to more people in Greater Melbourne than anywhere else.

It's the place, as Melbourne University Professor Kevin O'Connor once told The Age, where, "if you run a business and you want to supply everyone in Melbourne, this is the best place to be".

Back in Coburg, though, the state's population centre, there isn't a single person in sight when The Age visits, only cars belting by in the rain.

The factory has no signage on its barbed wire and mesh fencing, so I can't tell what is manufactured here (hopefully not meth because I lost the ability to sprint when I fractured my ankle two years ago).

I follow the perimeter fence to what might be an entrance of sorts, a door that says Sales and Enquiries. But it's blocked off by a large pile of garbage bags.

Eventually I do find the front office. It's on a different street about 100 metres away, at the rear of the hulking grey shed with its big aluminium vats that hum.

There is a sign too. It's Ernest Hillier's, "makers of delectable chocolate since 1914".

Hallelujah! The population centre of Victoria is a chocolate factory.

Ernest Hillier also went into voluntary administration two years ago but that's another story. They're still in business but under different owners.

I ring a door bell that sounds like a car engine that won't start and eventually I meet Steve, the factory accountant, who is clearly a busy man with little time to indulge a journalist's irrelevant questions.

What's it like to be in Coburg North, the population centre of Victoria, I ask him.

He looks at me like I'm simple.

"It's very industrial."

Steve tells me the factory has 25 full-time staff who produce about 20 tonnes of chocolate a week including scorched almonds, chocolate bars and mixed gift boxes.

It might not be a comfortable house in Hadfield, but that's still pretty sweet.