Irregular Writings
June 2013
Port/South
I spent most of the 90s living in the Port/South Melbourne area, in a manager’s flat above City Ford right next to the light rail overpass. The one where a truck gets its top knocked off every other week. Well it was actually next to a dim sim factory to tell the truth. Twenty-four hour security, though. It was a strictly light industrial area that was a ghost town on the weekends. The only people about were locals.
Albert Park and Middle Park had been getting poshed up for a couple of decades but this end was cool. Neighbourhood ladies chatted by the stone fence and their cats came out to say hello too. Our windows looked out onto the tall buildings of the city and a couple of gum trees hung over our rooftop garden, which our bedroom opened on to. Hey it was a lovely joint!
Like St Kilda when I first saw it, the streets were terrifically wide. Tanks could roll down them. South Melbourne was a funny mix of advertising people and auto repairers. There was an electrical and white goods store where I went to buy smokes. It was delightfully dodgy. Once they knew you, you asked for a brand and they went out the back and came back with the gear. At a price that was very competitive, as they would say on the business report.
Times change, of course, and the gentrification happened. Swallows and Ariel biscuit factory and the fire station were sold off for apartments along with many other quaint and cute operations that had hung on for longer than they should have. Mr Tippings variety store was in a block along Clarendon Street that had public housing at the back, next to the Town Hall. Gough Whitlam had ensured that the tenants would have a secure home for decades but that time and good will ran out and Jeff Kennett sold it as soon as he could. The tower blocks have been talked about for years by developers as being ugly and out of date. What they mean is that poor people shouldn’t have views of the sea like that.
The advertising business was there, in part, because of the many recording studios and film processing firms in the area. It’s still present there.
So it was that we found our way back to our old manor to play on a session. We took a break and wandered down Bay Street. We got lost on our way and drove aimlessly through the area known as ‘Beacon Cove’. It is a low level residential district, quite pretty and very successful. After finding an exit from the murmur of cul de sacs we came out at Port Melbourne pier. We had thought we were driving through the remnant nub of ‘Garden City’ but realised we were in the area that had previously been termed a ‘toxic waste dump’ unfit for habitation. Times had changed and those pesky red tape rules were relaxed in the 90s. Thus, Beacon Cove. I remember the advance settlement in that frontier area being a fish and chip emporium built by Rex Hunt. It was symbolic of the changes in the area. It went from poor and light-fingered to super-rich with no intervening bohemian time zone.
So we walked down old Bay Street. It used to have such a spectacularly sad and bereft annual street festival. It was funny. Now it has all been retooled and chromed to hell. I still read of the occasional murder and beating around here but it’s decidedly snooty. Fish and Chipperys and boutiquetries abound.
My comrade was wanting a few drinks after a hard session behind the kit. We found a shop that sold liquor. Too much choice! Whither the poor drunk nowadays? We stared at the rows of wine and whiskey and gin, bourbon, vodka, brandy and then headed to the beer at the back. There were a lot of staff. Ignored the shaven headed boss who was boring a young junior staff member, also didn’t make eye contact with the hipster-glassed Ned Kelly bearded fellow. What could he possibly know? We saw a thin gent who had lank hair and looked like a desperate alcoholic. A human being! So we thought. He proceeded to educate us about lagers and stouts and ales and interesting little breweries and cute modern ciders. I had to turn away as I was laughing too much. My partner asked for a famous Sydney brand of stout and got a lecture about genetically modified hops and the colouring that is used in such corporate fare. I wondered, as we walked out, what would be the fate of some poor desperate who just wanted to get pissed – as did my pard – just a little bit?
I went to the supermarket and filled a bag with stuff and then left it in the aisle, as there was not a single checkout person to bag it and pay. All the shoppers seemed to prefer it that way. Mean, these new people!
I would still love to live in this Bayside area though. Part of me is still there, wandering about those lovely, wide streets, lost in contemplation, wondering how to get out.
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