My suburb has a bottle-o, a vape shop, three massage parlours … and no residents

The idea of a Melbourne suburb without a resident population is intriguing, especially when, as with Tottenham, that suburb is a mere 8 kilometres west of the CBD. I don’t own one of the factories, drive a forklift at one of the shipping container facilities, nor am I running a religious congregation in one of the warehouses. But I do have a connection. Having lived in nearby in Footscray for many years, I’ve driven every street in this gritty landscape.

For instance, on the morning described I’m driving with Hamish to Sunshine. He’s on his way to umpire at JR Parsons Reserve, a ground that is pure western suburbs with concrete silos that loom over the field and remind us of the area’s industrial identity. But for the most part, I don’t run or walk the dogs in Tottenham. The landscape of fenced-off probably toxic sites, stacked shipping containers and train lines hasn’t always felt inviting.

Walking is how my elder son (not the umpiring kind) discovered Tottenham. Braving its thistle-covered fields, exploring its abandoned heritage factories, he got to the heart of the place.

On adventures during COVID lockdown, he explored the former carpet factory on Paramount Road, a location that provided work for second world war migrants, and which in the mid-20th century became host to industries formerly located along the Maribyrnong River. Returning home with a 1970s porno mag and other treasures, he talked excitedly over dinner about Olympic/Olex Cables and the wool stores further west and south.

My rebel son’s explorations of Tottenham highlight that the suburb is, and has always been, a place of work, but there’s more to it.

Take Kylie, who’s worked in Tottenham for 35 years. The office where she sits each day is at Lot 102, or Allied Containers. To get there, you head down Sunshine Road past the shops and the function centre, Happy Receptions (now closed), then turn left into Olympia Street. The day I do so, I see one other pedestrian – who doesn’t seem to be in a good way – and many trucks.

Melbourne residents with no idea how to place where I am from this description, might remember seeing the black smoke from an industrial fire that occurred in August 2018 when a warehouse illegally laden with toxic chemicals went up in flames. The fire took 140 firefighters and more than a week to control. Within hours, dead creatures – eels, fish and birds – began turning up in Stony Creek, the waterway which runs like a damaged vein through the centre of Tottenham. Many of the reports about the fire described it as being in West Footscray – a reflection perhaps of Tottenham’s tendency to be off the radar.

I walk to Stony Creek; it feels like visiting a wounded but courageous friend. The presence of trees, weeds and grasses is a testament to the creek’s resilience given the damage wreaked by the noxious industries long-associated with Melbourne’s inner-west.

Having grown up in Altona, Kylie remembers when the funny-looking building on Somerville Road, that became a Cash Converters, was previously the closest McDonald’s. She met her husband working in Tottenham; one of her aunts worked, for 21 years, at Huntsman Chemicals on Somerville Road. Tottenham may not have residents in the conventional sense, but Kylie, who’s spent time there every day for decades is as familiar with the locale as most of us are with our gardens, streets and cafes.

As is Dave, who a few years ago bought a concrete box of a warehouse and set up a recording studio in Tottenham. The place is a wonder. Dave’s put together all the rooms and equipment himself; the non-parallel walls of the studio that make for a better sound, the makeshift “lounge room” under high ceilings where musicians relax during breaks between sessions.

Dave told me how one night, working late at the studio, he fell asleep. Waking to the sound of someone playing a saxophone he crept downstairs. He saw a man emerge from the hole in the cut wire fence that abuts the weed-covered train line, in front of the studio and across the car park that forms the centre of the landscape between Dave’s studio and the other concrete warehouses; these serve as everything from plumbing premises to “man sheds” for storing motorbikes and boats. The man was playing the sax, badly apparently, but was not otherwise harmful.

I asked Dave if he ever got the heebie-jeebies, being in such a lonely place at night, and if he sometimes wants more “nice stuff” around. “No”, he says. “I like chaos. I’m comfortable in my own company. This place suits me.”

Residents of Melbourne’s west are used to the dismissive comments from other parts of the city, such as “the only way to see the western suburbs is by flying over them, preferably at night”. Driving through Tottenham, as most of us typically do, can be a bit like flying over – it’s tempting to be condescending.

But I think of Tottenham as like the backyard kitchen in which my Greek neighbour cooked so she wouldn’t sully the inside, “proper” kitchen, which was kept for visitors. The engine room of Melbourne, it’s the place where people who live in our city’s richer, more traditionally beautiful suburbs locate the industries which generate the wealth that means they can stay away from Tottenham.

Having come to love the western suburbs precisely because of the industrial life that make them what they are, this suits me, as I imagine it does Kylie and Dave.

Associate professor Ceridwen Spark conducts research on urban and social change at RMIT University.

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