My suburb has gone from daggy to desirable. But we still miss the roller disco

Stafford, to me, was always a suburb you drove through, not lived in, if you had any choice about it. Then, in 2010, I began dating a man who’d just bought a house – a postwar workers’ cottage – on Stafford Road, and I moved in with him soon after. We sold that house nine years later to buy another property two hundred metres down the road, and there we remain. Sixteen years and counting on Stafford Road.

Having a front-row seat to this noisy, often congested, east-west thoroughfare, I’ve watched Stafford slowly transforming from daggy to desirable. Those worker’s cottages, built during Brisbane’s suburban expansion in the 1950s and since left to rot and peel under the Queensland sun, are now getting the love and paint they deserve. The Stafford Road Bunnings has never been busier.

Take the old Stafford Bowls Club. This former blight on the landscape is now The Gibson: a shiny new club and dining venue you can proudly take your interstate relatives to. It’s named for the Gibson and Son’s Tannery (aka Scotia Works), established in 1887 when the area was known as Happy Valley and home to a lot of dairy cows. Longtime locals will tell you the stench from the tannery, which closed in 1982 to make way for the Stafford City Shopping Centre, was legendary.

Then there’s the new ANFE Italian Club, which managed to put the bellissimo into what was formerly an ugly Besser block gym, and bring authentic Italian cuisine to the burgeoning local food scene. Oh Boy Bok Choy, an Asian-fusion delight, is another a foodie favourite, while Everton Plaza’s Park Lane dining precinct, down the other end of Stafford Road, is now an established hospitality hub.

Most emblematic of Stafford’s urban upgrade and changing demographics, however, was the closure of the Stafford Roller Rink in 2021 to make way for a World Gym. The demise of this 40-year local institution was met with sadness and nostalgic reminiscence online, but the gym’s popularity speaks for itself. Stafford, in fact, does not suffer from a lack of gyms. Such is the abundance of heavy-lifting and cardio options in the area, the wags in our local Facebook group never miss an opportunity to make a quip about us needing another one.

Before becoming a magnet for gym bros, Stafford was a no-frills, working-class suburb, situated at the terminus of Brisbane’s northern tramline. The trams and roller skates may be ghosts of Stafford’s past, but their significance to the suburb’s local history is highlighted on a bright-coloured mural at the Kmart entrance to Stafford City.

Nowadays, you’ll find Stafford on ‘must-do’ lists, citing its microbreweries, specialist coffee roasters, artisanal craft markets, cafe culture and other nice things. Secreted away behind Anytime Fitness (next to World Gym!) is Bella and Tortie, a bakery like none other. You’ll have to join the Saturday-morning queue outside the door though to see what all the fuss is about.

Given Stafford’s newly acquired trendiness, I was curious as to what my fellow Staffordians loved, liked or loathed about our suburb, so put the question to them in our local Facebook group. Crime was a big “loathe”, and unfortunately there is a cluster of streets that bring down the tenor of the neighbourhood with break-ins and other drug-related mischief. Downers also included the traffic on Stafford Road – “no longer fit for purpose” – and the “eyesore” that is the Webster Road intersection, bar the heritage-listed Stafford State School.

Built in the late ’40s, the three-storey brick school is the suburb’s most iconic building after the old skate rink. Via that same Facebook post, I learnt that it has even featured in a couple of episodes of Bluey, which is surely all the kudos a suburb could ask for. Before the school was established on the site in 1886, it was an Aboriginal campsite, occupied by traditional owners, the Turrbal people.

Convenience was a big ‘like’. Because – location, location, location – Stafford is about eight kilometres from the city. You can make a beeline to the airport through the tunnel, or be on the Sunshine Coast in an hour (Bruce Highway traffic permitting). It has good schools, pleasant parks, the aforementioned mid-sized (if dated) shopping centre with a refurbed Hoyts, an Aquarama (fishtanks) and Hobbyrama (model trains and planes), and a sexy new library in nearby Everton Park. Stafford Heights has all that, plus views and a breeze.

‘Loves’ were the strong sense of community and generous green spaces in the area, such as the meandering Kedron Brook Bikeway that skirts Stafford’s southern border, and the Sparkes Hill Reservoirs. I put on my walking shoes and head there at least once a week for a nature fix and some soul restoration, even if it means dodging teens on e-bikes.

Yesterday, I was walking along Stafford Road to the gym (Powerhouse Gym!), thinking about the good, bad and ugly of this suburb that chose me, when I noticed some punks had graffitied the ANFE Italian Club. Was this a metaphor, I wondered, for a suburb in flux? A suburb trying to pull its socks up but not quite succeeding? Can we still not have nice things?