My suburb is an urban oasis, never mind the bikies. We even resolved the rotting cabbage smell

My wife and I found our suburb by accident. It was our shortcut to the Eastern Freeway from Brunswick.

One day, in 2009, we took a minor detour to a garage sale and stumbled across an oasis of tree-lined streets only a few metres from the traffic jam of Grange Road. The surprising peace and the greenery were enough to make us say, “We should live here”. We have lived in Alphington, a suburb that many people drive through but don’t even know exists, ever since.

When I tell people where I live, I typically get a confused look. We only have a few landmarks, but they’re usually enough for people to work it out. Most know the Dan Murphy’s on Heidelberg Road. It’s not any old Dan Murphy’s, but the flagship store with the head office attached.

Just 500 metres further along Heidelberg Road is the Hells Angels clubhouse, which for decades has been proudly positioned in what was a suburban home, with their logo splashed across a fortified gate. They’ve been quiet lately, but used to have an annual Christmas party with a jumping castle in the front yard. Alphington also has the Chandler Highway, which at 1.8 kilometres is often said to be the shortest highway in the world.

Get away from the busy roads and you will find tranquil pockets of bush that make you forget you’re only about seven kilometres from the CBD. The southern border of Alphington is the Yarra River, with a dirt trail along the bank, and wetlands. If you fancy risking a dip, there are even the remnants of a historic swimming pool along a bend in the Yarra.

The bird calls, especially from rainbow lorikeets, currawongs and kookaburras, can even drown out the traffic noise. Occasionally, kangaroos and deer find their way here, too. A particularly adventurous deer stormed through one of our neighbours’ houses a few years ago, demolishing the screen door on its way out.

The eastern border of Alphington is Darebin Creek and the Darebin Parklands, another pocket of bushland with duck ponds, turtles, sculptures, lawns galore for picnics, and an expansive off-leash dog area. But beware, both areas contain a healthy population of danger noodles (tiger snakes).

Alphington hasn’t always been idyllic. When we moved here, we called it the stinky suburb. The main source was the Alphington Paper Mill. Depending on the wind direction, residents would be overwhelmed by a smell that resembled rotting cabbage. We were told that it wasn’t from the massive chimneys that dominated the Alphington skyline, but from the piles of decomposing paper scattered around the site. The air quality wasn’t helped by the Chandler Highway being a parking lot, full of idling vehicles pumping out clouds of pollution while stuck in the old single-lane bridge bottleneck.

There’s a longer history of Alphington’s odour. The now-beautiful Darebin Parklands was once a tip, and before that, a quarry, supplying much of the gravel and bricks for the inner-north. Things have changed a lot since then.

The paper mill has since been replaced by many houses and apartment buildings. Homes are still being built here more than 10 years later. We were promised a supermarket and a cinema, but we’ve been left hoping. The bridge has been upgraded into something resembling a superhighway, and despite the controversy among the residents at the time, most are pretty happy with how traffic now flows across the Yarra. What were once those bargain tip-front properties are now among the most highly sought after. Alphington is stinky town no more.

Alphington has a weird shape to it, split by busy roads into three unofficial mini-suburbs. We’ve lived in all three and each has a different feel. West Alphington is close to the river and bushland, and has the hidden gem of Coate Park. There are good spots for launching kayaks and a couple of the original Queen Anne-style houses are still standing. Down by the river, you can watch boats zigzag upstream from the Fairfield boathouse as their inexperienced occupants try to work out how to row.

South Alphington includes the old paper mill, the wetlands, the primary school, and some spectacular properties that overlook the golf course. It wasn’t that long ago that there were horses in a paddock down there, but they were moved on after some major sewerage works about a decade ago. The buzz down here is that work has just started on a short bike path to connect us to the Darebin Creek trail that residents have been fighting for years.

Alongside Darebin Parklands, North Alphington is much flatter, almost every house block is the same size, and the streets are lined with plane trees. It was once all Californian Bungalows, but many of these are being replaced with modern cuboids. North Alphington was described to me as like Pleasantville – quiet and perhaps a little too perfect. It’s not known for much, perhaps mostly for the influx of hordes of children from the inner north during Halloween. Based on the number of times the streets get blocked, some of the houses seem to be favoured locations for TV shows and commercials as well. There’s also Far North Alphington that we don’t talk about much, the industrial zone with a concrete factory, and some secret treasures like a Spanish wholesaler, fish market and butcher.

You can get a taste of the Alphington vibe at the farmers market every Sunday or at the bowling club, a summer attraction with its ’90s drink prices and hearty meals. But it’s Darebin Parklands that is the soul of Alphington, the result of a dedicated community effort to rehabilitate the site.

It is not all sunshine and daisies, though. Alphington is not the most diverse of places. Nor is it the place for you if you have an aversion to designer dogs, especially cavoodles. And the plane trees! They might be pretty, but at this time of the year, the leaves are a burden. One neighbour reminisces about when we were allowed to simply burn piles of leaves in the street. We all keep an ear out for the street sweeper, and when it comes, there’s a flurry of cars being moved and neighbours all spring to action with their rakes and leaf blowers.

We’re grateful for that fateful detour all those years ago. Alphington remains a well-kept secret, but I’m not too worried about the word getting out – we have those snakes to help keep people away.

Todd Lane is a University of Melbourne academic and climate scientist.

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