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In some ways my suburb is peak Melbourne – within 50 metres of where I live is a secular wedding chapel that also does funerals, an artisan shoemaker, a craft brewery, and a record store. Sometimes whole weddings promenade down the street between chapel and brewery. There’s also the mysterious shop, rarely open, which purports to sell only spray paint and hotdogs.
This is all on Johnston Street, a fairly unlovely traffic chute, but one that is increasingly lively, especially at night. Those of us who like to be in bed by 9.30pm get up in the morning and marvel over the tokens of debauchery left from the night before — some more palatable than others.
Abbotsford hadn’t been our first choice. Moving from Brisbane (before that Sydney, before that Adelaide), we couldn’t crack the rental market in Clifton Hill, where a particular school catchment was calling. Abbotsford seemed a reasonable fallback – a mix of fine-grained terrace housing, street trees, adapted post-industrial buildings, and open space, close to the trails and urban bushland along the Yarra. Having now lived here for nine years, I’ve realised that it has everything I ever wanted from Melbourne.
I love the walls of graffiti down by the river, frescoes across the massive concrete retaining walls and concrete bridges. Likewise, I love waking to the sight of hot air balloons, the roar of their burners overhead, close enough to wave. Once one of them landed on Victoria Park oval, as if an alien had descended, which was fairly alarming. The basket dragged crazily across the grassy surface with the people still clinging on inside.
I’m fascinated by the anachronistic tagger who writes “free Assange” everywhere, another who draws strange figures with the head of Garfield and a body with enormous breasts – not my idea of erotica but whatever floats your boat. I’m the odd bod collecting a pizza from Rita’s in my trackie dacks, carrying my body weight in cardamom buns back from Falco, ordering the chicken parma at the Park Hotel. I’m also the one down by the river collecting grass for my guinea pigs (actually my son’s guinea pigs, but we all know how that goes) – I like to think of it as a 21st-century rodent version of grazing my cow on the common. People usually assume, excitedly, that I’m foraging for edible weeds.
Abbotsford is not a suburb that looms large in the city’s consciousness, but it has many bona fide landmarks – including Dights Falls. Bounded by the wiggly edge of the Yarra to the east, it’s marooned by a different arterial flow of Hoddle Street to the west, the freeway to the north, and Victoria Street to the south. Between Collingwood, Richmond and Kew, it’s like a small island, shaped something like South Australia tipped on its side.
The CBD is only three kilometres away, walkable in a crisp 45 minutes. Or get the train, which, elevated up on an embankment, offers a smooth panorama across the suburb, reminding me of the old Sydney monorail, or the New York High Line. I particularly love those spots where the rail jumps across the street grid, making a series of little urban gateways where roads pass beneath – each its own tiny fragment of Berlin, or Hong Kong, or Bladerunner.
Most people know Abbotsford for the convent, once a Magdalene laundry and religious asylum which, at its peak, housed more than a thousand women and children. There’s a melancholy history here, for sure – as we all know, some women “in need” were actually those who refused to conform, and historically the line between asylums and prisons has sometimes been obscure. The convent’s spaces still have a haunted feel, but I can’t think of a better way to soothe a difficult history than giving the space over to arts and community use, and these days the convent is full of music, a joyful place of trills and runs and warbles.
What used to be surrounded by a towering brick wall has its gates thrown open wide today, and the community comes and goes, strolling the unexpected halls and grand stairways, lying in the heritage garden, admiring the huge old trees, and drinking Negronis at Cam’s – one of my very favourite places in Melbourne, a bar opening onto a lovely cloister with a huge old liquidambar tree in the middle. Well, until Cam’s sadly closed last month. I almost cried. Hopefully another venue will replace it, just as I hope the convent can overcome its current funding and governance rumbles.
Next door is the Collingwood Children’s Farm. What Melburnian hasn’t been there to breathe in the perfume of sheep poo, do a tutorial on apiary or stare in awe at those enormous pigs? I’m told that at the Steiner school next door, classes are sometimes interrupted by the bleating of the lambs, and the ball is regularly kicked over the fence into the horse paddock.
Abbotsford has its share of commerce, with the major shopping centre being the Hive, down on Victoria Street. It’s a hive all right — but maybe more in the teeming and infested sense than the industrious and co-operative one they were going for. Meanwhile, in the south-eastern corner, past all the noodle joints, where Abbotsford reaches a gangly protuberance towards Kew, is the famous Skipping Girl sign. Yes, despite the common misconception, it’s in Abbotsford, not Richmond. Nearby is the Carlton United Brewery, which periodically exhales a Vegemitey funk across the suburb. The brewery casts a surprising influence on its surrounds, the monolithic brick walls and tall chimney creating a deserted post-industrial vibe — something like a de Chirico painting, except a century later and the other end of the world.
But my heart is up at the other end, near Victoria Park oval, which may seem odd given I’m not a football type, let alone a Collingwood fan. Living near an oval, you can’t help becoming aware of the rhythm of the footy season – the recruits striving to make the team, the umpires doing whistle training, the Auskick kids, the Community Cup. On the evenings they leave the lights on, the oval becomes a brilliant green coin shining out of the darkness. And on Saturday mornings, all year round, fit people sprint around it while we sit at the edge on our lazy bums, drinking coffee.
We’re really there for the dogs. I’m a cat person usually, but Victoria Park has turned my head. From black-eyed puffballs to squish-faced Ewoks, the border collie chasing airborne swallows, the corgi in full flight, feathery tail streaming. Altogether it’s a dog wonderland, and you can’t help but join in their excitement. That’s Abbotsford for you.
Naomi Stead is an architecture critic and associate deputy vice chancellor in the College of Design and Social Context at RMIT University.
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Naomi Stead is a writer and architecture critic, and associate deputy vice chancellor engagement in the College of Design and Social Context at RMIT.From our partners
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