Northside (A Memoir)
Written By Dahli Pestinger
I think I first realised the appeal of Melbourne’s north when I discreetly peered over my parents watching Death in Brunswick in the lounge room floor over potato cakes and cans of Solo one Friday night.
I was born in that same lounge room on the day the West Coast Eagles beat Sydney by a point in the AFL grand final. I have lived in the same 1950’s brick Coburg home since and the entirety of my friends were from Coburg; my two closest friends lived directly across the street or in the next block. I thought little of my suburb’s significance in my single digits as I was utterly encapsulated by it- my short route to primary school was along the Merri creek with my dad and all the other school kids who tagged along. I attended Coburg Primary and went to the mall after school to drink watermelon crush’s on the grass boxes with the same people I walked home with. On Saturdays I went to the fruit and veg shop with my dad and filled bags with green beans, potatoes and navel oranges. It was there I met Josephine. She was an Italian woman with dark hair, maybe middle aged. She liked my blonde hair: “Oh Princessa! Bella, Bella” and would teach me how to use the cashier behind the laminate bench. My dad used to have to help me lift up the flap to squeeze into the small rectangular canopy filled with pictures of Josephine’s children and phone numbers of suppliers, important calendar dates: CHRISTMAS. HELENS 40TH. DENTIST. The register was made of yellowed plastic and had pink lady apple stickers covering some of the keys.
Josephine would surprise me with presents each week, my favourite being a pair of blue earring studs
‘You don’t have her ears pierced yet!?!’ she exclaimed to my dad while I jumped up and down full of excitement from my shiny new presents. I kept them until I got my ears pierced years later- Josephine's fruit and veg shop is now a cafe with $25 brunches. I am yet to say a proper thank you to her.
My street was a medley of culture. The Italian’s grew olives in the terraced yellow brick on the corner, a Greek family next door, my Japanese friend directly across who shared a fence with a widowed Chinese woman next to them. Behind us was a Lebanese family with fruit trees that fell apricots, plums and lemons directly into our backyard. Each holiday we would throw a party in our front yard. We would have barbecues and pavlova in the heat of a new year or baklava and Lebanese pies while the box tv, stretched out from the lounge room onto the porch, blared the Melbourne cup race.
To the left of us was an empty house that was flattened recently in return for three muted grey units with three muted grey families. They would never come to barbecues and filed complaints for noise, squeezing into a black 4wd each morning to travel 10km to the nearest private school. No one liked them much.
My dad picked me up from school one afternoon. He had cheap ciabatta that we dipped into hot chocolate in a thermos while waiting at the Bell street tram stop. There was this loud man with heaps of bags asking people for ‘spare change for a coffee’ outside Ferguson and Plares. Almost everyone walked past, put their heads to their phones or solemnly shook their heads. The tram screeched to a halt and Dad and I stepped on it. It was only when we had sat down next to the window when we saw the bag man angrily hitting the closed tram door. He had placed one of his bags on the road and the cars were honking ‘Piss off!’. I pointed to him outside. Dad got up and pulled down the string, yelling out to the driver to open up the doors. The man got on. He stunk of cigarettes and slunk into the row of seats next to us.
‘Thanks for that man’
‘No worries’
‘Also, do youse know which stop is the StayInn?’
I'd overheard that word in mum and dad’s after-dinner conversations
‘Yeah, that's the last stop, Our stop too so we’ll be getting off with you’
And so we did. As usual, we’d stay on till stop 40 Bakers Road and the bag man, whose name we learned was John, got off with us. We all walked the same way, down Sydney road, each of us with a bag in hand. Dad pointed to the motel- It was behind the old shisha restaurant, now overgrown with the once trimmed hedge. John disappeared down into the arches of the StayInn.
That night I asked dad if StayInn is like the hotel we stay in when we go to see Nanna on the plane. ‘No, this ones a bit different’
I left Coburg Primary at the end of Year 4 after a continual trend of downturns for a new shiny primary school south of Moreland road. My new friends spent their summer in beach houses in Lorne while learning to surf life save and winter, over dinner parties, grand pianos and roasts. I soon became extremely embarrassed of my house and not once in my year and a half did any one of my friends step foot in my house. I failed to keep in touch with most of my Coburg friends and rarely saw my neighborhood besties.
I continued to catch the tram home, this time with the company of my Nokia 1661 and Tetris. I became aware of the StayInn prototype, commonly single mothers with children in my old Coburg uniform or scary looking men who paced up and down the tram. Newly inhabited families who built their first home in Coburg because of it’s cheapness and accessibility clutched their handbags and children close to their chests when on the tram. They lived in the grey boxes that began to dominate our street.
It was only once I started to stay up later that I heard the police and ambulance sirens in the background. The new neighbors began to bicker about the ‘safety of our children'. Barbeques became the subject of disputes between the ‘i’ve lived here since 06!’ and the new families.
‘I feel in danger walking home from the tram stop’
Soon I was in high school, still catching the tram but moving even further past Coburg, past Brunswick and into the city. My friends lived in Carlton and Parkville, North Melbourne and Brunswick West.
I discovered that the StayInn was a motel sporting a 1 star average, housing the homeless, the struggling, the ex prisoners and refugees for a lowered rent. It was sold to developers after formal complaints from the community about ‘a danger to us and our children.’
The construction is yet to start so the mattresses stay piled up outside the arches. My friends began taking the trip down to my house and falling in love with the cannoli and cheaper coffee than their inner city cafes. I started to notice skaters and groups of guys my age jumping the wire fence into the abandoned motel. My best friend across the road sent me a link to a tiktok compilation ‘COOLEST ABANDOS IN MELBZ’ . StayInn featured and I couldn't help but laugh to myself - these people sneaking into the hotel were the children of the young families in grey boxes whose parents scurried them away when they were little.
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