Opinion
My uncool suburb is so under-the-radar, even the criminals avoid us
John Bailey
ContributorIn 2020, Time Out readers voted Yarraville the fifth-coolest neighbourhood in the world. This was back when the phrase IYKYK (if you know, you know) was doing the rounds, and Yarraville was Melbourne’s shining example. Nearby Seddon, on the other hand, was less If You Know, You Know and more As Far As I Know ... It’s Somewhere in the West?
Though it shares a border with an apparently world-famous suburb, Seddon is one of those places like Cremorne or Travancore or Deepdene that might as well be a suburb of Narnia. You’re not quite sure it’s real until you visit it yourself.
This obscurity is partly due to size. At less than one square kilometre in area, it’s easy for lifelong Melburnians never to twig to its existence, despite its proximity to the CBD. From my house, I can see the sun gleaming on the windows of skyscrapers, and on New Year’s Eve, we have a front-row view of fireworks.
The contested history of Seddon might help explain why outsiders aren’t sure if it’s not just a fiction. For most of the past century, only locals described the area as its own suburb, and some still promote a misconception around its origins.
The myth dates back to 1906, when a name was sought for a new train station between Footscray and Yarraville. While this southern part of Footscray was at the time known locally as Belgravia, this was rejected as too similar to Belgrave in the Dandenongs.
Instead, former New Zealand prime minister Richard Seddon, who had died in office that year and lived in the area 40 years earlier, had his name bestowed upon our train station.
But this place wasn’t formally recognised as its own suburb until 1999. We still share a postcode with the ’Scray. (Incidentally, Seddon has ties to the name of another nearby suburb – his father-in-law was landowner John Stewart Spotswood.)
With its wide streets and sleepy pace, it’s not a party town. So what if Seddon can’t claim the cool cred that hovers over Collingwood or East Brunswick, where no one would use the phrase “cool cred”?
The simple truth is that Seddon doesn’t have enough non-conformists creatively asserting their identity in the face of an oppressive and precarious system, by which I mean people in their 20s. As far as I know, there’s but one share house in the whole suburb, and while those kids seem pretty on-trend, a single household can’t do all the work for the rest of us. That’s gentrification, baby.
Heavy is the head that wears the crown of cool, after all. Seddonites walk lightly, free of the expectations that weigh down residents of Northcote or Prahran. Look elsewhere for your ironic fashion boutiques and froyo outlets and 24-hour gyms.
Here, we have zero tattoo dens but an abundance of yoga studios. There’s an excellent second-hand bookshop, where I once scored a bargain on a signed edition by some obscure Norwegian. Children’s swings hang from trees on the nature strips. Seddon even has its own WhatsApp group.
In these parts, we boast street libraries the way other suburbs have bubble tea franchises, and if Seddon itself were a book, it’d be a cosy read. It’s a suburb without many question or exclamation marks.
Flying under the radar has its benefits. I was once shopping around for better home insurance (as I said, not a party town) when the voice on the other end of the phone line emitted a confused grunt. “That can’t be right,” he murmured. “It says here there’s no crime in your suburb.” After triple-checking, he confirmed the report.
Sounds possible, I agreed. Sure, there’s shoplifting, and bikes get pinched, like anywhere else. There was a police chase a few years ago, but the car had no tyres and was going at walking pace. Even the cops didn’t seem too fussed by it all.
A Victoria Street travel agency was bombed in May 1975.
Oh, and I suppose there was the terrorist attack in 1975, when a gelignite bomb took out five shops and destroyed the windows of 20 houses. Given that a Yugoslav travel centre appeared to be the primary target, suspicions were directed towards the local Croatian community. A spokesperson told The Age: “We are the first to be accused,” which isn’t the most convincing of denials.
That was long before my time. I arrived here a decade ago, looking for somewhere a freelance arts journalist could even dream of buying, to find the various Eastern Europeans who migrated to Seddon in the 50s and 60s have put aside the historic grudges that have divided their homelands. The elderly men of these communities stroll the streets daily, hands folded behind their backs, and gather out the front of a Spanish cafe to hold court each evening. Being one-sixteenth Croatian myself, perhaps I will join them in my autumn years.
A suburb this small doesn’t have enough oxygen for people to get red in the face too often. Everyone sort of knows everyone else, at least by sight. One of my neighbours seems to be on a first-name basis with everyone who passes his verandah, while the greengrocer has nicknames for most of his customers. People on my block mind each other’s homes and feed each other’s pets when they’re away. I once found a stranger’s credit card on the street and knew the surname well enough to recognise which shop’s door I should slide it under.
None of this might be cool enough to make it onto any international list, but we’re fine with the anonymity. The crown of cool can be snatched away in an instant, but a sense of community lays down roots, even for relative newcomers like me. If anyone asks: yeah, we’re somewhere in the west.
John Bailey is a contributor to The Age.
The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.