In this vein, I salute the heroic foot servants of the Liberal Party (and other banned conservative organisations) who brazenly show up in North Fitzroy every time there’s an election. For fun, and to shock my neighbours, I greet election-day volunteers from all sorts of crazy right-wing outfits – even the ALP – and solicit their how-to-vote cards.
Oddly for a woke haven, North Fitzroy is conspicuously lacking in ethnic diversity. Christian Lander, the American author of Stuff White People Like, labelled my suburb Melbourne’s “whitest spot” during a 2009 visit. “When a suburb is hip enough to contain vintage shops, but safe enough for white people to have kids in, then it’s truly white,” he declared.
The Captain Cook statue at Edinburgh Gardens was repeatedly defaced, until it was toppled by vandals after Australia Day this year.Credit: Penny Stephens
He had a point. At the height of the political wars in Canberra over boat people, many local houses were adorned with “refugees welcome here” signs. Curiously, amid all the compassion, North Fitzroy’s refugee population appeared to remain steady – around zero.
We’ve also been mostly bypassed by the recent waves of migrants from Asia. Contrast this with the 1950s and 1960s when North Fitzroy – then a poor suburb – was a prime destination for migrants from southern Europe. These days, our idea of a migrant is someone from Toorak.
The reasons are not hard to discern. North Fitzroy is unique in Melbourne’s inner north for having no high-rise public housing within its borders. This could partly explain our deficit of refugees. As for the lack of other new migrants, a median house price of around $1.7 million doesn’t exactly scream “Uber drivers from Hyderabad welcome here”.
Loading
Fortunately, North Fitzroy retains rich elements of its earlier migrant history. Prominent in this regard is Piedimonte’s supermarket, a formidable local institution run by generations of the same Italian family for more than 60 years, which continues to thrive on a prime corner site, selling bespoke Italian deli and bakery items alongside regular groceries, fruit and veggies and booze.
For many of us, a big part of Piedimonte’s cachet is its largely intact 1960s architecture and styling. I particularly admire (and covet) the original mid-century plastic fluoro clock advertising Colvan Chips (“Buy everybody’s favourite!“) amid the grocery aisles. The old-style variety store upstairs – selling kitchenware, stationery, magazines, coffee and ice-cream – is also a retro gem.
If you’d like to step inside this living retail museum, don’t wait too long. By contemporary retail metrics, Piedimonte’s is long overdue for the wrecking ball. When this eventually comes to pass – the owners have been pursuing redevelopment plans for several years – North Fitzroy will lose a precious part of its history and soul, as it did when Moroccan Soup Bar moved on two years ago.
But in the face of inevitable change and renewal, the essential qualities that make my suburb so interesting and unique – and so different to neighbouring Fitzroy – endure.
Whatever happens next, Dutton will surely still have cause to speak ill of my neighbours.
Tom Ormonde is a Melbourne writer and former journalist at The Age.
The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.