A sometimes series, possibly …
When I moved to Melbourne I was just a teenager, full of hope and wanting to belong. It took me two attempts – or one false start, depending on your perspective – to make sense of things. I was all naïveté and rose coloured glasses.
My first attempt was at 16 and it didn’t go so well. After initially staying with my Melbourne-based best friend, I bounced from creepy share house to share house, finally ending up with a kind high school friend of my brother’s, sleeping completely platonically on the floor of his a tiny St Kilda apartment.
I felt isolated and strange, scared of the menacing carpet of syringes that the neighbouring flat-dwellers had thrown into the shared courtyard, fearful of the kerb crawlers that followed me along Grey Street as I rushed home with a small pizza (Hawaiian) from Topolino’s, confused that the man I was working for at my new job on reception at Pan Pacific Pictures just off Acland Street had rudely labelled me “slightly hippyish” in his interview notes when clearly my major style influence was actually Madonna. (The man’s name was Norman Godbold. I ate a lot of apple slices from Monarch Cakes to take the sting out of his judgement. It still smarts.)
It wasn’t all terrible times, though. Okay, mostly it was, but once I spotted fellow – and familiar – former Canberrans The Doug Anthony Allstars busking in Bourke St and we had honey crumpets and tea in the cafe overlooking the mall. I remember Paul McDermott was particularly kind to me and it restored my faith in people no end. This was a rare bolstering blip in that messy move, however. Within months I’d caught the overnight bus back to family in Canberra, settled back into my small bedroom with the birds on the curtains and immediately began plotting a second move south.
I tried again when I was almost 18 and this time the move actually stuck. I was more grown up (I thought) and leased a single-fronted Victorian terrace house in MacPherson Street in North Carlton ($125 a week) with my best friend, right around the corner from more pizza (La Porchetta … Rocco’s Margherita – told you I’d grown up!) This home was short-lived too. I can’t really remember what happened but I do remember the real estate agent was in hot pursuit of us for a) breaking our lease and b) leaving 2 bags of rubbish and some paint tins at the back gate. It turned out okay though because we didn’t have mobile phones back then and I had swiftly met and fallen in love with my eldest child’s father (at The Underground, a King Street nightclub where we were both working – me on hot dogs and chip service and him on the main bar).
I shifted from North Carlton into his WAREHOUSE APARTMENT in an old shoe factory in Dally Street, Clifton Hill and got to know his intimidatingly creative artist/musician parents. Within a year I had a baby calling her ‘Karinya’ which meant ‘happy home’. I’d set an intention for what I very much hoped would follow.
Spoiler alert: Reader, it did not follow!
Love to you, pal. Thanks for being there for me!
x pip
29 Comments
Love this. I’m hooked and ready for more.
Oh Pip, this was both beautiful and riveting. I hope there will be a next installment (maybe a memoir?!). I was enthralled.
More please!!!!
I love this nostalgic piece. So cool, so creative, so Australia, and so hard! Love everything you do Pip. I know your insane spark of creativity can be exhausting, but know it’s also inspiring.
loving hearing your voice via narrative again.
Oh … I didn’t want the story to end!
Loving this blog revival. Loving your writing and memories.
Rachel x
Gorgeous evocative writing Pip! Please give us more xx
PS: I’m sure I speak for all your faithful readers when I say Norman Godbold can eat a bag of dicks.
Oooh… can’t wait for the next instalment.
Hi Pip, I always love your writing and your wisdom. I read this will real interest as my daughter wants to move to Melbourne to do an apprenticeship once she finishes school. She will be 18. I worry, but I am also excited for her. It’s such a big move and city life is quite foreign for us. As mothers, do we ever stop worrying I wonder?
Yes!! This is so gooood! Thank you + can’t wait for the next one!
I lived in McPherson St. In 1985 – 1992!
16! What and exciting and scary thing to do! Looking forward to the next installment.
Keep going.
This is awesome Pip!
LOVE this post a lot, lot, lot.
Oh wonderful! Can’t wait for the next episode! X
Pips memoir part 1!
Looking forward to the next instalment!
Invested and waiting for more <3
This was really lovely to read… like the start of a biography perhaps? ?
Beautiful Pippy
I REALLY hope this is the beginning of a book! I would inhale this.
yep totally hooked in and invested in this tale
cheers Kate
In the interview notes for my first permanent job, the secretary told me that my boss only wrote ’10’ (as in the movie).
No surprise that I was fired a week after getting married, which he’d told me repeatedly not to do…
What a complete JACKASS he was, Anne. UGH. x
I’m holding out for episode two, as well! x
I’m invested in this already xxx
Me too!!
Oh I am looking forward to what happens next