The Melbourne files : 001

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!

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