Home truths

From Griffith REVIEW Edition 20: Cities on the Edge
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.

Written by Kate Fitzpatrick

Download the complete article PDF

Kate Fitzpatrick's biography and other articles by this writer

We didn't want to go. The Gold Coast was a place for holidays, not living. Annual baths of intense bone-warming sunshine had been enough for even the coldest of my acquaintance.

I loved Queensland, but I had never been a big fan of Surfers – or ‘Sufferers' Paradise' as Dad used to call it in the '60s. I had been resident for several weeks in 1981 while making a movie called Goodbye Paradise and had recorded my observations for the Sydney Morning Herald. During the filming, I lived in a glamorous new high-rise right on the sand. By early afternoon the shadow thrown by my building plunged the pale cream sand into deep blue shadow.

I called the article ‘God's Waiting Room'.

I don't remember ever sighting one young, tanned, bikini-clad surfing god or goddess. At the time Surfers seemed populated by fragile geriatric joggers (admittedly many of them tanned) reading On Death and Dying. This was reasonable. It was the world's best-selling book.

More disturbing than the thought of old folks being taught to ‘rage against the dying of the light' was the idea that some of them probably weren't that old – they just looked it. The sight of them lying under the pulsating blast of the midday sun was unforgettable. Apart from money, these men and women all had one thing in common: solar-powered, oil-basted crackling they called skin. The beach resembled a working tannery, with them staked out like lizard skins waiting to be processed into something useful like a handbag. Even their apparently empty homes resembled mausoleums that were too big for their plots and surrounded by lifeless canals and treeless lawns. Grass so green and manicured it could have been Astroturf.

In 1981 I couldn't find a florist. I had never thought of going back.

WE WERE HAPPY IN MELBOURNE. Good fortune found us in Middle Park, a wonderful surprise package of an old bayside suburb. A small rectangular grid of wide streets, big trees and narrow lanes wedged between St Kilda and Albert Park. Once a working-class area, it is now firmly in the ascending grasp of the middle class. Restored facades of large brick and small wooden, Edwardian and Victorian houses disguise their renovated, extended interiors and often exotic back gardens.

After six years we knew it well. On weekends we cycled along the edge of the Bay from Port Melbourne to the St Kilda pier. Most mornings we walked clockwise, or counter, around Albert Park Lake. We welcomed new generations of swans, ducks and geese and eagerly awaited the annual mass arrival of pelicans. Within minutes they would form a giant white hoovering wedge and move methodically from north to south. Up and down the lake, like a team of office cleaners, until it was spotless, fished clean.

The seasons change in Melbourne.

In response to some hidden signal, Donovan's restaurant alters its décor from summer to winter. Forgotten spring bulbs – crocuses, grape hyacinths, daffodils, lilies and bluebells – miraculously re-emerge at exactly the same time, in exactly the same place, every year.

Most of Middle Park is shaded by old palm trees and equally gigantic plane trees. In autumn, the footpaths are hidden by enormous piles of torn brown paper leaves. Riding or kicking your way through them instantly takes you back to some moment in childhood. The rejuvenating effect is instant and a lot cheaper than surgery.

We shopped for everything at South Melbourne market. Our birthdays were deliciously celebrated at Donovan's. We made great friends and were regularly invited to dinner, and weekends at the beach. We were asked to join book clubs and local sporting clubs. Within a short walking distance in either direction, there were thirty really good to terrific restaurants – from Japanese to pizza. Crammed into a square kilometre were several choices of every kind of shop, café and amenity including an award-winning bookshop, cinemas, a theatre, sports clubs, football and cricket grounds, a golf course, an Olympic swimming pool, music venues, bars and pubs. It was possible to live a really full life without crossing the boundary streets.

Best of all, we had Greek neighbours. Loud, loving, ridiculously generous Greeks who had lived in the area years before it had become fashionable. Their double backyard was a seasonal market. The front garden was crammed with potted cymbidiums and shaded by a gigantic lemon tree so laden with fruit that boughs would occasionally snap. We were given so much fruit my son Joe and his friends used to sell homemade lemonade out the front of our house.

Yes, it was a little Stepford Wives. Hair was brushed and lipstick did seem to be automatically applied before contemplating a cycle to the shops. The streets were very safe. My son and his friends delivered papers at five in the morning without a problem from their point of view, or a qualm from their parents.