My suburb is the unglamorous sibling of a seaside gem. But we're still better
It's beautiful, safe and free, but all of this still made me want to leave.
My suburb, Williamstown North, is an inland wedge of just 1622 people across the north of Willi. At the far end is the defunct Mobil refinery and an industrial park that makes up more than half the suburb. At the sharp end of this wedge is Newport rail junction, the first step out of this small-town suburb by the bay.
I was born in Williamstown Hospital and lived in the same Willi North house – a green weatherboard – for the first 20 years of my life. Most of the homes in this nest-like suburb curl around the Williamstown Cemetery (and the adjacent retirement home), and mine was no different.
Our house faced two parks: K.C. White Reserve, which looked onto the cemetery, and Quarry Reserve, behind which lay a vast abandoned lot we called 'the rabbits' (due to the feral bunnies who lived there). The lot was surrounded by chicken wire with peeled-up edges that you could easily sneak through. And there is also Boral, a lively operation whose trucks come and go, carrying locally made asphalt.
I loved these parks. I kicked footballs relentlessly in winter, caught cricket balls in the summer. I trained hard with my brother and dad, and the year K.C. White was our home ground, we won the premiership. I also remember our kelpie splashing after waterbirds roosting in the puddle-strewn oval.
I would ride my bike up Park Crescent to buy a Slurpee at the 7-Eleven, or down to Challis St for the paper. In the summer, when I was bored, Mum would send me across to the factories behind Quarry Reserve, next to the rabbits, where I'd hit a tennis ball against big smooth walls in empty parking lots. Experiences like this are characteristic of North Willi: big, flat and empty.
There was something freeing in this quiet spaciousness. Perhaps it's why I was always drawn to the urban and melancholic work of Australian artist Jeffrey Smart. I can't imagine growing up in a fabulous house by the postcard-pretty beach. The temperature is cooler here. The birdsong is louder. The sky is bigger, rounder …
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