My suburb is the beating cauliflower heart of Melbourne's gluten-free belt

Sydney Morning Herald

26-05-2025

Our south-and western border is the Merri Creek, and although Clifton Hill and Fitzroy North can claim to have prettier aspects, we get to enjoy it amidst the roar of trucks on Heidelberg Road. If the creek ever floods, it's the hardy folk of Westgarth who live on the flood plain.
Is Westgarth part of Northcote? In the old Melway, Westgarth looked to be its own suburb. But over at Australia Post, they won't give Westgarth a postcode, smudging it into 3070. So as much as some renegade Westgarthians might want to secede, hogging the Bill Lawry Oval and the Merri footbridge for themselves, we keep Westgarth in the fold. Like Australia needs Western Australia for its iron ore, we need Westgarth for its cinema, which is a grand, art nouveau beauty at the base of Ruckers Hill. We also need it for its famous wholefoods store, Terra Madre, which is where I go to shop if I want to feel like a marble being tilted around a maze where the walls are made entirely of red lentils. There is a way out, I promise, and you can reward yourself at checkout with an impulse buy of Northcote's finest carob.
We are famous for our cafe culture, think Vienna around the turn of the century, or Paris during the Enlightenment, except the talk around here is all about the design of the next tattoo sleeve, or Pokey Le Farge's tour dates. Pokey is a randomly selected, excellent but little-known touring artist who blew my mind with a show at the Northcote Social Club six years ago. That sort of thing happens in the live music hub that is 3070. It's even better now that the Northcote Theatre has been renovated. Every weekend, a queue snakes around the corner into Bastings Street, the ages and dress of the gig goers varying with the shades and genres of who's playing.
For some decades, Northcote was thought of as a hotbed of creativity, a place for artists, musicians and writers. I do love that our local primary school, Westgarth Primary, has an 'Idol night' that is a no-kids-allowed karaoke fundraiser extravaganza at which parents sing along with a 10-piece band. In the first years I was involved, Ben Ely from Regurgitator was on bass. I dressed up as Piggy Pop (fat Iggy Pop) with drawn-on abs and sang Lust for Life. It was ridiculous, Ben and I collaborating on a musical performance. I wondered if it would happen in other suburbs of Melbourne. It felt very Northcote.
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Is Northcote still a place for artists? Rising property prices have changed things considerably, although I'm pleased to report that I'm writing this article on an Olivetti typewriter at a High Street whiskey bar that also stocks the complete works of James Joyce. The clack of the keys is putting everybody off their $22 a pop whiskey mules.
But there is still a community feel to the suburb, a sense that we can all come together in the car park of the new aquatic centre and circle unsuccessfully for a park together. Our street has a WhatsApp group, where we find out who has an overabundance of quinces or which neighbour had what car stolen overnight. We even have an Oxford Street Tree Art exhibition, organised by Matt at number 19, who gets us all to dress up our street trees. My best effort was to put a shopping trolley around a trunk, so it looked like the tree was growing through the middle of it. Thank you Martin, at number six, for your angle grinder.
My favourite community activity is visiting Dog Park, which I can't talk too much about because our dog park is not actually a dog park, and I don't want to alert the rangers. We also have a dog called Ranger at Dog Park, so if a ranger actually comes, and someone yells 'Ranger!' — look it's all going to be very confusing.
What we need at this point is some giant wooden dog, preferably with eyes that flash red when someone is coming.