GROWING UP IN BROADY
March 7th 2009 11:53
I was driving my son to school around the time when Underbelly - the tv series based on the gangland killings - had been banned from public screening in Victoria but was being viewed illegally by almost everyone. We always had the radio tuned to Hughesy & Kate in the mornings - they were still pretty entertaining if you could ignore Kate Langbroek’s consistently unsensible comments. She seemed to get worse after the birth of her second child so you had to assume it was some domestic pressure so I was sympathetic. I just told her to ‘shut up’.
Genteel Moonee Ponds, a couple of suburbs in the other direction would have been more in their line of vision. But now this guy’s laying claim to hailing from Broadmeadows. What a wanker!
When I was a teenager my daydreams all revolved around getting out of there. It really was a backwater - the last suburb at the end of the train line with miles of paddocks beyond. But that was part of its charm. All that free space was great when I was a kid but teenage years are so very different. You’re losing interest in childhood pursuits and looking towards things that are just beyond your reach so everything is vaguely boring.
I’m older than Carl Williams - my teen years were the 70s but I expect it was just as boring for a young Carl Williams as it was for me. Probably more so. Most of the paddocks would have been built on and built up by then.
Looking back, it seems like I spent my early teenage years walking. Walking to my girlfriend’s house and hanging around. Walking around the streets to see who we’d run into. Walking to the local shops and hoping someone we knew would turn up. Walking and waiting.
The one place I remember as being fun was ‘the track’- a series of paddocks that stretched from the outskirts of new streets with new houses towards a backdrop of distant industry. Where local boys would take unregistered cars - pushing them through the streets - and, while we crammed into the cars and shrieked, would drive as fast as the old bombs would go, churning up the hard dry earth to dust. For teenagers in Broadmeadows, there really wasn’t much to do.
The first time I actually ‘went out’ from my suburb, was when my sister and I went to St Kilda for the day with our (secret) boyfriends and a couple of other slightly older teenagers. Luna Park. The beach. And then the city. It was so exciting! But when we arrived home - at 9.30pm on a Sunday summer night - our mother was crying. I couldn’t understand it. She kept going on about St Kilda and ‘prostitutes and pimps’ and sobbing and I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. I had to ask my sister later what a pimp was. We were simultaneously laughing at our mother’s stupidity and raging because we’d just been given the punishment of no going out of the house - except to school - for 2 weeks. I really didn't mind that too much because the boyfriend idea was starting to pall but my best friend was still allowed to visit.
Teenage boredom and infuriating parental rules aside, my memories of growing up in Broadmeadows are very happy. A lot of families were working class Aussies who had moved from inner city or beachside suburbs like Carlton, Collingwood and Middle Park and had landed in Broadmeadows because of the cheap government housing.
And there were immigrants. Lots of Brits - like my parents - and people from Italy, Spain, Greece, Egypt, Lebanon, Yugoslavia, Ukraine, Poland, Austria, Germany, Holland and Ceylon. I’m sure I could come up with some more if I thought about it. What people had in common was their poorness.
Many families we knew left Broadmeadows for more salubrious suburbs but I think it probably had as much to do with the stigma of living in Broadmeadows as moving up the social scale.
Turks had started to trickle in when I was a teenager and that trickle became such a stream that my old high school (Upfield) became a Turkish secondary college and a mosque was built across the road.
And we got some interesting teachers - relegated to the backwaters for one reason or another. The young and newly qualified. The foreign - some we could barely understand. And the too radical to be trusted in the better class areas. Helen Garner taught at Upfield High for a time. I had her for French. Pregnant, glowing and admirably cool - I think the word we used was ‘grouse’ - in platform shoes and mini-length smocks, she was proof that motherhood did not have to equate with dowdiness.
A few of these teachers seemed to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown and I feel really guilty now when I think about how cruel I was. I might have pushed them that bit closer to the edge. Then again, maybe it just toughened them up. Anyway, I blame hormones and repression. And boredom!
It wasn’t until I had spent years living away from Broadmeadows that I was able to momentarily assume the eye of the stranger; take in a sudden glimpse and focus on what I guessed an outsider might see. A scraggy young mum in tight jeans and runners, a couple of squawking kids, a smoke hanging out of her mouth.
My daughter attended Macrobertson Girls’ High, a selective secondary school that takes girls from all around Melbourne, and she made friends with a couple of girls who lived in the Western suburbs. We lived in an Eastern suburb.
I was frantic one night after my daughter had gone out, waiting for her to phone from her destination - a party in Altona that she had gone to by train. I had this image of a dark lonely railway station platform and a bunch of half-drunk yobbos. I was praying that nothing bad would happen to her and had to go and lay down on my bed to calm down. What a relief when she phoned to say that her friends had picked her up.
I wonder what Dr Phil would have to say about that? It was an extreme and unfounded reaction, I know. It was silly. I’m sure the people in Altona are lovely but in my mind all I could see was the shadowy threat of the Western suburbs.
Now, if it had been Laverton…
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Comment by Janet Collins
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Sydney and its suburbs has changed also and very much in the light of how you have said Melbourne has. This has been good, but has also promoted a bad element to it as well.
You just can't stop change, wherever it is!
Comment by Teresa Ralton
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Some of both the Northern suburbs and the Western suburbs of Melbourne have a reputation but when you live in a place it always seems different, doesn't it, to how it is viewed by outsiders? I have lived in St Kilda a few times. It has changed a lot over the years - I liked it better when it was seedy. There have been protests about the amount of development - changing the character of the area but, you're right, you can't stop change - maybe just try to steer it in the direction you like. Were you there when you visited Melbourne or do you have family here?
Comment by Damo
I grew up in Oak Park and went to high school in Broady.
Day one getting off the train and walking past all the Commission Houses I found utterly depressing. They looked like unfinished homes that were all the same.
Some of the area has improved since.
I met Crazy John Ilhan about a year or so before he died. He seemed very down to earth, humble, present and polite.
Comment by katyzzz
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Comment by Teresa Ralton
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Well that is very funny, isn't it? What school did you go to? Even after I had grown up and left Broadmeadows, it took me a long time to even work out what people were seeing. I became furious with a boyfriend because he ridiculed Broadmeadows. And I am still upset because my mother sold our family (housing commission) home a couple of years ago and moved out of the area. Broadmeadows is a good example of appearances being deceptive.
Comment by Teresa Ralton
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I am very happy with the 3 page designs on my blogs. The first one took me all day! So I'm quite proud. Long post? I cut it by about a third. I am mainly doing this to publish stuff I write because it's not going to happen any other way.
And Broadmeadows does have a very interesting history - not mentioned at all here because it would make my post even longer.
Comment by Lady Henrietta Muddling
Potter in a Harry
Worse still, she could have gone to Werribee.
Really interesting post. Broady in the 70s sounds like a country town.
I don't know the Broady area much but I did live in Melbourne for 7 years (2000-2006) and worked as a postie in a few of the outer western suburbs (St Albans, Sunshine, Hoppers Crossing, Carro Springs, etc), so I can understand your concern. It's hoonsville out there. I also did a couple of stints in Caulfield and East Bentleigh. I lived in various eastern suburbs while I was there, from South Yarra through to Hampton, Camberwell, etc, because I first stayed with my sister who had a house in Ashburton at the time.
I was only thinking yesterday about how many times I've moved in the past 20 years. I've only been back in Qld for 5 weeks, and I'm already at my third address. I'm so sick of moving. And another one is coming up soon. Hopefully it will be the last one for a while. I'm a bit over selling or giving things away. It's not helping my aim to become a capitalist.
Comment by Teresa Ralton
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I worked with a young woman from Werribee. She loved it. Her husband was a 'garbo' and and his job sounded really good. It wouldn't be now though - working alone. All this mechanization and automation is reducing jobs - I don't see the point. Broadmeadows was very much like a country town. A lot of people I went to school with came by bus from little country towns up the Hume Highway, which are now more or less intergrated into the suburbs of Melbourne.
Sunshine looks a lot like Broadmeadows but I’m sure the perception of ‘hoonsville’ is vastly overstated.
I live close to Caulfield right now and I am moving next week - but not very far. I have lived in a lot of places myself so you have my sympathy. It is draining, but at least you are forced to cull all the stuff that seems to accumulate. Well, that’s what I find anyway. I hope you get settled in your next place.
I lived in Sth Yarra from 1999-2000 And in Elwood from 2001-2005. Maybe you delivered my mail?
I have capitalist plans myself but they have been thwarted by unemployment. Money makes money, as they say. So I hope to be making some before too long.
Comment by Lady Henrietta Muddling
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Would you like to set out on a capitalist dream together? I'll go out to work and you can sit home and think about me. How does that sound? I like the notion myself.
At night, I can come home all dirty and we can have a shower together.
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Comment by Lady Henrietta Muddling
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I might even go out and roll around in the dirt on days I don't have to work.
I'd like to have a shower with you. There's a couple of spots on my lower back I can't reach. Would you scrub them for me?
I promise I'll make it worth your while. I'll reciprocate.
Comment by Mistersmith
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