We bought a house in Carlton in 1957, prior to our marriage. We had both been living in Parkville, but already we realised we couldn't afford Parkville prices: it was becoming professional and middleclass. Carlton hadn't really started to move in that direction, it was the very beginning of that, and in this street as far as I can recall, there was only one other academic/professional type, who was a friend of ours. Soon after that other similar people began to move in so that by the time I had babies and young children, there were three or four professional families up and down these two blocks, who were in the same boat. We got to know one another and the kids played together. But the people who were living around us then were mostly working class Australians. We had a couple of wharfies in the street, labouring people and people who worked in retail shops. Then there were quite a lot of Jewish people still living in the area; there'd been a big influx of pre war Jewish refugees. They had a big effect on the area and their presence was still quite marked. Everything was available within this short distance. We had, just in this block between here and Lygon Street, three little corner stores including one just at the end of this lane on the ground where the High School still is and then a little group of about ten shops down in Lygon Street, so you really got everything within a much narrower range. We didn't have a car when we came here so we patronised these local shops. It was a big excursion to go down to Lygon Street. I used to go down to the market on the tram however.
The Jewish people started to move out about the time that we moved in, and then came the first wave of European immigrants. The first were the Italians. They began to change the appearance of the houses pretty drastically, modernising in their eyes, putting in concrete paths, taking down the iron work and painting plastic, acrylic finish on them in bright colours. The Italians really did do quite a lot of damage to the fabric in terms of its Victorian integrity, although we used to think, 'It's lovely, it's bright and it's different'. They were bringing a bit of 'colour and movement' to the suburb, and I suppose it took us a while to learn that, in fact, it wasn't really the right thing to do.
This house was very dilapidated when we bought it. It had a wooden verandah which was rotting and it had been used as a boarding house. The people whom we bought it from were a large family of Lebanese origin, who had not only five children, but also boarders. A lot of the other houses were rooming houses which had stoves on the verandahs, and closed verandahs with glass windows. This is a big house, but it's not big enough to have about twelve people in it and only the outside lavatory. My parents, who lived in Hawthorn, were pretty horrified and used to tell their friends that we lived in 'Princes Hill.' They never mentioned the word 'Carlton', which was regarded as a slum, and they hoped that no one knew where Princes Hill was; it certainly sounded much better!
After the Italians the Greeks started to move in, as did more professionals. The 'gentrification' began with Italians selling out to people with different aspirations, while they wanted to go out further, get more land, grow vegetables and have a different kind of life. The Greeks started to build the Greek church which keeps them in a community. The Jewish people just practically disappeared, and all the shops down there almost disappeared too. Inevitably we went further afield for our supplies. Everyone had cars then and you were just expected to go out and do your shopping further away.
In some ways, the sense of community was broken up, but then, I think, there was also a sense of community that grew among people who began to see that the inner suburbs were threatened. People got together and the Carlton Association was formed. We got to know other people and in that way a sense of community developed of a different kind. I suppose it was an upwardly aspiring community. We had this wonderful battle with the railway land, things that made people feel very much as one. The primary school also has always been a very big focus for people here. Probably the school and the football were the two big local elements that took over your life to some extent once you had kids going to the school. The school has always been one that had a lot of community interest. We got involved with that. You knew other people whose kids went there, so when you ran into people you had something to talk about. The kids found friends there and it was the same with the football. When we came here, we weren't the least bit interested in football. Once we had a small boy going to school and getting the lore from his mates there, Bob used to have to take him over for the last quarter, when it was free. Then he would take him for a full match if Carlton was playing at home. A few years later they were queuing up all night for Finals' tickets! It's like a pervasive folk culture that overwhelms you.
We liked living in Carlton because my husband worked at Melbourne University and he's basically a pretty lazy sort of fellow. He didn't want to sit in the traffic queues or use public transport. He prefers being near where he works, and we both had been living in Parkville which we liked very much, so we just looked for the next nearest place to Melbourne University that we could afford. I think both of us are fairly urban types. I've never lived in the country. I just am used to cities and I'm definitely a city dweller. We really enjoyed the open parks and we used to go walking a lot in the early days. We liked the wide streets, and the appearance of the houses. They appealed to us; we had that kind of taste. We and our friends, of course, spent days, weeks, months and even years renovating our own houses, because nobody had the money in those days to employ tradesmen. We would borrow tools from people in the same situation, discuss materials and finishes. We'd all go round and admire each other's work and have parties when we had finished this or that, so there was a social life of that kind. In terms of the actual community, I don't think we were really terribly involved in it until we got involved over the sort of issues of preservation and the threats to the environment from traffic and demolition.
The fire in 1970 when the school burnt down was quite exciting. When we first came here Princes Hill High School was the central school still with a terrific reputation. It was a feeder school to University High and it always had a reputation for being academically excellent. Even working class kids made it through Princes Hill Central School to University High and then came out doctors and lawyers. People like that could say, 'I was a working class boy and I went through this system and it stood me in good stead.' Then it was made into a High School, but it was really just declaring a building a High School. There was really very little extra given to it. The teachers in fact were complaining about the facilities, and parents of kids who would soon go there began to be aware that it was pretty inadequate. The school didn't have any proper science laboratories, for example. Really it was rather unsatisfactory. Just at the time when wt were demanding a better school building and better facilities, the fire broke out. At one stage people thought it could have been a parent or a disgruntled student. But it turned out to be a British migrant who had lit fires all over Melbourne. The problem was what to do with the kids in the High School. This divided the community. Although our kids were still both at primary school, one of them would be coming up to High School within two years. We knew that the Government wouldn't get a building up within that time. The suggestion came of putting portables in Princes Park. We were already involved in protecting the park from various intrusions, but my husband and I were in favour of using it for the portables. Some of our friends and neighbours were adamant that they wouldn't have portables in the park and they started up an opposing group called the Princes Park Preservation Society. There were some nasty meetings and arguments about that, but in the end it was decided the park was where the portables would go. They were there for nearly three years until the new building went up.
Women were vitally involved, even if the experts were men... Women would always put in their six pennyworth into the discussion .... But I think at the time men seemed to get their name on things more, and so they seemed more important from the outside.
We were foundation members of the Carlton Association. I remember clearly finding a group of people with common interests and a lot of talent, and suddenly realising that there were all these people in the neighbourhood who shared the same concerns and who had something to give to it. The Association held meetings and groups, gathering day and night, with sub committees for this and that, with members all painting posters, getting out information leaflets and distributing dodgers. A great deal of effort and expertise went into it. If we needed somebody to do a particular piece of research there would be somewhere among Carlton's residents an engineer, or a lawyer, or an architect, or someone involved in the Public Works Department or someone in the Council, so that we would be able to draw upon their expertise.
It was a very skilled group, a very dedicated group and a very unselfish group in giving time and energy. Of course, it was fun in a way too. It gave you something to do and it gave you a lot of social spin offs, a lot of satisfaction and rewards, but it was a very serious business. I remember a meeting one weekend in this house, when we were actually drafting a submission to go to the Government and the Council on the Lee Street block. The meeting went all day Saturday until about eleven o'clock at night. Then it started again about nine o'clock on Sunday morning and went through to about three o'clock on Sunday afternoon. To raise money we had openings of houses to show them in different stages of renovation. We had garden openings. They were money spinners, but also showed outsiders that you could have a nice environment in the inner suburbs and that the houses weren't all slums. The amount of activity was just prodigious over a period of three or four years.
Women were vitally involved, even if the experts were usually men. I think that probably reflected the times also. There weren't so many professional women with careers, and in this particular group most women with professional training were at the peak of their child bearing years and not in the full time work force. Women went to meetings held in people's houses when it was possible. We would even get baby sitters so we could both go, as other families did also. Sometimes people brought the kids and we took them on the demonstrations. I remember women would put their six pennyworth into the discussion. We'd also be providing cups of coffee and sandwiches to the blokes doing the writing. But I think at that time men seemed to get their name on things more, and so they seemed more important from the outside.
Carlton probably has less sense of community now that many of the major environmental campaigns have finished, and we have less need to join together to fight on particular issues. It seems now much more of a 'dormitory' suburb, and different sorts of people are buying the houses now they are so desirable. But it remains a very rich environment, our needs are well catered for in this small area, and we have absolutely no intention of leaving it.