A newborn baby sleeping, swaddled in a blanket, lying on pink, blue, yellow and white striped hospital linen

Spinning Baby, Spinning Mind

I take the 96 tram from St Kilda, change at William Street. Calm, calm, try to be calm. Hands on my belly, Steve next to me. My weight presses into the fuzzy green cloth of the seat. Where are these other passengers going? Normal day at work? Cancer appointment? Not to have their unborn baby turned around most likely.

Intersection of Fitzroy and Grey Streets in St Kilda on a cloudy day

The Other Side of Fitzroy Street

I didn’t always love St Kilda. I grew up in quiet leafy Middle Park; my high school was in Windsor. St Kilda lay in between, a kind of Badlands to be crossed, every weekday, from behind the safety of Mum’s car windows. When the lights at the intersection of Fitzroy and Grey Streets turned green, she would release the hand break and the car would, for the briefest moment, roll backwards, like a horse retreating from a shadow-filled place: the...

A woman on the Byron Bay foreshore. She has a baby in a carrier on her front, and a young boy waves a long leaf in front of her

A Change of Scene, Not a Holiday

On a trip to Byron Bay, I was followed by a young woman. It was our first holiday as a family of four – daughter 8 months old, son 5 – and the word ‘holiday’ and all that it conjures (sleeping in, cocktails by the pool, reading a novel) is best replaced by ‘change of scene’. As anyone with young children knows, a holiday with kids involves doing the same care work you would at home, only it costs more...

A smiling woman with short hair wearing a grey-blue cardigan

“Community takes people being involved” – a profile of kindergarten educator Tarryn Holland

Tarryn Holland loves her job. As the Coordinator of St Kilda Balaclava Kindergarten – affectionately known as ‘Nelson Street’ or ‘SKBK’ by those on the inside – she heads up one of the suburb’s oldest community-run kindergartens, operating in a Balaclava back street since 1911. Tucked behind the wooden front gate lies a childhood sanctuary: an enchanted garden full of trees and vegetables, sandpits and building blocks, learning and imagination. “Every AGM I cry,” Tarryn tells me, “because I just...

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Middle Park – Life in the Burbs

For his 70th birthday, we took Dad to virtual reality. While my brother shot zombies in a graveyard, Dad and I played Google Earth. Headsets on, side by side, we explored the pyramids of Giza, the Grand Canyon, the Antarctic. Or so I thought. Just as I was enjoying the view from the top of Table Mountain, Dad shouted out: “I can see our back fence!” Presented with the wonders of Earth, he had travelled to the corner of Wright...

A woman in a pink jumper sits in a red mobility scooter. She is smiling and in front of a building with a pink banner that reads "Greeves St Op Shop"

“I never look down on anyone” – a profile of Helen Phillips

“The moment he pointed a rifle at me, our five kids screaming in the corner, was the moment I decided to get outta there,” Helen Phillips tells me. It was 1974, Cootamundra, New South Wales, and her husband was a violent alcoholic. “He said ‘You’re done’. And I said ‘If you’re gonna do it, pull the trigger, cause you will never get another chance. I’ve had ya – you’re done yourself.” The familiar cycle of apologies came – “Oh baby,...

“People want to connect” – community development worker Robyn Szechtman tells her St Kilda story

In the park beside the National Theatre stands The Great Wall of St Kilda. A patchwork of ceramic tiles, the central mural shows our eclectic suburb: palm trees, Palais, pier and people all presided over by Bunjil the eagle.  Around the outside, 600 smaller tiles were designed by members of the local community. Bright and inviting, passersby often stop to stare up at the Wall, examining its detail.   The close observer may notice the name Robyn Szechtman painted on...

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Attracted by the buzz, beach and breeze – a profile of philosopher and beekeeper Karen Green

The swarm of bees chose the right St Kilda resident. “They lodged themselves in the ceiling of the balcony,” says philosopher Karen Green, pointing out the loungeroom window of her apartment on Robe Street. After a professional failed to remove them, Green, knowing something about bees, got a protective suit and a box and tried to cajole them inside herself. “They didn’t move for weeks,” she tells me, “Until one day they swarmed – flew over the road and completely...

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I’m raising my children in a flat and the community that comes with it is worth it

My father lives in the next suburb, but I can count the times he’s been inside my home on one hand. Two fingers, actually: after the birth of my son and after the birth of my daughter. It’s not because we don’t get on – I love Dad and he loves me. But he is a boomer who bought a four-bedroom, three-garden house for $2 in 1974, and I am pushing 40 and live in a flat. Let me repeat:...

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Just a Moment in the Woods

When I was 15, I fell in love with a boy and a man. The first introduced me to the second;Ben, more confident in my talents than I was, dragged me along to audition for a schoolproduction of Merrily We Roll Along. While he got a main role and I got into the chorus, weboth got our first taste of Stephen Sondheim. When artists die, perhaps it’s not the personthemselves that we mourn – who we haven’t met, didn’t know...