Isabel Robinson's

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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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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...

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...

Gardening Australia – Where to Begin story

In 2021 I was on Gardening Australia, getting some advice from Jane Edmanson about the basics of growing things in my community plot in St Kilda. The segment was replayed in 2024. You can watch the story here: https://www.abc.net.au/gardening/how-to/where-to-begin/13577212?utm_campaign=abc_gardening&utm_content=link&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_source=abc_gardening...

When Did You Call Yourself a Writer?

28 years of diary keeping helped me realise I was one On my seventh birthday I started a diary, a tiny blue book with hearts on the cover, my stories — mostly about my love for Shauna the Grade 1 music teacher, and detailed descriptions of the lollies I bought with my pocket money — kept safe by a heart-shaped lock. These diaries have accumulated over the years. The physical ones — before I started storing my thoughts in a...

A stressed white female teacher sitting at a desk with her head in her hands

I Had to Become a Chinese Teacher to Discover the Writer Within

At 32, returning to Australia after a year studying Chinese in Nanjing, I embarked on a teaching course. I had come to the reasonably-late-but-not-too-late-in-life realization that teaching was my true calling, despite pushing it away for many years. Not that the other things I’d been doing were wrong, but that here was the perfect profession for me, something that would use all my skills, that would be rewarding, useful, helpful, and hopefully, fun. Oh yeah, and that would pay me...