My suburb feels like it’s hiding. But its genteel exterior belies a boisterous heart |
My suburb feels like it’s hiding. But its genteel exterior belies a boisterous heart
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My suburb is four kilometres from the city, but people still don’t quite know where it is. It’s like people have a black hole in their mental map of Melbourne. When I tell people I’m from Kensington, I’m often met with blank stares that only flicker into vague recognition when I add, “It’s next to Flemington … you know, where the horse races are?”
How can a suburb so central, serviced by no fewer than three train lines and the renowned 402 bus, perched on the edge of the CBD, remain so unknown?
Wedged between North Melbourne, Flemington and Footscray, Kensington today feels like it’s hiding. It’s more a waypoint than destination, and most people whizz overhead on the freeway en route to the airport, or pass by on the express train to the racecourse. Local real estate agents often describe it as having a “village feel”, and while it may sound glib, it rings true. Its quiet and stubbornly unhip streets can feel closer to a country town than the inner city. That may simply be a function of its size. Kensington is just 2.1 square kilometres, and driving anywhere within the suburb is unnecessary.
Favourite youth pastimes were always best done on foot: a trip to the tragically defunct Kensington Pizza to have a halal parma, or the after-school ritual of getting a potato cake and a can of coke at the fish and chip shop before football training.
My two best friends lived on either side of my house on plane tree-lined Wolseley Parade, a street of Victorian terraces and Edwardian cottages typical of much of Kensington. My house was the little Edwardian squeezed between their much........