Living in Carlton in the late ‘70s meant teenage desires found climactic expression and bohemian tendencies went troppo. A rented terrace with seven residents, and a floating population of 70 times seven, was an unequalled domestic adventure. ‘Floating’ was in fact the word, with a daily intake of legal and illegal substances causing the population to see the great omphalos in the ceiling rose, or a Canning Street roundabout. Ganja plants lined the concrete backyard, or were cultivated by ultra-violet light under the staircase: the only things in the house given careful tending. Washing-up? What’s that? We ran alternative shows on the nascent 3RRR. There was a high demand for sensory overload. Concrete poems built from Real Estate sections decorated the walls. Philip Hunter was imitating Tapies in one room, Paul Grabowsky copying Bud Powell in another. Weekends were one long jazz rehearsal. Parties were immovable feasts as guests took half an hour to find their way from front door to fridge. Culinary skills extended about as far as over-peppered spaghetti Bolognese.
We never thought we were making memories, but this book reminds us we were one small story in decades of change. As Arnold Zable says, ‘from the outset Carlton has been on a roller-coaster ride of booms and busts.’ This most lavish of local histories is full of surprises. Three closely-written pages explain how Carlton got its name. Nobody knows, the closest plausible reason amidst a labyrinth of guesses, being that the Carlton Gardens, established in 1852, lent the name to the surrounding bushland by simple mind association.
An attempt is made to piece together Koori history, though ‘Carlton is not known to have had any particular significance to the Wurundjeri’ and we mainly learn how the people were dispersed or assimilated. In fact one conclusion drawn by Don Chambers is that Carlton was ‘probably associated with death and mourning’ by the Indigenous inhabitants, as their people were buried in the new Melbourne General Cemetery, in the section ‘Other Denominations’. The presence in the bush of the Collingwood Stockade on what is now Lee Street School, would not have been a friendly sight either.
The truth about Carlton is that it’s unavoidable, geographically, culturally, collectively. It’s often seen as an extension of the city of Melbourne. To get anywhere north of the Yarra, Carlton must enter consciousness. A range of topical chapters goes a good way in delineating how