Michael Batson

St. Kilda, now a funky seaside suburb near Melbourne, has a chequered history full of gangsters, pimps, prostitutes, crooked cops and, well, pyromania. Many of its landmarks have a habit of burning down – the sea baths, the St Moritz Ice Rink, the pier kiosk and the Palace nightclub – have all been lost to fire.

Some remain, including the iconic Luna Park, which opened in 1912 with 20,000 people attending the opening. With its distinctive smiley moonface entrance and the Scenic Railway, Luna Park has the oldest continually operating wooden roller-coaster in the world (and just one of two that requires a ride-on brake operator).

The park is built on land leased from what is now the Department of Sustainability and Environment, which is responsible for about one-third of Victoria’s public lands. Maintenance is an expensive and necessary task.  Three full-time carpenters replace each beam of wood with a new one, meaning that very little of the original structure still stands. Maintenance chief, Mark Harrison, says ''It's like the Sydney Harbour Bridge: by the time you're finished at one end, you have to start again at the other.”

Of the 81 Luna Parks that have existed around the world, Melbourne's is believed to be the oldest still in operation. Though it’s much changed, there are still rides aplenty guaranteed to make you dizzy. Harrison estimates that someone becomes ill every half-hour or so. ''We call it a 'code rainbow' over the radio,'' he says, ''and in [Sydney's Luna Park], they call it a 'protein spill'.'' Elsewhere it’s known as the “technicolour yawn.”

St. Kilda itself, is blessed with a good public transport service; there are buses, trains and trams, but public transport in Melbourne has been much maligned of late. Quality of service depends largely on what time you travel and where you live. Outside the inner city (zone one) it’s rather poor, and in some places, nonexistent. The main tram service to St Kilda is via route 96, which runs from East Brunswick to St. Kilda Beach, and is Melbourne’s busiest, carrying over 35,000 people a day. Mornings tend to be hideous. Usually everyone is bunched in like sardines looking miserable. Going home it’s a lottery, sometimes you get a seat and other times, it’s standing room only.

The trams however are slow. You could cycle faster than any tram runs but with temperatures sometimes hitting 40 degrees Celsius in summer or, cold, miserable and wet in winter, why would you want to.

Melbourne is now home to largest tram network in the world. The trams that run from Acland Street shops to Prahran and down Chapel Street, the W-class, have been in service since 1923 and have an old-worldly charm with wooden floors and bench seats. Built for neither speed nor comfort and without air-conditioning the slow ride along congested Chapel Street to Abbotsford through Richmond can be a painstaking journey, especially in summer.

The number- 96 tram runs past Albert Park on the light rail system, the former train line to St. Kilda. Once a year in February, around Albert Park Lake they hold the Formula One motor racing. It takes over 2 months to put up the grandstands, crash barriers and all the corporate facilities and other paraphernalia associated with this ear-splitting event. 50,000 tonnes in all is trucked in, a huge carbon footprint, from an organization not noted for its environmental awareness, proving it here. It takes another few weeks to pull it down all for four days of racing! Melbourne reorganizes much of its tram system to accommodate race-goers, ignoring and inconveniencing regular punters in the process. It cost the Melbourne City Council $30-odd million to host this event.

Bernie Ecclestone, the generalissimo of Formula One motor racing, who pays not a cent towards organizing the event, said recently at Melbourne of one problem child from among the racing drivers, “Every time I’ve been out to dinner with him he’s been as good as gold, he’s even better pissed!” The noise from this event is unbearable. Aircraft buzz the event and helicopters fly constantly overhead. Every hotel room in Melbourne is booked out as countless middle-aged bogans descend on the city, most of whom are seemingly unfamiliar with the use of public transport, though much of the transport network is maneuvered to accommodate them.

Life in St. Kilda can be interesting, and it’s an area of sharp social contrast.  There’s some intriguing street life covering the entire spectrum. Street walkers, drug addicts and the homeless share space with bikers and the well-heeled. Itinerant backpackers are a constant feature also. House prices are ridiculous. Near Middle Park in St. Kilda West are some really grand places, worth a packet. On the corner of Fitzroy and Acland streets is the Prince of Wales pub which has bands on most nights including many overseas acts from Australia to Alabama. There’s a pool table inside and a dartboard. Flat screen televisions show the local sport. The toilets look like the original.

In summer and during warmer times, the outside bar stools and benches at the Prince is frequented by the smokers mainly, the habit being banned indoors. To save time on drink orders, the staff opens a window and punters pay and receive their orders without having to go inside at all. One Saturday, the Rebels Motorcycle Club held a run, distinctive with their patches with the flag of the former Confederate states of the US, their bikes ranked alongside the curb outside the bar.  The Prince was built in 1940 in the modern style on the site of the first Prince of Wales which was built in 1920. It has been used as a cabaret venue and is now another live music venue ever since.

Later that weekend the Bros Motorcycle Club turned up on Fitzroy Street for Sunday brunch, parking their Harleys on the pavement, their group being smaller, and somewhat quieter, though no less threatening.

The homeless in St. Kilda are a reminder that all is not well in the “Lucky Country”. Soup kitchens exist daily on Grey Street, run by various religious groups. There are “Op shops” selling a wide variety of goods, clothing and furniture, some of it dilapidated and others remarkably pristine, designer labels even. Beggars can be aggressive. One guy, much the worse for wear sits outside the 7-11 on Fitzroy Street. “Got any money?” He asks. “No, well xxxx you!”

The Gatwick Private Hotel on Fitzroy Street is home to the down-and-outs. Groups sit drinking outside on the footpath. The police regularly turn up. The smell from inside the building filters out on to the street. It’s stale, urine-soaked, of dank rooms and desperation, while mere metres up the street, the well-heeled soak up the atmosphere at the Tolarno Hotel.

At the bottom of Blessington Street, at the junction where St. Kilda Road meets Brighton Road and on to the Nepean Highway, the demarcation between St. Kilda and the less salubrious St. Kilda East, is the Greyhound Pub. From Thursday through Sunday they host a range of bands usually without a cover charge. The décor leaves much to be desired (it’s since been renovated) but it’s got character. On music nights you can see bands such as the Sons of Lee Marvin, ably supported by the Screw Top Detonators, great stuff.

Back along Blessington Street from the Greyhound are the St. Kilda Botanical Gardens occupying an entire block and surrounded by art deco masterpieces. The gated gardens have resplendent mature trees and the main entrance is framed by magnificent palm trees.

Between them and the Greyhound is the haunt of street walkers, the traffic of their clients and the residue of their trade – used condoms – and countless cigarette butts. Occasionally, the police drive by, though anecdotal evidence suggests, members of the force aren’t above availing themselves of their services also, with the glaring difference that they do not pay, trading an arrest waiver for services rendered.

Anecdotally, more miscreant police officers are transferred out of St. Kilda police station for indiscretions, than from any other station in Melbourne, for a variety of offences including assaulting detainees to “misplacing” evidence.

Victoria has had at times, a beleaguered police force. It’s the only force in a Western country where I’ve seen officers standing on streets smoking. Officers are armed but with antiquated revolvers. Their recent commissioner, a woman in an overwhelmingly male-dominated profession, sat juxtaposed to her deputy. She was squat and broad and he long and lean with a shaved pate, resembling Lurch from the Addams Family. The legacy of the 1980s where corruption was endemic, is represented in St. Kilda. Today, more officers are transferred out of that station than any other in Victoria. Allegedly for witness intimidation and evidence tampering. All the more surreal, given the Federal Police force is located around the corner off Balaclava Street and has a division office not far away on St. Kilda Road.

Still, things are better than the once were, when St. Kilda was the place all the undercover drug deals went down, and the line between what was legitimate and what wasn't became increasingly blurred.

Carlyle Street in East St. Kilda is home to an eclectic range of shops. A “supermarket” will offer all wares for the Jewish faith. There are kosher butchers, bakers and candlestick makers. At the local pub on Carlyle Street near the corner of Chapel just up from the pharmacist, the regular punters, middle-aged men in casual attire range at the outside smokers area have a prime view of the passing pavement traffic. “Fancy an orange juice, girls?” Two leered at scantily-clad young women at the height of summer. Undeterred by being ignored, communication albeit one-way continued unabated, “A lemonade, how about a beer, or a vodka?” This got them no further but produced self-induced palls of phlegm-induced laughter from the gathering bar throng, like misogynistic laughing hyenas.

Demographically, St. Kilda has been a melting pot. The original native Australians lived in the area for 30,000 years, little evidence remains, and they are largely forgotten, a pity. More documented, the first European settler arrived around 1839. The area was officially named St Kilda in 1841. St Kilda became a fashionable area for wealthy settlers thereafter, and the indigenous peoples were driven out to surrounding areas. Between 1870 and 1890 St. Kilda's population more than doubled to about 19,000 persons. During the Land Boom of the 1880s, St Kilda became a densely populated district of great stone mansions and palatial hotels, some of which remain. Though some like the George on Fitzroy Street, could do with a lick of paint.

St. Kilda became a centre of Melbourne’s Jewish population, before the community prospered and bulk of the population, now estimated at some 40,000 moved inland to Caulfield. On Saturday mornings, the Jewish men file off to the synagogue on Charnwood Grove, a building surrounded by a high security fence with security at the gate sporting hand-held radios. Walking past some worshippers encountered no response at all, unusual in a quiet suburban street in this land.

A number of Italian eateries are still prominent in Acland Street. The barbers seem to be Russians. Mine said he’d been cutting hair since he was a teenager, had rarely gone to school. He gave me the best advice on shaving I’ve ever heard dispensed in English while debating the merits of Roman Abramovich’s rule at Chelsea in his native tongue to his partner working at the next chair.

St. Kilda allegedly has the highest proportion of single women aged over 30 in Melbourne. On weekends, especially during summer when the days are hot and the evenings are long, Acland Street’s bars and cafes are packed until the wee hours. Bikers bring their choppers down for show. Tourists of all descriptions trawl the streets and shops. In early 2009, with temperatures hitting the forties on consecutive days, bathers stayed on the beach all night. The renovated promenade lit up with street lights so bright it almost resembled daytime anyway.

Bohemian it is these days. The area echoes activity. Recently, they filmed excerpts of Spielberg’s “Pacific” with Tom Hanks at the Botanical Gardens, closing off the whole block for days.  A house used in the television series “Satisfaction” was on Blessington Street. The Ten Network drama “The Secret Life of Us” was filmed off Acland Street. The Esplanade Hotel, the “Espy” built in 1878, hosts television shows and bands. There’s lawn bowls and AFL football, with the Melbourne Aussie Rules team, the Demons, training at the Junction Oval, though their recent performance have been characteristically poor. Next door to the late Palace nightclub is the Palais Theatre. Acts come from far and wide to play here, Bryan Ferry to local icon Nick Cave, on the site of the failed bid to build the St. Kilda Triangle, a huge retail complex that, arguably, would have gutted much of St Kilda’s charm and heart.

Then there’s the St. Kilda festival. It’s estimated up to 500,000 people drop by for fun in the sun and a piss-up. The streets are closed to traffic and are lined with stalls for over a kilometre down Fitzroy Street along the Esplanade and onto Acland Street. Aussies comfortably head out on Sunday nights regardless of the impending working week ahead. Kiwis are sat at home Sundays thinking “Gee, I have to go to work tomorrow.” Sound stages abound all along the beach front and around Luna Park, with numerous bands playing at any one time, all free. The bands finished about 11pm but the bars kick on until the wee hours and all the bars down St. Kilda are full until late.

One day on a visit to the barber’s, the Aussie chick cutting me hair, announced she was “over St. Kilda years ago”. Most Aussies live near the coast. Having seen inland Australia I can understand that strategy.  If I were to live anywhere in Australia on the coast, I’d opt for here, got to love the history and the character. The rough edges make this place.