You’re not from Armadale unless you’ve passed this test

I moved to Armadale 20 years ago, just as future pop-cultural icon Kath & Kim became a hit TV series. The title characters and their often-quoted catchphrases were offset by those of their polar opposites, the fancy-homewares-selling, grey-bobbed snobs Prue and Trude.

Armadale was until then known as an aspirational suburb with beautiful heritage houses; it wasn’t really subject to cliches or common perceptions elsewhere in Melbourne. Prue and Trude, however, became the poster girls for Armadale types, and the satire wasn’t entirely inaccurate.

In my ’hood, Prues and Trudes are the exception, rather than the rule (much more common are women wearing exercise pants, despite lacking any intention to exercise) but it is fun to spot them.

Soon after moving here, I bought a decorative urn from a homewares shop with a counter saleswoman upon whom both characters were probably based. Her comment as she was ringing it up: “What are you going to put in here? Grannie’s ashes?” She placed hand to mouth to contain her amusement at this comedy gold. It felt like I was now living in a hilarious sitcom.

At a supermarket self-serve in mid-2022, as the floods were engulfing NSW, two prototypes next to me commiserated over one’s abruptly cancelled trip to “Baaahron” (Byron Bay). “Ohh, NOOOOH!” cooed the other at a startling pitch. It was clear the ACTUAL flood victims were the furthest thing from their minds.

My first home in Armadale was my final share house, which was literally on the corner of Armadale, Toorak and Prahran. During my time there, the address changed from Armadale to Toorak, and back to Armadale. Australia Post was unable to make up its mind.

The front door was in Armadale, the back door was in Prahran and if you stuck your head out the kitchen window, it was in Toorak.

The house was demolished in 2021, along with its neighbour to the rear, and the land on which it stood now hosts a luxury apartment building soon to open to its new occupants, who will never know the silly shenanigans that once occurred there. They’re probably better off: what happens in a share house (you know the rest).

This kind of development is the story of Armadale playing out. What was one of the last suburbs in Melbourne to boast one beautiful heritage home after the next is becoming a patchwork of the old and new. I wouldn’t say developers have won the war, but they’re certainly no longer hiding in the trenches.

Although it was already well underway, it felt like the shock demolition of the Greyhound Hotel in nearby St Kilda in 2017 was the key opening of the floodgate to start relaxing preservation of the 100-plus-year-old homes that characterise Armadale.

Phillippa Grogan at her eponymous Armadale bakehouse in 2021. Credit: Eddie Jim

Socially, like many wealthy suburbs all over the world, if you’re not from here, no matter how long you’ve lived here, you’re not from here. If you didn’t go to one of the many private schools in Armadale and grow up here, you might as well be from Glen Iris.

The epicentre of Armadale, Melbourne’s last bastion of sophisticated outdoor shopping, dining and Being Seen in Melbourne is of course High Street. Life in this ’burb revolves around this strip, which thrives as a fashion, cafe, and restaurant mecca. Unlike its twin sister Chapel Street, which decayed into shameful ruin throughout the noughties.

Saturday mornings on High Street are when it’s at its most lively and entertaining. The excited, freshly mani-pedi’ed alpha girls are out wedding and bridesmaid dress shopping, and without flinching would step over a struck-down pedestrian to get to their next fitting.

The puffer-jacketed queue outside newly opened croissanterie Lune moves quickly, and as I walk around, I wish that the Armadale Hotel, where I saw bands in my 20s, was still there (it’s now a “high-end” Woolworths). Richfield’s coffee house, too. And the New York cafe and the Austrian restaurant with posters of grand prix driver Niki Lauda as decor. There are mainstays, however, like Giorgio’s with its disconcerting druid-like statuary in the forecourt.

Graham Geddes of Graham Geddes Antiques, pictured at his High Street store in 2012. Credit: Angela Wylie

Until recently, one of the reasons people went out of their way to visit, the antique stores, have all but disappeared. It’s almost as though they reminded the area of its age, and as they vanished, more and more day spas and plastic surgeons opened their doors so that it could stay forever young and attractive.

Of the positive recent changes, the most obvious is the greater ethnic diversity that’s finally found its way here.

Also, as many more international students are among the recently added residents, I’m sure the median age has lowered too. Armadale no longer feels quite as much like a Neil Diamond concert just got out.

And while businesses that felt unique to the area might have diminished a bit in the last few years (in no small part thanks to COVID), and real estate prices have become “aspirational”, to put it mildly, the overall leafy charm of the area hasn’t.

OK, sometimes I’m envious of the variety and quality of restaurants, bars and cafes north of the river; but travelling there makes it more of an adventure, so I’ll keep my fancy backyard for now.

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