My suburb has a bad reputation, but buzzes with the energy of those making a second start

“If Afghanistan, Albania and Sudan had a baby, it would be called Dandenong. A place so rough, even the plants are monitored by CCTV.”

Comedian Teddy captures the common perceptions of Dandenong – perceptions that were heavily emphasised during a recent visit from the ABC’s Q+A program. If you watched the program filmed in my suburb you’d think our area is little more than crime gangs, cultural ghettos and “white flight”, where “boganville” meets the ungrateful migrant. Sitting in that Q+A audience, I realised that if Dandenong didn’t exist, certain politicians would have to invent it, as so many have built their careers spinning harmful tropes about us.

Shoppers at the iconic Dandenong Market.Credit: Simon Schluter

But while we may serve as fodder for politicians and comedians, we know Dandenong is far more multifaceted. It has been shaped by successive waves of migration. There were the early colonisers displacing First Nations peoples and corralling them into the Coranderrk Mission. Then the European workers who arrived in the postwar years to build Holden cars (it is said GMH even had someone on the migrant ships signing new employees) and work at the Heinz factory. And more recently, the waves of professional and humanitarian arrivals from southern Europe, Asia and Africa. Together, they made Dandenong a place of second chances. I never imagined living here, but I won’t ever leave.

Dandenong may not be somewhere people aspire to live, partly due to its lack of an inner-city hipster vibe and lingering reputational damage from past warring gangs. There were the Dandy Turks, who fought with the Kambo Klowns from Springvale. And there was the Noble Park 3174 gang of mostly Latino youth in the late ’80s and early ’90s, who wore blue bandannas and clashed with the red bandannas of the Hills Posse from Endeavour Hills and the MC-3 gang from Springvale.

But once you’re in Dandenong, it gets under your skin. It’s a major city that never lost its country-town vibe, where people may come for affordable housing or to work in our major manufacturing precinct, but stay because it’s the centre of the south-east – just 30 kilometres from the Melbourne CBD, while also being close to the beach and the mountains. And the 150 nationalities or so that you’ll find here are just a WhatsApp message away from the bigger world.

Our name’s a gift to advertisers – “It’s all dandy in Dandenong” – though it has inspired darker monikers like “Dandybong” or “Dandistan”. It’s reputed to be an Indigenous word for the Dandenong Ranges – a place far removed from the clay flats of the suburb, flanked by the Dandenong and Eumemmerring creeks. The plentiful water turns our massive parks and vast open spaces into oases of green and rich biodiversity.

When I arrived here 30 years ago as a young mother in the pre-internet world, I felt the suffocating isolation of white suburbia. My street was home to retired factory workers, stoners who kept large snakes in small glass tanks and single mothers doing home-based sex work during school hours. My sanity was saved by the family who ran the milk bar, Druze, who fled from Lebanon.

While our kids played, they served me bitter Arabic coffee and sweet baklava. Justin, the father, a born storyteller, entertained us with tales of their homeland and their wedding that lasted three days and nights, filled with music, dance, and traditions stretching all the way back to the Caliphate of Al-Hakim. These happy moments were a brief respite from their painful past: the deep pain of incalculable losses etched into the haunted eyes and bone-deep weariness of many residents here.

The transition from a farming village to a major city is evident in the cityscape. If you stand on the corner of Lonsdale and Walker streets in central Dandenong, you’ll see the 19th-century ornate cream-coloured stonework of the old town hall (now the Drum Theatre) opposite the old ANZ building, typical of the interwar commercial era that served the thriving agricultural and manufacturing communities. Across the street are mid-century, high-fronted retail buildings, contrasting sharply with the modern cantilevered civic centre, unmissable in its striking fire engine red, with the popular The Public’s Corner cafe nestled below.

Our houses, too, are transforming from mid-century family homes to the ubiquitous townhouses that often resemble cookie-cutter versions of one another.

Lonsdale Street may now be a mere shadow of its once-bustling shopping centre, with people flocking to nearby mega-centres like Chadstone and Fountain Gate, but some institutions remain, like Rob’s British Butchery, the Lebanese AB Bakery, where the affable Abdallah brothers serve pastries alongside a stunning display of traditional sweets, and the award-winning Kiwi Steak & Cheese Pie, at the entrance of the time capsule that is the Dandenong Arcade.

Little India in Dandenong.Credit: Penny Stephens

But the heart and soul of Dandenong is the Dandy Market; it’s what most people know us for. Architecturally faithful to its origins as a livestock market, it’s a big shed full of fresh, low-cost food. On the Cleeland Street side you’re drawn in by the irresistible smell of hot naan bread from Kabul Kitchen, where customers wait in long lines at the hole in the wall.

Inside, owners Ali, Mohammad and others make the bread with the kind of easy expertise that comes from a thousand years of tradition. It’s mesmerising to watch them indent the dough with a tandoor stick, sprinkle it with nigella seeds, then stretch it into a plump canvas pillow before placing it onto the circular cooking plate that feeds into a modern tandoor oven. And then there’s the chicken biryani, Kabuli palao rice, dhal and a mouth-watering selection of kebabs.

I came here for a backyard but stayed for the authenticity, the genuineness of people struggling to get by, and a place as saturated with stories of struggle, pain and loss as the verdant land near our waterways. But it’s also a place with the vibrant energy of those making a second start, fuelled by determination to succeed. Dandenong is the centre of the south-east and a microcosm of a complex world, with all the layers and opportunities that brings.

Rhonda Garad is a mother of four children, an academic at Monash University and a local government councillor.

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