My suburb fought so hard to stay off the radar that Melburnians can’t even get its name right

If you’re not familiar with Princes Hill, we’re fine with that. To help you place it, it’s next door to Carlton North, and often lumped in with it.

It’s surrounded on the other three sides by Princes Park, Melbourne General Cemetery and a strip of green where the Inner Circle railway once cut across the city. And if you don’t call it “Princess Hill” or confuse it with Clifton Hill, you already know more than most.

In fact, it’s so under the radar that I believe it is one of the few parts of the inner north that never featured in an episode of Offspring.

But it’s nice to live under the radar. My small suburb is not somewhere people come to visit, just somewhere people are happy to live. We’ve got one cafe, one convenience store and two churches. Our only residential tower is a retirement village. Apart from Lygon Street, the busiest traffic route is the bike path cutting through the suburb’s north. It’s quiet but close to places that aren’t, like Sydney Road and Carlton’s coffee strip.

Colonial central planning of the 1870s gave Princes Hill narrow terraced houses but bizarrely wide streets. Were the roads laid out this way due to concerns about sanitary conditions, or on the expectation of gold-rush fuelled growth? If it was the latter, those planners might be a little disappointed that the suburb has in recent decades been firmly preserved as a NIMBY heritage district. Those wide streets are now dominated by tentative L-plate drivers.

The older houses date back to when Princes Hill was a self-contained neighbourhood on the city fringe. A few red brick factories in the back lanes, and a mix of modest cottages and mansions lining Princes Park. The factories are now residential and the only manual work being done is tradies popping second storeys onto those modest terraces.

In the 1970s, residents fought hard to keep that vibe. In a battle against developers and Kleenex manufacturers, they were aided by the Builders Labourers Federation, which blackbanned work on a factory planned for disused railway land in the suburb’s north. Punches were thrown, BLF head Norm Gallagher got arrested, the factory lost, and the land is now a linear park and bike path. A decade later, residents tried unsuccessfully to stop much-needed public housing from being built next door.

Since then the suburb has stayed out of the political news, except in 2012 when then-opposition leader Bill Shorten was involved in a misunderstanding about a pie at our local convenience store. Fortunately, Princes Hill’s low profile was preserved when media coverage of this storm-in-a-pie-warmer referred to it as a Carlton North convenience store.

Still, stroll through the asphalt and bluestone back lanes, and you’ll get a couple of surprises. There’s the thriving community centre where Paul Kelly played one of his first Melbourne gigs, and the 1970s brutalism of Princes Hill Secondary College, where 800 students are packed into a compact, Tardis-like building with a smaller footprint than the average primary school. To compensate for the lack of space, the park and surrounding streets fill with casual-clothed students chattering like parrots at lunch and break times.

Climb the gentle rise of the hill to the cemetery gates and the avenue of elm trees. Look out to the city skyline and the Fitzroy high-rises and get a sense of peace and space, a world away from the constant traffic a couple of blocks over.

We moved here in 2007 when houses were cheaper, and decided to stay, contributing our bit to gentrification. Princes Hill is now firmly part of the inner-city “woke belt” and one of the highest Greens-voting areas in Melbourne. Over the years, local Labor member Lindsay Tanner was replaced by Adam Bandt, and “Yes” to same-sex marriage signs were replaced by signs urging “Yes” to the Voice.

It happens slowly, but there has been demographic change here. There is almost no trace of the suburb’s pre-war past as a Jewish neighbourhood, and only fading traces of its post-war Italian population. The under-used bocce court by the former railway station is now a community garden.

If there was one turning point, it would have been the end of Carlton’s AFL games at Princes Park in 2005. While they had been winding down for a while, the brief Saturday afternoon invasions filled the streets, reminding residents they were part of the broader fabric of Melbourne and its working-class history. Many long-term residents were relieved to get their quiet suburb back. When the first-ever AFLW match drew a capacity crowd of almost 25,000 to Princes Park in 2017, the cars came back.

Despite being a lovely place to raise kids, having two school-aged children puts us in the minority. Families either want more space than what’s on offer here, or have been priced out into Brunswick. What’s left are young professional couples and downsizing Boomers who wear puffy jackets and walk fluffy dogs, and zip down to Carlton for coffee on Italian scooters.

Rising property prices mean few new migrants now settle here, and even the University of Melbourne’s students are being pushed out. The population is gently declining – dropping by 5 per cent between 2016 and 2021. And while renters still make up almost half the suburb, I can’t remember the last time I was kept awake by a noisy party.

Like most inner suburbs, Princes Hill has several communities living alongside each other: drop-offs at the school, dog walkers heading to the park, older couples pruning their rosebushes, young people picnicking and flirting on the median strips in summer. People don’t knock on the door with cakes when you move in, but you gradually begin to recognise faces and exchange nods.

Apart from the endless renovations, little changes here. When I head home at the end of the day and watch the sun setting over the park and the circling joggers, or see the magnolias flowering in August and the roses blooming in spring, it seems nothing will ever change. And that’s a nice feeling.

Come and try Princes Hill. You’ll never leave (unless a downsizer makes your landlord an offer they can’t refuse).

Ben Ruse is a former journalist who now works in communications.

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