My suburb likes to hide its identity. Even our most famous building is misplaced

If you don’t live in Clifton Hill or know somebody who does, you have no reason to ever visit – and that’s just the way we like it.

Tucked between the cooler, more high-profile suburbs of Collingwood, Northcote and North Fitzroy, Clifton Hill flies under the radar.

The Clifton Hill McDonald’s is technically not in Clifton Hill. Credit: Justin McManus

There’s really no hill in Clifton Hill, just a slight rise that is only discernible if you are riding a bike; being the inner north, that’s something many of us like to do.

It’s a suburb that hides its identity – the local swimming pool is confusingly called the Collingwood Leisure Centre, even though it’s slap-bang in the centre of Clifton Hill, while the athletics track on the Northcote border is the Collingwood Little Athletics Centre.

Even one of the most well-known buildings in Clifton Hill, the art deco McDonald’s, is technically in North Fitzroy.

If we could build a moat around Clifton Hill, we would, but we have to make do with natural barriers in the form of the Merri Creek, which encircles a large part of the suburb, the Eastern Freeway and the Ramsden Street boom gates.

Other suburbs have campaigned to have their boom gates removed as part of the government’s level crossing removal project; in Clifton Hill, we welcome anything that makes our suburb more difficult for others to get to.

The main gripe for most of us: the number of drivers who use Clifton Hill’s quiet streets as rat runs to get into the city. Find me a Melbourne suburb with more speed bumps and traffic-calming devices than Clifton Hill, and I’ll shout you a flat white at Uncle Drew Cafe.

Clifton Hill residents, sometimes called “Chillers” or “Clifton Hill Billies” are a well-organised lot.

There’s generally a King’s Counsel on hand, ready to mobilise the neighbours to advocate for slower traffic, fight to protect the local pub, The Royal, from being redeveloped into apartments or, more shamefully, to oppose an aged care home.

It’s no surprise, given that Clifton Hill sits in the middle of “solicitor land”, one of five suburbs in the inner north where lawyers outnumber all other jobs.

I can hardly complain, I used to be a lawyer as well.

The gentrification of Clifton Hill is a far cry from its early days. Quarries Park was a working quarry, and the area was filled with factories and tiny workers’ cottages.

A family member who grew up in Fitzroy 80 years ago tells me: “Fitzroy was a slum and Clifton Hill was a slum; they just thought they were a better class of slum than us.”

For a long time, the suburb was working class, a home for many Greek and Italian migrants. There is still public housing in the area, and some of the nonnas and nonnos remain, with their lemon trees and white plaster garden statues.

But gradually, the nonnas’ homes are being bought and renovated by young professionals driving up the median house price to $1.6 million.

In the 11 years I have lived here, I have seen the suburb come up in the world: old warehouses have become apartments, the tattoo parlour turned into a gourmet pizza shop, and the parks are overrun with cavoodles and rescue greyhounds.

One sign of the suburb’s new-found wealth was apparent during COVID lockdowns when bougie Queen’s Parade grocery store McCoppins put up a sign that struck fear into the hearts of locals: “Limited supply of D’Affinois.”

The famed Fromager d’Affinois cheese.Credit: Lisa Maree Williams

Forget fights over toilet paper; in Clifton Hill, it was French soft cheese that was being stockpiled.

Despite Clifton Hill’s upward mobility, it is still left-leaning, held by Labor’s Ged Kearney federally and the Greens’ Gabrielle de Vietri at a state level.

Greens MP Gabrielle de Vietri.Credit: Justin McManus

The suburb is part of the Yarra council, jokingly referred to as the People’s Republic of Yarra, which has just switched from a Greens council to one dominated by former Socialist Stephen Jolly and his coalition of independents.

There’s a labyrinth down by Merri Creek, the recycling centre is the pride of the suburb, and many front fences have “climate action now” or “Yes” signs still hanging from the referendum.

It’s no surprise the area is in hot demand – Clifton Hill is spoilt with public transport links. It has a tram, buses and a train station with two train lines running through it (Mernda and Hurstbridge).

This means trains are so regular that I can just walk to the station without checking the timetable and a train will turn up within a couple of minutes, letting me momentarily pretend I am living in a city with a reliable and high-frequency transport system like London or Paris.

There’s a real sense of community, helped by little book libraries on most streets, an active “good karma” network and an annual Halloween lolly bonanza so generous that kids come from surrounding suburbs.

The parkland and trails around Clifton Hill make it feel like it’s the middle of the bush.

Sunrise brings hot air balloons floating overhead, and when the sun sets, flying foxes swarm above our home from their colony by the Yarra, on their way to the fruit trees of Carlton and Brunswick.

Even the flying foxes haven’t worked out how good life is in Clifton Hill, and that suits us fine.

Cara Waters is city editor.

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