The suburb where everyone knows your name – and your marital status

South Caulfield. Caulfield South. Jo’burg North.

Whatever you want to call it, this is the kind of suburb you dream of escaping when you’re a teenager, and dream of living in when you have a teenager. Does that mean my teenager is dreaming about moving to a Carlton North share house? Oy vey. The cycle continues.

What I love about Caulfield South is its distinct absence of Gen Z twenty-somethings, which means a distinct lack of house parties blasting Fred Again until 2am. It also means a distinct lack of single-earring-wearing, vape-inhaling keyboard activists looking like Y2K vomited up all of its worst clothes. Someone once proposed a skate park here. It did not go well.

Caulfield South has a median age of 41, meaning I am finally living among my people. It’s also the global capital of the oodle, which usurped the Maltese shih tzu as the Caulfield South dog de jour.

In terms of Caulfield South landmarks, there are three: Princes Park, Brighton General Cemetery, and Mr Brightside Cafe.

Princes Park was in the news recently for being the flashpoint of ugly clashes regarding a Middle East conflict 13,000 kilometres away. Before then, it was newsworthy for another ugly clash. Local cricketers were claiming dog owners had turned the grounds into “one massive toilet”. They were fed up with games being interrupted by off-leash fur babies, whose owners were probably too busy debating said Middle East conflict to notice the huge divots being dug up by their prized oodles.

I won’t weigh in on this (or any other) conflict; suffice to say that Caulfield South has a very dog-forward culture. My mother-in-law is basically the mayor of the dog park (yes, she lives here too), and the cafe near the park – aptly named Fress, which means “gorge oneself” in Yiddish – is so dog-friendly, it’s the humans who have to wait outside.

The historic but misleadingly named Brighton General Cemetery is right at the end of my street.

One day during one lockdown, part of the cemetery’s outer brick wall was breached. Suburban legend has it that the wall was destroyed by a careening car.

If this rumour is true, no one knows who was behind the wheel. Was it a drunk driver? An 88-year-old whose licence should’ve been cancelled when she ploughed into the local servo 10 years earlier? Rumour has it the damage was caused by a scorned spouse whose visceral reaction to her partner’s affair involved crashing the family car into the cemetery wall.

Despite its name, Brighton General Cemetery is located in Caulfield South.Credit: Craig Abraham

It can’t be verified, of course, but I like to believe it because it’s the most exciting thing that’s happened to Caulfield South since the North Road IGA began stocking imported cheese.

Sir John Monash is buried at the Brighton General Cemetery. As is Arthur Boyd.

Weirdly enough, there are no known Arthur Boyd impressionistic landscapes of Caulfield South and the reason is quite simple: the suburb is an aesthetic and architectural eyesore. It wasn’t always this way. In the 1960s and ’70s, the area was home to beautiful modernist homes designed by European-trained architects, along with Californian bungalows and quaint red-brick cottages.

Many have since made way for ’90s Neo-Georgian brick veneer monstrosities, or their modern incarnation: the cookie-cutter dual occupancy. How do I know? I live in one, #sorrynotsorry.

But what Caulfield South lacks in architectural consistency, it more than makes up for in character.

There’s a distinct Jewish feel to the suburb; a Jewish South African feel, to be more specific. Jews make up more than 36 per cent of the population here, which is a pretty big deal in a state where the Jewish population hovers around 0.7 per cent.

It’s probably the only suburb in Australia where a nondescript corner store stocks bagels, kosher wurst, chopped liver, Russian potato salad, kreplach (Jewish soup dumplings), and biltong (South African jerky). (Shout-out to Bambra Deli, whose Indian owners can slice brisket better than any Jew I know.)

The family owners of Cafe D’lish were pioneers here, opening up what may have been the suburb’s first cafe during the second wave of South African Jewish immigration in 2001. Then there’s Mr Brightside, the epicentre of South Caulfield Primary communal gossip and the one-time stomping ground of multiple premiership-winning coach Alastair Clarkson. I asked the cafe’s co-owner, George Redwan, what he loves about the suburb, and he says it’s an “old-school community feel” that you can’t get anywhere else.

“I can’t walk more than 50 metres without recognising someone and stopping to chat,” he says. “Happens in the cafe all the time.”

So in that sense, Caulfield South is a bit like the TV show Cheers. A place where everybody knows your name, but also your marital status, your child’s VCE score, your strain of oodle, and your position on the Middle East conflict that shall not be named.

Darren Levin is a Melbourne writer who moved to South Caulfield (via Templestowe) in 1999.

This piece is part of The Age’s Life in the ’Burbs series.

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