This was published 5 months ago
How St Kilda remains St Kilda against all odds
St Kilda is a place constantly in transition. While cash is flowing into the bayside suburb, it’s also an area that locals will fight doggedly to protect.
By Cara Waters
Brian Nankervis at The Espy in St Kilda.Credit: Wayne Taylor
Brian Nankervis is standing surveying the view from The Espy, out across the moody horizon of the bay, listing off the things he loves about St Kilda.
“I love the proximity to the beach,” he says. “I love the romance of the coastline: Luna Park, the Palais Theatre, the Peanut Farm, Veg Out, The Espy.”
For years, Nankervis hosted television music quiz show RocKwiz at The Espy, as Esplanade Hotel is known. His kids went to St Kilda Primary School and he still lives “St Kilda adjacent”.
He remembers ice-skating at St Moritz as a boy before it burnt down and was replaced by a Novotel, and going to the hot sea baths full of “old Russian folk lolling about”.
A woman and her dog cross the road on the corner of Fitzroy Street and Canterbury Road in St Kilda.Credit: Simon Schluter
“There was a grandeur to the place,” he says. “Slightly faded, of course.”
Over the years, Nankervis has seen the suburb gentrify and he says you don’t wander down the street in St Kilda and bump into as many artists and musicians any more.
“I think the rents have forced people out, and you know, things change,” he says.
St Kilda is a suburb constantly in flux. Down the road from The Espy, the face of Luna Park is covered in scaffolding as the amusement park’s operators renovate the towers and work continues on the forecourt area between Luna Park and the Palais.
Cash is flowing into the bayside suburb with the $53 million renovation of the St Kilda Pier nearly complete, a $4 million makeover of The Saint hotel last year, and legendary restaurant Di Stasio getting ready to reopen on Fitzroy Street after a major overhaul.
New blocks of apartments with luxurious penthouses are planned in Fitzroy Street from developers Fortis and FSST.
However, it’s also a place where locals fight doggedly to protect its spirit, evident in the ongoing dispute over what should happen to the “triangle site”, which is next to the Palais and currently languishing as a car park dubbed “the Bermuda Triangle of ideas”.
St Kilda’s first people were the Yalukit Willam clan, one of the six clans of the Bunurong/Boon Wurrung people, who were displaced by European settlement in 1835.
The suburb became a playground for the rich in the 19th century, with the grand mansions that still stand along St Kilda’s boulevards a reminder of its time as the wealthiest suburb in Melbourne, with more jewellers and dressmakers than butchers and bakers.
After World War II, St Kilda became Melbourne’s unofficial red-light district, the home of low-cost rooming houses and “gutter crawlers” cruising the streets for sex workers.
Monarch Cakes on Acland Street has seen a few changes over the 90 years it has been trading. One constant – the store’s front window groaning with shelves of cakes: lemon tarts, vanilla slices, apple crumbles and sachertortes.
Three generations of owners at Monarch Cakes (from left): Nikki Laski, Talia Laski and Shirley Markham. Credit: Simon Schluter
Inside feels like a time warp, with walls papered with old photos, movie posters, an ancient cash register and a set of vintage mint green scales sitting on the glass counter.
Perceptions of danger
Owner Nikki Laski says that when she started working in St Kilda 30 years ago, it was “vibrant and eclectic”, with groups of elderly Jewish men talking about the wartime and young punks walking down the street.
“People like to talk about the doom and gloom of St Kilda, and it’s almost a sport these days, saying it is full of junkies and homeless people,” she says. “It’s a snapshot of Melbourne, we have a mix of billionaires on The Esplanade who live two doors away from hostels full of homeless people. That is what makes St Kilda fantastic.”
Her one complaint is the closure of Acland Street to traffic in 2016 and the creation of a plaza at the Barkly Street end, which she says has hit local businesses hard.
“Jacinta Allan, our premier, who was then minister for transport, decided to upgrade the tram lines and put in super stops and with the City of Port Phillip they pretty much killed the vibe in the street,” she says. “We all knew it was going to happen, and everything we predicted has come true. Melbourne is a city of people who drive. They want to drive here, they want a place to park.”
Walking down Acland Street on a cold but bright autumn afternoon, a few customers sit soaking up the sunlight at tables outside the cake stores, but nearby shops show “for lease” signs with around 14 shops empty between Shakespeare Grove and Barkly Street.
Vacancy rates on Acland Street are at 12.5 per cent and on Fitzroy Street 8.3 per cent, according to City of Port Phillip.
A group of three police officers talk to a distressed man standing in the middle of the street’s plaza, shouting and swearing at passersby.
Port Phillip police area commander Brett Coloe says overall crime in St Kilda is at its lowest level in the past 10 years.
“Last year, there were 25 robberies and 270 non-family violence assaults in St Kilda – a suburb that was visited by more than 4 million people,” he says. “As a result, the chances of being robbed in St Kilda were one in 160,000, while the chances of being randomly assaulted were one in almost 15,000.”
Robberies in St Kilda were at their second-lowest level for the past decade, while more than 60 per cent of non-family violence assaults in the areas were “lower-level push and shoves” with no major injuries.
Outreach worker Chris Middendorp, from the Sacred Heart Mission, says he’s seen a real change in the way the police interact with the community.
“Police are a lot more accepting of difference and a lot better equipped to manage mental health issues and homelessness in St Kilda,” he says. “It was a pretty rough place when we started here.”
The Sacred Heart Mission operates out of the old presbytery on Grey Street and Middendorp says numbers have remained steady over the years, with about 220 to 300 people through the doors every day for a free feed, crisis accommodation or another form of support.
“There’s always been perception that St Kilda is worse now than it was before,” he says. “It’s often about perceptions of danger and people often say that it’s about drug use, and it’s about street sex work, and it’s about homelessness. But when you actually look at what goes on on the street, a lot of it is people from out of town, from other parts of Melbourne coming into St Kilda to party on Friday nights and Saturday nights.”
A street sex worker in St Kilda in 2004.Credit: Wayne Taylor
When Middendorp started coming to St Kilda as an outreach worker in the mid ’90s, you could get a room for $80 a week “no questions asked”.
“The ‘no questions asked’ part of it was what was most appealing about St Kilda,” he says. “St Kilda attracted bohemians, writers, artists, people who didn’t quite fit in, members of the LGBTQ community, trans people, all sorts of creative types.”
Since those days, Middendorp says, St Kilda has gentrified. The biggest change has been the closure of the private rooming houses, the most well known being The Gatwick on Fitzroy Street, which was redeveloped into luxury apartments for The Block.
The revitalised Gatwick Hotel on Fitzroy Street, St Kilda.Credit: Simon Schluter
“They were never all that safe, they were never all that well-run,” he says. “But opportunistic accommodation where you can just show up at the front desk and say ‘I want a room for a week’ – that’s kind of gone completely.”
Middendorp says there is more social housing in St Kilda, but it’s more expensive, costing about $250 a week, and it doesn’t cater for people who don’t have an ID or an income, or find it overwhelming to fill in application forms.
He’s also seen a change in the street sex industry, with the sex workers who used to stand along Grey Street mainly gone.
“It’s by no means as obvious as it used to be. It’s almost invisible compared to what it was 20 years ago and I guess the internet is one of the main reasons for that,” he says.
Cleaned up
These days St Kilda’s residents are well-educated and wealthy.
Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows the suburb has a median age of 36, and 40.6 per cent are tertiary educated in comparison to 23.3 per cent in Australia more broadly.
The median weekly income for a person is $1214 compared to $805 in Australia and for a family $2737 in comparison to $2120 in Australia.
Marcello Callmistro gets a visit from some lorikeets on his balcony in St Kilda. Credit: Simon Schluter
People live densely, many in apartments, in the style made famous in television series The Secret Life of Us, with 79 per cent of residents in a flat or apartment compared to 14 per cent of people in Australia.
Marcello Callmistro’s apartment must have one of the best views in St Kilda, looking out over Albert Park to the city skyline and the bay. He’s lived in the suburb ever since he arrived from Italy in 2008.
“I just looked at the map and I thought I wanted to be close to the beach,” he says. “There was a moment when Fitzroy Street was a little bit more down, with shops closed and not a lot of people around. Now there is a lot of new bars opening. It’s nice to see people around. It’s been cleaned up a little bit.”
Over the years, waves of migrants like Callmistro have arrived in St Kilda and made the suburb their home.
Walking with Port Phillip Mayor Heather Cunsolo along Acland Street, she runs into an Irish couple who became Australian citizens that morning at a citizenship ceremony she conducted.
Of St Kilda residents, 32.5 per cent have English ancestry, 20.1 per cent Australian, 16 per cent Irish and 10.7 per cent Scottish.
Port Phillip Mayor Heather Cunsolo has a coffee in St Kilda. Credit: Simon Schluter
“We’re ‘County St Kilda’, don’t you know,” Cunsolo laughs. “I love that about St Kilda, I love that this is a hub that a lot of internationals come to.”
She points to Irish pub Fifth Province, which is expanding and will offer an Irish whiskey bar in the former Pizza Birra site at the Metropol where the light rail stops.
Cunsolo defends the vacant shops along Acland Street and Fitzroy Street as part of a broader issue for high streets across the country due to major changes in the retail landscape with the shift to online shopping and high rental costs.
As for the closure of Acland Street, she says the size of the tram super stop that is required for accessibility means there is not enough room for both cars and a broad enough footpath.
“You can see that this could be an asset,” Cunsolo says, gesturing at the sparsely populated plaza. “But I know it’s a change from what it was, and some people say that it hasn’t necessarily been the positive change they were maybe hoping for.”
Live music
The triangle site is another headache for the council. It wants to put a 5000-person live music venue there, but needs the state and federal government to kick in money, which has not been forthcoming.
An artist’s render of the proposed development on the St Kilda Triangle site.Credit: City of Port Phillip
Port Phillip residents group Unchain’s head, Serge Thomann, says the proposal is a folly from the council. “We know that the state government hasn’t got any money,” he says.
“For me, the live music venue has always been something that cannot be achieved and for me, it is also wrong, because whatever should go on the site should be a place that is used seven days a week and not just a couple of nights a week for bands.”
Creative Industries Minister Colin Brooks says St Kilda is a great place to experience live music.
“While there had been no formal submissions [on the triangle site], we continue engaging constructively with the City of Port Phillip on the future of the site,” he says.
Cunsolo and the Port Phillip council are keen to push ahead with the plans as part of a broader strategy to make St Kilda Victoria’s first live music precinct.
“The point of the live music precinct is to get regulating bodies, liquor licensing and noise and council, and trying to bring it all together to make it easy for the people who are living and working nearby and the venues to operate so that we can be happy neighbours,” she says.
According to music promoter Live Nation, operator of the Palais, since 2017 the venue’s show count has more than doubled and audience attendance has grown by more than 80 per cent, with acts including Dua Lipa, Tim Finn, Nick Cave and Crowded House all performing on its historic stage.
Live Nation’s Mark Graham says the operator has spent $10 million refurbishing the historic theatre and has a further $6.5 million of works planned in the next year “to ensure it remains a cornerstone venue in the ongoing growth of Melbourne’s outstanding arts and entertainment culture”.
At the nearby Prince Hotel, owner Andy Ryan says while getting people back into the habit of seeing live music after COVID has been a challenge, the crowds are returning to the bandroom.
“At the Prince it is about ensuring locals have the right amenity and places for them,” he says. “For us, it’s about locals as well as those coming from further afield.”
Down the road from The Prince, Alby Tomassi has owned The Banff for 16 years and says even though St Kilda is a tourist hotspot, his casual pizza and pasta restaurant mainly caters for locals.
“The locals are the true custodians of the restaurant, we are just managers of it,” he says. “St Kilda still has the eclectic transient feel, there is a mix of artists, musicians, wealthy people, street workers. Homeless people come in for a coffee, we know they don’t have any money, but we help them out, they say ‘thanks’ and walk out. There is never any trouble.”
Alby Tomassi, owner of The Banff in Fitzroy Street, St Kilda. Credit: Simon Schluter
Tomassi says lots of his customers are singles who come in and share a communal table with a few others and “have a bit of banter” and a glass of wine.
“St Kilda is all about community,” he says. “It’s an amazing suburb and will stand the test of time.”
Nankervis is positive about St Kilda’s future as well and points to the $25 million Pride Centre, which he says has breathed new life into Fitzroy Street.
“There’s just that sense of expanse,” he says. “Look, it’s not Bronte or Coogee, but it’s ours.”
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