Brunswick has changed, but not even developers can get rid of its charm

Even though I’d been visiting Brunswick my whole life, I’d never thought about moving there until we had our first child and began looking for a house. That was 16 years ago, when my oldest son was four and my second was a newborn. Back then, Brunswick was still considered really far away. When I told someone we were moving there, they thought we were crazy.

After looking at the house that would eventually become our home, my partner and I went to an old cafe that had no menu – just a coffee machine, a photo of the Argentine soccer team on the wall and containers of fresh salad and rolls on offer. The vibe was so right and the sandwich was so spot on that I fell in love with the area immediately.

We bought the place off our next-door neighbours who lived with their kids. Their parents had lived in our house, and that multiple-generation living summed up everything about Brunswick back then. In our early years there, they taught me so much about cooking and food. They were generous with their knowledge; it felt like a community in the true sense of the word.

It’s always been an interesting suburb to walk around because the streets have so much character. People have poured their own concrete paths, made their own garden gnomes and grow their own vegetables in the front yard. The beauty is so deep and layered.

If we hadn’t moved to Brunswick, I never would have started running food trucks, because it couldn’t happen in any other suburb. Years back, all the inner-city councils had a special permit for ice-cream vans that, for some reason or another, they all cancelled in the early 2000s.

But Moreland Council (now Merri-bek City Council) still had this permit and I realised I could use it on a food truck. There were so many good suppliers in the area that it made setting up and getting off the ground possible in a way that just wouldn’t have happened anywhere else in Melbourne.

Raph Rashid with the first Beatbox Burger truck in 2011.

We started Beatbox Burgers in 2009 and in those early days, because of the permit, we could only sell within the council catchment area. But no one else was living in Brunswick back then, so we had to travel to find our customers. We’d drive the truck up to the park in North Carlton, right on the council border, and sell burgers there. It took off straight away so in 2011, we started the Taco Truck. Now we’ve got our restaurant on Edward Street.

Brunswick is a tricky suburb. Running a successful business is not a given; you’ve got to work hard. But that’s the charm of the place. As soon as people could see I was serious, everyone around us showed so much love.

For me, Brunswick has always been about the diversity more than anything. It’s a soulful place where you can get lots of different versions of whatever you want in the same suburb. It got painted with the hipster brush the hardest, I think. There really wasn’t that much of it here, or at least, no more than there was in any other inner north suburb at the time.

Of course, it’s changed a lot since then. From 2011 to now, the suburb has boomed. In 2021, there were 12,000 apartments in Brunswick, almost twice as many as 2011. Not all those apartment blocks are pretty, but those extra people have fed life on Sydney Road, made all the new bars and restaurants boom and generated a creative buzz unmatched in any other Melbourne suburb.

The change is part of its charm. When the good versions of cafes and bakeries began to arrive, like Ovens Street Bakery and Wide Open Road, we knew the place was going to be the next thing. A1 Bakery is legendary, you can get warm ricotta cheese at Mediterranean Wholesalers and amazing coffee from the new Market Lane. I could spend hours in the IGA – it’s the quirkiest one in the city. You’ve got to embrace change rather than fight against it, and I think people who have lived in Brunswick for a long time really get that.

Back in the day, Brunswick used to be one of those working-class suburbs that families lived in until they made enough money to move out to Templestowe. A lot of people didn’t want to stay. But there seems to be a lot less of that now and the people who choose to live here and call it home are in it for the long haul.

One thing about Brunswick that hasn’t changed is that if you go five minutes in any direction, you’ll be in a spot that feels completely different to where you’ve just come from. There are pockets all along Sydney Road now and the whole area has so much to offer. East Brunswick is more young professionals, West Brunswick is more families and Brunswick itself is a bit of both. It’s got everything you need (although we do need more trees).

I’ve had developers tell me they’re the reason Brunswick isn’t shit anymore. But what they don’t realise is that it was never shit. It’s always been beautiful, and their one ideal of beauty isn’t the only one that exists or that people are chasing.

Brunswick is the most inspiring suburb in Australia. There’s nothing you can say to change my mind.

Raph Rashid started the BeatBox Kitchen food truck before launching a series of other food trucks in the following years. He now runs the Juanita Peaches restaurant in Brunswick.

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

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