My suburb is known as the Elwood of the west, but it’s actually better (apart from the stench)

My suburb is one of nine that make up the City of Maribyrnong, the smallest and most densely populated of Melbourne’s municipalities.

Sandwiched between Brooklyn, Melbourne’s most polluted suburb, in the west and the Maribyrnong River and Coode Island in the east, Yarraville has changed enormously over the past 30 years, rising from the shadow of its industrial past to become one of the more sought after inner-west addresses.

An aerial of Melbourne from Yarraville.Credit: Joe Armao

This transformation has been so thorough that I’ve recently heard people from the other side of the bridge refer to Yarraville as the Elwood of the west. Why Elwood of all places? Yarraville has no stinky canal for a start, although it does have a stench. More on that later.

The habit of attaching puzzling names to my suburb goes back to the 1850s. As Melbourne was being subdivided for settlement, it was thought that putting Yarra in its name, of all the places the river passes, might make it more attractive to settlers. I guess it worked. The Maribyrnong, which also skirts my suburb, was then known as The Salt Water River and Yarraville sounds more appealing than Saltwarterriverville, especially as that river was, by that stage, already home to the kind of noxious industry that would characterise the region for the next century or more.

For some decades now, Yarraville has been walloped with the gentrification stick. And yet, some parts have felt its sting more thoroughly and more swiftly than others.

When we first visited the house we were to buy here – only 16 years ago – it looked more like a scene from the Walking Dead than The Real Housewives of Elwood. The yard was wild, the windows were all smashed. The plumbing had been stripped too.

Little kids in tow, my wife and I clambered into the house through the hole where the front window used to be, pushing up fallen ceilings and walls as we went. It looked abandoned, but we soon found out it wasn’t.

A lady from across the road asked what we were up to. We said we’d heard the place was up for sale. She confirmed that it was, but she hadn’t formally signed with the real estate agent yet. An hour later we’d made a handshake deal to buy it.

Once we’d moved in, we soon learned that where we now lived was, to misquote Paul Keating, “the arse end” of a suburb unofficially divided into four hierarchical boroughs. The heart, and the nicest part, of Yarraville is “The ’Ville”, which runs east of Williamstown Road, down to the river. West of that lies the next best bit, known as The Other Side of Willy Road. West of that you’ll find The Other Side of Cruickshank Park and last and definitely least is our bit, The Other Side of Roberts Street.

Although there’s only a kilometre or so separating the four zones there is a genuine feeling of distance and difference. One close neighbour, admittedly a former country girl, speaks of “going into town” when she goes to The ’Ville.

The ’Ville is the part of Yarraville everyone knows and loves. When Time Out named Yarraville one of the coolest neighbourhoods in the world in 2020, that’s what they were writing about; more specifically the intersection of Anderson and Ballarat Streets, where you’ll find the famous Sun Theatre and Bookshop, the (now permanent) Pop Up Park, the iconic Corner Shop cafe and several ripper wine bars and eateries.

On warm summer evenings, when the fairy lights strung between the lamp posts are a-twinkling, and the streets are full of punters scouting for a bite and a jar, you can understand why it made that list.

On the western edge of The ’Ville stands a lovely old red brick grandstand that plays home to the Yarraville Seddon Eagles football club and the Yarraville Mouth Organ Band – quite a combination. I’ve never heard the band play, but they’ve been tooting their harps for close to 100 years, so they must be good.

If you look north from there, along Willy Road, you can glimpse the Whitten Oval, home of the Western Bulldogs. When the Dogs made the grand final in 2016 Yarraville went mad. It was as if the entire suburb was expecting its first child. You couldn’t go five steps without someone smiling, winking, nodding, and whispering “Go Dogs!”

Western Bulldogs supporters fill the streets of Yarraville to watch the 2016 grand final.Credit: Chris Hopkins

I couldn’t get tickets to the game and so, along with a several hundred others, I watched it on a giant screen in the Pop Up Park. Not quite the same as being there, but it was the biggest, warmest and most welcoming party I’ve ever attended, so I wasn’t too disappointed.

If there’s a dark side to The ’Ville it’s that the streets are so narrow that giving way has become a way of life – when the level crossing bells are ringing you can be stuck in a snarl for anything up to 15 minutes at a time. Locals manage this vehicular dance with grace and aplomb, nonchalantly waving each other through. There’s a collective pride in the restraint with which we handle this. So much so that a few years ago someone started a Facebook page named, The Yarraville Courtesy Wave Campaign that championed this communal forbearance. Having said that, we have absolutely zero patience for non-locals who don’t wave. Remember that if you ever visit!

On The Other Side of Roberts Street we have no issues with traffic, but we do have to battle what we like to call the Yarraville Stench – an arresting little aroma drawn from the abattoirs and tanneries of Brooklyn that occasionally drifts our way when the wind is in the west.

We are somewhat compensated for this by the access we have to the expansive greens of Angliss and McIvor reserves, and the former quarry, then tip, and now urban oasis that is Cruickshank Park, home to Stony Creek and the Pobblebonk Frog, which really does say “pobblebonk”.

The park runs down to Francis Street where the constant rumble of trucks is a reminder of the still-strong links this suburb has to industry, and the dire need for The West Gate Tunnel Project which will take these apartment block-sized B-Doubles off our streets.

Or so we are told. We’re not holding our breath though, except for when the wind is in the west.

John Weldon is a writer and an academic specialising in curriculum design and innovation at Victoria University in Melbourne

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