My suburb is so defiantly untrendy, it feels like even the Bunnings is trying to escape

Oakleigh South is, according to my children, a place where nothing interesting ever happens. And most Melburnians seem to agree.

Its biggest claim to fame is being adjacent to a livelier suburb with a very similar name. When I tell people where I live, the most common response is: “Where’s that?” The next most common response is: “All those wonderful Greek cafes!”

That’s when I explain that Oakleigh is an entirely different suburb, and that the cakes and coffees of Eaton Mall are an hour’s walk from my home. Sadly, there’s barely a barista to be found in these parts.

The paradox of Oakleigh South is that a lot of what’s great about it is its proximity to other places. For example, there’s a wonderful collection of Sri Lankan shops just a short walk away – on the Clarinda side of Centre Road. Our local station, Huntingdale, is not actually in Oakleigh South. (Nor is it in Huntingdale – it’s in Oakleigh.)

And my local shopping strip, with an ever-growing number of bubble tea shops and Chinese restaurants, is in Clayton. Even Bunnings has moved from Centre Road up to the Warrigal Road boundary with Bentleigh East, as if trying to escape the confines of Oakleigh South.

So what’s inside my suburb? Golf courses. Lots of them. The Metropolitan, Commonwealth and Huntingdale golf clubs take up a large proportion of Oakleigh South. We’re in “the sandbelt”, where golfers are spoilt for choice.

The residents, not so much. All those beautiful open green spaces are privately owned and for members only. Thanks to the sandy loam soil so valued by golf clubs, another chunk of the suburb is taken up by a disused sand quarry and tip, which many residents dare to hope might one day become a park.

Then there are the industrial pockets – showrooms, storage facilities and factories. The rest of Oakleigh South is residential, with many original ’60s and ’70s single-storey homes and a scattering of units, flats and townhouses.

Golf courses, industrial parks, 1960s houses … yawn. My kids are right. But we do have one claim to fame: Melbourne’s oldest ice skating rink, which opened in 1971 and appears not to have changed much since then. If you go there on a hot day, you can sit on the benches and feel your feet slowly turning numb while your back overheats from the sun beating down onto the corrugated iron roof.

It’s true that nothing much happens here, but one thing has changed over the past 20 years: demographics. The area’s once-significant Greek and Italian migrant population is giving way to those born in India (8.1 per cent) and China (6.4 per cent), with those born in Greece now making up just 5 per cent of the population, according to census figures.

Fortunately, the migrants who were among the first to buy homes in Oakleigh South have left a beautiful legacy in the form of the ubiquitous front-yard olive trees (although, tragically, my house is one of the few without one).

My own street has residents born in several different countries, and it’s diverse in other ways too: we have violinists, accountants, plumbers and graphic designers – even a surfing, skateboarding real estate agent and her surfing, skateboarding husband. Kids ride bikes up and down the street and play hide-and-seek in people’s gardens. We have street parties and barbecues; at Halloween, we go wild. For me, the biggest surprise about Oakleigh South is that it’s the friendliest place I’ve ever lived.

Oakleigh South is devoid of pretension. There’s no “keeping up with the Joneses” around here – people quietly go about living their lives in a landscape of benign suburban sameness. We don’t do grand mansions or showy homes (although a resident made the news in 2016 for his immaculately kept lawn, now a local landmark).

This place so epitomises Victorian suburbia that the late artist Howard Arkley moved here in 1991 to experience the suburbs that inspired his work. His artworks of 1960s brick veneer homes feature the use of pattern, iridescent colour and a distinctive airbrush technique.

Howard Arkley in front of his work in the Australian pavilion at the Venice Biennale in June 1999.Credit: Fernando Proietti

After his death, an obituary mentioned Arkley’s move to “defiantly untrendy Oakleigh South”, and I can confirm that Oakleigh South continues to live up to that reputation. When the blandness of suburbia threatens to overwhelm me, I try to see my own brick veneer home through an Arkley lens: a shining, glimmering symbol of the Australian dream.

Nothing exciting happens in my suburb – and that’s not entirely a bad thing because what Oakleigh South lacks in excitement, it makes up for by being peaceful, safe and friendly – all things I have appreciated in my 12 years here.

Sure, we don’t have the cafes and period homes of Oakleigh, the restaurants of Clayton or Bentleigh East’s shopping strip and sports facilities. But comparison is the thief of joy, as I remind myself while driving to the next suburb to get a coffee and a piece of spanakopita.

Perhaps there’s nothing special about my suburb, but you could do a lot worse than living out your days in such anodyne serenity.

Marisa Mowszowski is a primary school art teacher.

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