Snakes in the basement and summer dance parties: My suburb is a cut above plain old Coburg

The tiger snake in my basement is not typical of Coburg North, I would think. I just like to start there because it’s a story that travels well. The lovely beast slid in from the garden late one arvo while I was down there looking for something I promptly forgot, because now I had a tiger snake in my basement, hiding in a jumble of suitcases.

The story illustrates my favourite thing about my suburb: the bush that cuts a wild, V-shaped swath through it like a set of inverted lungs linked by two converging creeks. I walk there with my dog Archie every day, weirdly comforted by the reminder that everything up on brick and bitumen level is temporary.

On that score, another auspicious memory is the fire billowing from the top floor of the abandoned Kodak building down the road. It appeared a day or two after we sealed the plunge into home ownership 15 years ago. Some saw vandalism. I saw a nifty invocation of The Tower tarot card: danger, change, destruction, learning, liberation.

The snake and the tower are both gone now, the former fearlessly bagged by Steve the snake wrangler; the latter by the inevitable process of urban renewal. There’s a Woolies there now, part of a 20-hectare housing development that has brought in about 1000 new neighbours and kept the small strip of takeaway joints and cafes shuffling.

Dining out options are my suburb’s weak spot. And if you want a drink in a licensed premises, you’ll need your passport. But with adjective situated stylishly after noun, Coburg North is clearly a cut above plain old Coburg in more than the geographic sense.

Its footprint isn’t much smaller, but with 8300 residents, it’s one-third as crowded. That’s because of all that recreational space for one thing. Jackson Reserve wetlands and Coburg Lake parkland sprawl either side of the outdoor Olympic pool. There’s a basketball stadium, athletics tracks, footy oval and a table tennis club around there too. Some folks I know have even been inside them.

The grittier side of the non-residential coin is a fair whack of industrial zoning, both on Newlands Road, site of the heritage-listed Village Drive-In Cinema, and the busier third of the rectangle west of Sydney Road. The Gaffney Street superstores front a labyrinth of indie trade suppliers, from sand and soil to glass and bric-a-brac. My favourite lock-up is Round Again: paradise for pre-loved hi-fi and record hunters.

It’s a suburb with a distinct east-west divide. That western Sydney-Road-to-Sussex-Street block I call the Coles end of town. There’s history down there. The Lincoln Mills chimney still towers behind Bunnings: the last vestige of a teeming textiles operation that employed most of Coburg at its peak between World War I and 1980.

If you ever see a trickle of teenagers pouring off Sydney Road or Batman train station, they are probably going to Coburg Velodrome. Established in 1979, it’s been an unlikely summer dance party venue for the past few years, programming those all-day multi-DJ hellscapes my kids have given up trying to explain to me.

There’s more historical intrigue at the Woolies end. The aforementioned Kodak factory ruled here from ’61 to 2004, a steamroller of manufacturing optimism that slowly consumed 40 hectares of dairy land that was still operated, until their 1977 eviction, by the family of 1880s Scottish immigrant John McKay.

Kodak’s award-winning modernist buildings were opened by awestruck prime minister Bob Menzies, back in an indestructible age of industry that looks from here like a fever dream of Shelley’s Ozymandias. It’s all dust now, under brand-new streets quaintly named for pre-digital memories: Spectrum Way, Aperture Street, Focus Drive.

My neighbour Alba worked at Kodak for a while. Everyone did. As a young girl she remembers Mr McKay riding his horse along the ridge across the creek, a perch now dominated by the recycling plant. Back then, the Big 4 Caravan Park was full of travelling circus folk. The creek was awash with frogs, the bush with echidnas and goannas. Her mum used to tell her aunt in Brunswick how much clearer the air was up here.

Some things have changed for the better. Aerial photos from Kodak’s reign show a lot less greenery than I walk my dog through now. When my kids were small, we used to plant native trees, shrubs and grasses with the Friends of Edgar’s Creek, a fantastic community organisation bent on the steady restoration of a landscape the original Wurundjeri mob might recognise. I’m sure the tiger snakes are loving it.

I’m yet to see one, by the way, outside of my basement — although I have a strong suspicion the developers will unearth a bit of wildlife in the rotting weatherboard a couple of doors up. According to the notice that just went up outside, the peeling pile is due to be razed for “construction of two double-storey dwellings”. My son saw a fox slip in there last week. Another weirdly comforting reminder that everything else is temporary.

Michael Dwyer is a Melbourne-based freelancer who specialises in music, art and culture.