My suburb is the beating cauliflower heart of Melbourne’s gluten-free belt

Hey Fairfield 3078, I know you think you’re better than us just because you’ve got a giant wooden dog outside your train station with eyes that light up and flash in time with the signal, but never forget this:

Northcote has not one but two Coles. We call one “good Coles” and we call the other “shit Coles”. You might think this would make supermarket selection easy, but shit Coles is actually surprisingly good. Intriguingly, they are 50 metres apart at Northcote Plaza – our beloved shopping centre, aka renovator’s delight with sails for a roof that can resemble the Opera House in certain light, that being white-hot midday sun boring blindingly into your retinas.

The plaza was built on the old brickworks, and if you’re nostalgic for 1981, or you want to buy party supplies or plastic flowers or CDs from your favourite artist still releasing CDs, the plaza is the place to go. I sometimes see Tigers legend Matthew Richardson there, and it fills me with joy every time.

Northcote is a land of contradictions, and one of them is that the plaza is a Richo drop punt from High Street, named by Time Out magazine in March 2024 as the coolest street in the world. The actual coolest. Not the second coolest (which is Hollywood Road in Hong Kong) or the fifth coolest (Commercial Drive, Vancouver), but the coolest.

I know what Fairfield is thinking. What does Time Out know? Let’s name names on these arbiters of cool and find out why they don’t like big wooden dogs with flashing red eyes. And is Northcote skiving off Thornbury’s undeniably cool work in recent times? Time Out specifically comments on the Portuguese tarts at Casa Nata and lasagnes at 1800 Lasagne, which admittedly are both pure Thornbury 3071.

Without Thornbury, would our High Street be the coolest street in the world? We’ll never know, Fairfield. You’ve really got to stop whining about this. And FYI, we haven’t just got Richo. We’ve also got Bob Murphy and two of the members of Tripod.

City views from High Street in Northcote.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui

Northcote is also the beating cauliflower heart of Melbourne’s gluten-free belt that runs from Abbotsford in the south to Reservoir in the north along clearly marked bike lanes. I’m not a coeliac myself, but would be willing to make the sacrifice to fit in conversationally.

Our southern and western border is the Merri Creek, and although Clifton Hill and Fitzroy North can claim to have prettier aspects, we get to enjoy it amidst the roar of trucks on Heidelberg Road. If the creek ever floods, it’s the hardy folk of Westgarth who live on the flood plain.

Is Westgarth part of Northcote? In the old Melway, Westgarth looked to be its own suburb. But over at Australia Post, they won’t give Westgarth a postcode, smudging it into 3070. So as much as some renegade Westgarthians might want to secede, hogging the Bill Lawry Oval and the Merri footbridge for themselves, we keep Westgarth in the fold. Like Australia needs Western Australia for its iron ore, we need Westgarth for its cinema, which is a grand, art nouveau beauty at the base of Ruckers Hill. We also need it for its famous wholefoods store, Terra Madre, which is where I go to shop if I want to feel like a marble being tilted around a maze where the walls are made entirely of red lentils. There is a way out, I promise, and you can reward yourself at checkout with an impulse buy of Northcote’s finest carob.

We are famous for our cafe culture, think Vienna around the turn of the century, or Paris during the Enlightenment, except the talk around here is all about the design of the next tattoo sleeve, or Pokey Le Farge’s tour dates. Pokey is a randomly selected, excellent but little-known touring artist who blew my mind with a show at the Northcote Social Club six years ago. That sort of thing happens in the live music hub that is 3070. It’s even better now that the Northcote Theatre has been renovated. Every weekend, a queue snakes around the corner into Bastings Street, the ages and dress of the gig goers varying with the shades and genres of who’s playing.

For some decades, Northcote was thought of as a hotbed of creativity, a place for artists, musicians and writers. I do love that our local primary school, Westgarth Primary, has an “Idol night” that is a no-kids-allowed karaoke fundraiser extravaganza at which parents sing along with a 10-piece band. In the first years I was involved, Ben Ely from Regurgitator was on bass. I dressed up as Piggy Pop (fat Iggy Pop) with drawn-on abs and sang Lust for Life. It was ridiculous, Ben and I collaborating on a musical performance. I wondered if it would happen in other suburbs of Melbourne. It felt very Northcote.

Is Northcote still a place for artists? Rising property prices have changed things considerably, although I’m pleased to report that I’m writing this article on an Olivetti typewriter at a High Street whiskey bar that also stocks the complete works of James Joyce. The clack of the keys is putting everybody off their $22 a pop whiskey mules.

But there is still a community feel to the suburb, a sense that we can all come together in the car park of the new aquatic centre and circle unsuccessfully for a park together. Our street has a WhatsApp group, where we find out who has an overabundance of quinces or which neighbour had what car stolen overnight. We even have an Oxford Street Tree Art exhibition, organised by Matt at No.19, who gets us all to dress up our street trees. My best effort was to put a shopping trolley around a trunk, so it looked like the tree was growing through the middle of it. Thank you, Marcus, at No.39, for your angle grinder.

My favourite community activity is visiting Dog Park, which I can’t talk too much about because our dog park is not actually a dog park, and I don’t want to alert the rangers. We also have a dog called Ranger at Dog Park, so if a ranger actually comes, and someone yells “Ranger!” – look it’s all going to be very confusing.

What we need at this point is some giant wooden dog, preferably with eyes that flash red when someone is coming.

What do you say, Fairfield?

Trade you for a Coles?

Tony Wilson writes a Substack called Good One, Wilson. His film Ange & The Boss is screening at Cinema Nova.

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