Ah Loris, I didn't actually grow up in Kensington. Grew up in Glen Waverley and when I moved out of home and went to uni, I lived around the inner city for years. Richmond, East Melbourne, Kensington, Collingwood, Fitzroy. Bought my first house in West Footscray, just before they re-named the part I lived in as Kingsville and the property prices went mental.loris wrote:Gee st.byron if it was your old stamping ground 40 years ago....was a rather smelly stamping ground in those day's wasn't it?st.byron wrote:
but I see that you live in Kensington, one of my old stamping grounds
When the warm west winds used to blow through that market and abbotior areas it was such a putrid stench. I wonder if the young upwardly mobile who now live in "upmarket Kensington", realise their villas and apartments are built on the smelliest part of Melbourne of days gone by.
I hope the land fill doesn't subside over the years or they will be in deep sh!t. Then again if interest rates continue to rise they possibly will end up there anyway eh
My brother still lives there. I remember following Waverley in the VFA and catching the train to Yarraville when I was about 10.
For a Glen Waverley boy, the Western side of town really seemed like another planet. Factories, a stink and run down. More heavily industrialised then. No West Gate Bridge either. It was the train or Footscray Rd. I remember looking down my nose at it at age 10. What a little snob!!!
My dear old dad, bless him, from his middle class Glen Waverley heaven, would be mighty surprised to know that both his boys became West Footscray boys and that the little weatherboard cotage I could have bought for $40,000 in 1985 is now fetching about $600,000.
Those villas built on the market site are luvverley and all the smell has gone, I'm sure. The whole area is still prety down at heel though. Last time I went past the Western Oval in 2006, it was still as run down as ever. Didn't Howard promise funding to do it up? I remember going to a WRFL game there in 2005 and it was bloody awful. The ghosts of Charlie Sutton and Ted Whitten would not be happy.