I've been writing songs about West Brunswick for sometime now. Years, if the truth be told. Until recently I've lived there 20 of them. Now I live in Coburg, West Brunswick got too expensive. I miss it and have kept writing about it. West Brunswick is still my home.
I didn't really like it at first but then I didn't really like my best mate when I first met her. West Brunswick seemed a little too far from the action of Carlton and Nth Fitzroy where I had been living. But those suburbs were already getting pricey, as cheap student housing was bought by the upwardly mobile, who renovated the life out of the place and, in so doing, made something that had been affordable, out of reach to the locals. Up went the rents and out went the dreamers.
This dreamer, who happened to be pregnant at the time, landed in Hope Street, West Brunswick. Great street to live for an expectant mother. It was a corner place, blonde brick, with a curved front room that caught and amplified the constant roundabout traffic. It had a shared backyard and clothesline and two other flats on the same property. Instant community!
That Hope Street house was the beginning of my love affair with West Brunswick.
The feeling runs so deep that, as well as songs, I've started writing poems and flash faction accounts, which are tiny stories that aren't quite true but close enough, of the places I lived, the people I met and lived with and the tram I rode.
So, I'm gonna bung some of them in a little book and record the suburban songs on a little album.
Then it's into the lounge rooms of local and honorary West Brunswickians to play the songs and tell the stories of my West Brunswick home.
I hope you'll join me as I record the daily work.
Helen x
I didn't really like it at first but then I didn't really like my best mate when I first met her. West Brunswick seemed a little too far from the action of Carlton and Nth Fitzroy where I had been living. But those suburbs were already getting pricey, as cheap student housing was bought by the upwardly mobile, who renovated the life out of the place and, in so doing, made something that had been affordable, out of reach to the locals. Up went the rents and out went the dreamers.
This dreamer, who happened to be pregnant at the time, landed in Hope Street, West Brunswick. Great street to live for an expectant mother. It was a corner place, blonde brick, with a curved front room that caught and amplified the constant roundabout traffic. It had a shared backyard and clothesline and two other flats on the same property. Instant community!
That Hope Street house was the beginning of my love affair with West Brunswick.
The feeling runs so deep that, as well as songs, I've started writing poems and flash faction accounts, which are tiny stories that aren't quite true but close enough, of the places I lived, the people I met and lived with and the tram I rode.
So, I'm gonna bung some of them in a little book and record the suburban songs on a little album.
Then it's into the lounge rooms of local and honorary West Brunswickians to play the songs and tell the stories of my West Brunswick home.
I hope you'll join me as I record the daily work.
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