8 May, 2016 10:15
CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
Residents of Melbourne’s outer suburbs have today insisted that the outsiders perception of the Victorian capital is nothing but a result of good marketing and incessant instagramming.
Every year Victoria’s population grows by the size of a packed MCG. One hundred thousand new people are added to the state every 12 months.
92 per cent of those new ‘migrants’ [bored people from Queensland] are headed towards Melbourne – a culturally-charged city of coffee, laneways and blonde brick three bedroom houses with corrugated iron roofs that sit next to 200 clone copies in an outskirt suburb not serviced by public transport.
Outer Melbourne resident, Kylie Wenham (42) says her family of four have only been to one AFL match at the MCG in their entire lives.
“It’s really hard to get around, hey” says the Veterinarian assistant from Mickleham.
“I was born in Melbourne and I didn’t see any trendy laneways until I was halfway through uni. There’s only about three of them…”
“We just keep to our own out here. There’s no public transport really, certainly no trams like you would imagine”
“No coffee either. In fact, most of Melbourne just looks like Kath and Kim style urban sprawl,”
Kylie, who’s husband is a FIFO worker that needs to live near a major capital airport for work, says looking around her suburb, you could easily be in Western Sydney or Logan.
“It’s all the same, its not trendy at all. Anyone who moves down to Melbourne for the three laneways with graffiti and the AFL culture need to be realistic. If you’ve got a family, you are living in a developed community like this one,”
“But the local carvery does a mean roast pork sanger and choccie milk special,”
Keep quiet about your bare blonde brick walls or the criminal “artists” of Melbourne will find out and before you can say high-pressure-hose your nice clean suburb will be covered in vomit-inducing tags and cartoons. (It’s ok to induce vomiting in the laneways, which get cleaned up by the rats and cockroaches – at your expense of course. This is why you pay $10 plus for tea and toast.)
When it comes to moving to a different city or state, I worry for anyone who factors the presence or absence of laneways in their decision making process, regardless of how “trendy” said laneways are.
That said, Melbourne does have great cafes. I live in Hawthorn and I must admit the Cafe’s around here are excellent.
Died at [bored people from queensland] because its so fucking true…