Northland, my local shopping mall, was much in the news a couple months back. A machete fight and a fugitive driving through the mall and a smoke evacuation will do that. My girlfriend and daughters happened to be at the movies there during the fight, had their theatre evacuated and saw a bit of the aftermath, a bloodied person and a freaking out person being tended to. A lovely day’s outing.
Northland is not really that bad, even if it’s not that good. It opened in 1966 and was the first of Melbourne’s big (by Australian standards) shopping malls. The place has been revamped plenty since then but it still has a small and drab and dated feel to it, and it is somewhat bogan. Northland is in Preston, which, by Melbourne standards, is a tough area. But Northland has always felt very safe. There are no indications of antisocial nastiness, much less gangs and the like. My daughters very much enjoy the place and correctly view the machete et al as anomalies; they are happy to keep going.
Preston is tough but it used to be a lot tougher. Mommy and Jeff and I lived in Preston for three weeks, as the result of a rental mishap, and they were three miserable weeks. It was part of 60s Melbourne childhood that one had to tolerate some assholes and bullies but in Preston everyone seemed to be a bully. The neighbour kids automatically picked on me, hard, as the new kid on the street; I don’t think there was ever a civilised word from any of them. The only redeeming feature of living there was that Jeff and I could watch the drive-in over the back fence.
That was in 1966, while Northland was still under construction. Jeff insisted we take a walk to check out the construction site, and so we did. It was a construction site.
I enjoyed Northland as a kid. Myer then had a very good deli, with great hot dogs and great kosher pickles, and giant balloons for 10 cents and monster balloons for 20 cents. There was Tim the Toyman, where I could wonder at all the toys that we could seldom afford. And there was a Coles variety story full of plastic junk and marbles and whatnot, which we could afford (and which I was once accused, falsely, of stealing). There was the donut shop with its automatic donut-making machine, which never ceased to fascinate me. Mommy would leave me to wander around the mall by myself, with a prearranged meeting time in the central area.
I have fond memories of Northland but fonder memories still of another, earlier mall: the Bell Street Mall, simply known as The Mall. Located next to Preston in Heidelberg West, The Mall was built in the 50s as part of the new infrastructure for the ’56 Olympics. The Mall was all outdoors, a hundred metres or so of walkway with shops on both sides. It was tiny, but of course it didn’t seem tiny to a 5-ish year old kid. I remember it very little except as a family memory. It had a milk bar-ish place with cheap-brand soft drinks that Mommy could afford (11 pence, instead of 13 pence for Coke and its ilk). And it had a variety store – Woolworths? Coles? – full of plastic junk and marbles and whatnot, which, in the early 60s, we could rarely afford. Jeff found Screech there, a weird of and funny book of B-grade Gorey-like cartoons, which we still have.
The Mall still exists, as a ghost of what it was. The Mall is a mile or so from Northland and must have faded quickly once Northland opened; I have no later childhood memories of having gone there. Maybe there was a Tandy Electronics there in the 80s? Now, there is almost nothing to speak of.
Last year the Herald Sun had a very sympathetic but very depressing feature on the nothingness (M, P). The Mall has a shoe store but it is an oddity, almost the only sign of a healthy shopping strip. The rest is, in the main, tobacconists and chemists and op shops and the like, and boarded-up nothings.
There are a few African cafes but they do not seem to be very good or very friendly. (Melbourne is wonderful for such hole-in-the-wall eating, but I have failed to locate any such wonderfulness at The Mall.) There never seems to more than a handful of people at The Mall. Just me and a few fellow oddballs, summoning ghosts. It is a sad, sad place, but I cherish the ghosts.
You forgot to mention the local name for Northland – ‘Norfies’. Also the Mall has 3 op shops, even if 2 are of the more corporate kind (Salvos and Vinnies). It also has a good butcher I am told.
I don’t know that I ever heard “Norfies”, but I certainly remember “Norfland”. As for op shops, there were (at least) three, but two holes-in-the-wall closed. There’s a Salvos still there, I think. Or maybe Vinnies? Are both there?