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My Melbourne : A Wasp's-Eye View of 'The Hill'

During the Great War my parents bought their first home, an Edwardian house in Princes Hill, which William Dunkling, the jeweller, had built. He had spared no expense in providing lead-light windows that were jewel-like. Ornately carved rosewood mantelpieces in the style of art nouveau graced several rooms. My earliest days there were happy ones, before the Great Depression cast a shadow that, like the war, affected many lives.

'The Hill', as it was affectionately known, was then a genteel place, part of North Carlton, soon to become a refuge for those seeking the 'golden door' that others had once sought in that other land of the free. It became the destination of more Jewish people than any other locality in the country. From the pogroms of Europe they would arrive, pushing little wagons piled with their humble belongings, mostly unwrapped and unboxed but tied together with bits of string, pots and pans jangling as they struggled by foot to a new home.

The Hill was fast becoming a polyglot enclave, with more strange faces whose customs and dress were different from our own. There was much bitterness and less understanding among the 'old' inhabitants who had had to tighten their belts during the depression. Some had lost their jobs, and others who rented could not pay their debts. It wasn't unusual to see a whole family evicted, meagre goods mingling with valued family treasures piled on the footpath. Once forsaken, the house would deteriorate, for it was usually difficult to re-let when there was no money for maintenance. Vandals stoned the windows and carried away the carved mantels and ornate ironwork from the historic terraces. Gardens became a wilderness. If rats didn't move in first, a migrant family was often glad to seek refuge at a cheap rent and would often provide some renovations. From unglazed 'windows' strange cooking smells began to emanate, produced by the contents of bulging hessian sacks carried home from market. Matzoth (the traditional unleavened bread) and the special cakes began to appear in local shops, along with garlic.

Unemployment and prejudice created scapegoats, and in such a situation anti-Semitism became common:

'They know where to get the money.'

'Doing our own out of work.'

'They pretend they don't understand you, but they know what pounds, shillings and pence stand for.'

You would hear these remarks and you'd see graffiti in white paint appear overnight on brick walls and footpaths.

Denouncement of the Jewish people often came from persons who had gathered to gossip after church on Sundays, forgetful of the pious prayers they had just offered. But, on the whole, teachers and schoolchildren, as they do today, took the little sad-eyed strangers to their hearts and instructed them in Australian ways. My six-year-old brother 'adopted' a Polish child who could not speak an English word but soon learnt to handle a cricket bat, proving that the language of childhood is universal.

Most had moved on to East St Kilda or Caulfield and some to Toorak by the time World War II had broken out. As naturalised Australian citizens who were nevertheless able to retain their identity and practise their religion in freedom, the number participating in wartime activities (and the number of deaths on active service) proved their dedication to their adopted country. They were later joined by thousands of other, highly educated Jews from Central Europe who, with differing beliefs and cultures, had sought refuge from Nazism before the war, those who had sailed in the hell-ship Dunera, and postwar settlers who survived the Holocaust.

A few years after the war I met one of the boys who, when he had arrived in Melbourne as a child, had struggled with the English language. He still lived in Princes Hill and was a successful barrister.

'And how is the old Hill?' I asked.

'You wouldn't recognise it', he replied in perfect English. 'Why, in our street I'm just about the only one who speaks a word of English. They don't even go to the footy. Prefer soccer. They're all bloody foreigners!'

Plus ça change!

Postscript: Holy Moses, this niche of Melbourne suburbia now comprises a great mix of educated gentility and multicultural academics, artists and students, whose homes may be jazzed-up cottages or heritage terraces bringing more than a million today.

Plus, plus ça change.

Marjorie Tipping