St Kilda is the woman that catches my tram sometimes. She has a hard, thin mouth and very strong views, which she shares with an angry energy.  She speaks loudly. My daughter asks, “How do we know that lady mum?”
 “We see her on the tram sometimes” I say.

St Kilda is balconies, with pot plants, potting mix and barbecues, big and small. Some look out over Port Phillip Bay at the sunset; slow flying planes, and St Kilda Festival. Others are tree lined where cats stretch their legs and watch birds and possums. They are filled with an assortment of cat litter, washing, fading furniture, air conditioners and wind chimes. They let in fresh air, the sound of cicadas and mosquitoes. 

St Kilda is homeless and at times sleeps in cobblestone alleys with graffiti covered fences. An old blanket, a shopping trolley, a box and a plastic bottle mark the spot.

St Kilda is rude. If you are in a really bad mood and walk down the street in your daggiest tracksuit and grimace people don’t mind. In fact they get it and leave you alone. They don’t take it personally. They have seen a lot worse.

St Kilda is an eggplant, a smooth shiny eggplant in the community veggie patch. My patch marked by a fencepost mailbox is outside the hen house, facing the side of Luna Park.  I am an eggplant too with a globular glow as my daughter grows inside me. Later we will throw silver beet over the wire to the chooks.

St Kilda is a bag. The fruit and vegetable shops in Balaclava after five fill with people loading boxes and baskets full of fruit and vegetables. Red capsicums, local garlic, yellow peaches, up the back for potatoes and cabbage. Supermarkets are full of people buying just a few things. The baker discusses the video held by a customer as she puts bread into a paper bag. Carlisle Street is filled with people with bags: plastic bags, recycled bags, shopping bags and school bags as people come and go.

St Kilda is a street. Fitzroy St leads down to the sea. At night it buzzes. Acland Street is better through the week when there is space to wander and sit. I pushed the pram up and down Acland Street every day over the diamond tiles, past the cakes shops, Café Scherezade and the ice cream shop, across the road and around the corner to the Galleon and back. This is a street of many stories but this is my story. I pushed, walked and waited for the moment when my darling would nod off. Sometimes it took one circuit, other times two or even three. Then taking my chances I would slip into a café, grab a paper or a magazine and order a coffee. Good coffee. Sometimes I would take a sip and she would wake. Other times I made it half way through the second glass.

St Kilda is music. A busker rests at the bank arcade. Guitar chords drift down the stairwell, who is visiting?  A compelling rhythm drifts in the evening air from somewhere over the back fence. The strains of opera fill the street and disperse, seeming to come from everywhere. The country rasp of the man next door jamming in his car could be a cd, but isn’t.

St Kilda is moving in and moving out. The rice paper was starting to peel at the corners off the glass doors of the bedroom, as I packed my back pack and wandered down the stairs of the Hotel Colombo, where the smell of smoke still lingered, down past the bins, out across Acland Street, past Luna Park and the Peanut Farm Reserve to the ground floor flat with the angel fountain.

St Kilda is young men walking with prams, some with partners, some with mates, some alone. Wheeling them over condoms and up into the botanical gardens. The duck pond is low now but the turtle population is flourishing.

St Kilda is a memory. My nan, at twenty and my great aunts rented a house in Dalgety Street. She worked in a restaurant where the chef smoked all day and the ash burnt all the way up his cigarette. Once it fell into the food. Later she went to work at Kew Cottages. My granddad was in the navy. Melbourne was full of American sailors then. My nan said they had lots of money to spend on the local girls. My granddad hated Americans.

St Kilda is a yellow leaf that crunches underfoot as I run after my daughter’s bike, “watch out for the driveways” I call as she hurtles down Charnwood Road with glee. Free at last of her training wheels.

St Kilda is a story. The faded runners fell after four years. One day my daughter said “look mum, the shoes. They fell. I’m glad they’re down. I thought they might fall on me”. There they were on the footpath finally separated. Children notice things. They don’t stop seeing. That comes later.