Back then most people left their doors unlocked and children, even very small children, were free to wander the quiet suburban streets. Our family lived on the first floor of a cream stuccoed apartment block. The glassed-in balcony was my small bedroom; my parents slept next door; the sitting room with its shiny mantelpiece clock was on the other side of the corridor. My only boundaries were mostly obeyed. Not that this mattered, everything I needed was right here; the footpath was wide enough to tricycle to the milk-bar. Cycling the other way, I came to where my friend Harry lived.

Harry, who was nine months younger and a full head shorter, had mahogany eyes surrounded by thick curly eyelashes, and his mouth was permanently strawberried by food and cold sores. No matter how often his mother brushed his hair, it would never lie down and be still. On sunny days, one foot on the back bar of our tricycle, the other paddling furiously and with Harry’s yappy blue heeler nipping at our heels, we travelled down the street bumping over broken bitumen and jutting tree roots so that our insides frothed like milkshakes. Once, when Harry’s baby brother Colin had been left to sleep under a tree, we hooked the pram handle onto our bikes and towed him into the path of an oncoming car. Another time we turned on the gas in his mother’s kitchen, lit a match and waited for the ‘bang’. A favourite outing was to that same ‘continental’ cake-shop in Acland Street to be fed slabs of rich dark-chocolate, another to the gardens beside the beach where we ran up the grassy embankments for the sheer joy of rolling down again.

The world was suffering from a dreadful war. But my earliest years were halcyon days when the sun shone through dappled leaves, when neighbours spoke a strange mixture of Yiddish, Polish and English, and a richness of aunts fed me on cinnamon biscuits, honey cake and lemonade made from real lemons; where streets were safe to play in.

This happy existence underwent a major upheaval when my twin sisters were born. The apartment proving too small for our growing family our father moved us to a Victorian terrace on the eastern side of Nepean Highway, a neighbourhood where the lady’s high class influence had slipped away. That house was so old, had so many fractures and cracks between its ageing windows and windowsills that on windy nights to an imaginative child’s ear, ghosts of past inhabitants whispered of wicked happenings almost too awful to repeat.

Our next-door neighbour was a corner pub where at six o’clock men were thrown out to either fight each other, throw up in the gutter, or both. We girls were warned to avoid the drunks and swaggies who squatted in a nearby lane with their nightly meal; a cray or lobster wrapped in newspaper which they washed down with beer. A pie-shop further up the lane encouraged a breed of super-rats to prosper. Gossip was that these rats ended up as pie-filling. Was this true? More like a nasty rumour put out by the local fish and chippery. But some things stick. We never ate meat-pies.

Our household was a middle class rarity in a locale that reeked of poverty, maladjustment and post WW 2 widowhood. Visiting a school friend’s small cottage, I was horrified by the overpowering stink of mould and leaking gas, shabby carpets, ill equipped kitchen, rusty bathroom fittings and outdoor dunny. Though my family was relatively prosperous, for us children the fifties were miserable: our mother suffered with post natal depression; our father was pre-occupied with making a living; our teachers were bossy and dull, our schools rigid and authoritarian. The general atmosphere was so Sunday-church-grey-oppressive, I spent my adolescent years in a perpetual funk, hid in films and books, read about other times, other places, and wished myself somewhere far, far distant. I left as soon as I could, travelled overseas, lived interstate, wandered well away. Back then the Lady held no attraction for me.
But sooner or later I felt a need to return to where I was once so happy. In the early eighties I moved into an apartment in West St Kilda. ‘Big mistake,’ friends warned. ‘Only sads, mads and bads live there.’ In some ways they were right. To an outsider the lady appeared tawdry, even shabby, much like a beautiful monarch toppled from her throne and forced to live on charity. I recall mentioning my address to a young acquaintance, how his eyes rolled, how he smacked his lips at the thought of all the naughty stuff he knew went on there. Back in the seventies and eighties St. Kilda’s reputation almost equalled Kings Cross. Our only supermarket in Fitzroy Street stocked rotten fruit and

vegetables, week-old milk and mouldy bread. Beggars, drunks, druggies, whores, the mentally ill and the all-together-desperate filled our streets. If the handful of Aborigines from the Bunerong and the Woiworung tribes who met under the spreading native fig-tree always looked unhappy, it was for very good reason.

But as change and gentrification came to other suburbs, the lady was also coming back into her own. Fitzroy and Acland streets had always had a few upmarket restaurants in amongst the hamburger and pizza take-away joints. But now more established chefs were prepared to try their luck. Writers, artists, actors, film makers and lots of ‘would-be’s’ moved into the suburb. Houses were bought and renovated. New buildings went up. Streets with whorish reputations suddenly became respectable, their double and triple terraces highly prized. The remnants of the Kulin tribe painted the toilet block beside the fig tree black, yellow and orange and us whiteys sat up and took note. Many of the old boarding houses disappeared, though there were always enough left to remind me of our less affluent days. As time went on us locals became more involved in how our streets should look, did our best to block inappropriate developments, held street parties, met up with each other... it was all great fun.

Gradually, gradually, these last two decades I have watched the lady rebuild her reputation and resume her long lost status. We might still need the Salvos, Red Cross and free dinner wagons for our more needy inhabitants, but on the whole the motto on her crown reads ‘Prosperity’. These days when I walk the streets I see young women talking into cell phones as they push their strollers - often these are the babies’ nannies - and women once old enough to be grandmothers who are those babies’ mothers. Over time I have established which is my favourite coffee-bar, restaurant, chocolatier, bakery and supermarket, and will argue their virtues over others with anyone prepared to take me on.

My life would be derelict indeed without my local library and its always obliging staff. Living so close to the beach, I can become one with the weather; winter storms hold me in thrall, summer southerlies keep me cool; king tides remind me how vulnerable we are to climate change. On my daily walks I watch yachts, surf-riders, and surf-boarders ride the waves as far as Williamstown; volley-ballers compete on the sand; joggers, skaters and cyclists scurry to Port Philip and back; observe the Spirit of Tasmania dock and leave.

Though the lady has always welcomed newcomers of every colour, race, and language, not all her changes have been for the better. There are the usual complaints about traffic – far too noisy and intense - and parking because there is never enough. Some wonderful institutions like the ‘Sheherezade Cafe’ have been forced out by higher rents. Restaurants come and go at a dizzy rate; it takes more than mere money and style to succeed within such intense competition. Property values are so astronomical, people who recall this suburb with nostalgia can no longer afford to rent or buy. Hoons still view our boulevards as the only place to road-test their vehicles, house break-ins are frequent, and too many stoned or drunk drivers would be better off staying home. I’m always aware that if I don’t watch my step crossing a road, I’ll end up as mince-meat.

If I think about what I might wish for this lady’s future, it would be that her traffic be better controlled, that she create more parking spaces for our visitors and more toilets for our ageing population, that she restore the Palais and Luna Park to their former glory, and prevent inappropriate development to take place. I would wish that she continue to maintain our beaches, gardens, playgrounds, libraries, community houses and health centres, that our restaurants and shops remain busy, that she still welcomes people from all over the world. On a more personal level, I hope I can continue perambulating her streets to come up with more writing ideas.

Though there is some doubt about the actual existence of a woman called St. Kilda, we do know that the suburb was called after the 19th Century schooner Lady of St Kilda that sailed to Port Phillip in February 1841. How appropriate for a suburb that attracts people from all around the world. So I’m happy to spend my declining years right where I am. It’s comforting to know that when I falter too much to look after myself there are facilities that will care for me. Certainly when it comes to the apartment block where I live most people make their final exit carried out feet first. Right now it seems that where I began my life I will also end it. Eclectic, wild, diverse, gentrified, tame, organic, soulless, spirited? Maybe the lady is a combination of all these apparent contradictions. I can’t find any definition that will actually fit her, she’s ‘all things to all people’.

What I do know is that I love living here.