collingwood

Collingwood is enemy territory to a true Blue. At 16 I sit in the Rush Stand on the western wing at Victoria Park, terrified. I’m the guest of a schoolmate, a Magpie member. Carlton beat Collingwood that day and my heart rejoices, but I utter not one syllable nor allow a facial tic to betray the slightest smile. Over the years my hatred of Essendon exceeds that for the Woods.

My father’s family came out of Collingwood. His father Edwin was born in Abbotsford. His mother Elizabeth, a Hammond, grew up there and worked in a shop in Smith Street. His father was an inspector at Carlton United Breweries but Elizabeth insisted he make something more of himself. He studied with the doyens of accountancy, Hemingway and Robertson.

My grandfather was good, topped Australia in his book-keeping exams, and set up a practice in the Melbourne’s CBD. My grandparents built a fine house in Alphington and my grandmother drove my grandfather to work in the city every day in a big black Buick or Plymouth, driving through Collingwood without stopping. She turned her back on the place of her origin.

My grandmother’s brother Charlie drove his horse and cart through Collingwood’s streets and alleys to collect tallow from the tanneries to make candles and soap. Sometimes my father rode on the cart with him. On Saturdays from 1906 to 1918 Uncle Charlie turned out for Carlton and played in five premierships. My grandfather stuck with the Magpies but my grandmother and her son barracked for the Blues.

Back then Collingwood was a slum, working-class, its laneways haunted by corrupt burghers like John Wren. My mother tells me she worked as a comptometrist at a Collingwood shoe factory for a year during the war. She hated the place and her friends looked down on her for working there.

Now I work in Collingwood. Foy and Gibson’s old warehouse, the letters clear as day on the façade, occupies the corner. Former factories house boutique businesses all along Cambridge Street. Arty-farty galleries share walls with a panel-beaters. Small wholesale fashion outlets populate Gipps Street, relics of the days when Collingwood dominated the rag trade and the boot industry.

Collingwood is a long commute or ride from where I live. I can get any food I care to hunt down in Smith Street—a solid sourdough loaf or a pud thai lunch for $7. A specialist single-speed bike shop beckons me in on Peel Street.

The 86 tram drops me at the least crowded entrance to Parliament Station. My father remembers pushing cable trams round the corner out of Gertrude and Smith when the underground cable jammed.

Collingwood is raffishly eccentric. I like it.

Rock on.