Life in the ‘burbs: Vermont (The Age)
Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. It’s a sentiment Vermont feels in its bones, in its sinews. What you think you know about the eastern suburb – Neighbours, it’s really just Neighbours – isn’t actually something Vermont can claim. For it is Vermont South that’s home to the long-running soap, and it has busloads of British backpackers flocking to Pin Oak Court to prove it.
Just as Australia used to claim Russell Crowe, the actor who played Kenny Larkin on Neighbours, as one of our own, Vermont would be happy for you to think it was home to the iconic TV series. When travelling around England, all I had to say was that I was from the real-life Erinsborough to instantly paint a picture of my home suburb – leafy, quiet, humdrum.
Just compare the Wikipedia pages of Vermont and Vermont South. The former reads like a leaflet; the latter has 11 subheadings. It boasts of its accomplishments – the largest Bunnings Warehouse in the world was built in Vermont South in 2005, the same year the 75 tram line was extended. It has four churches, seven schools, eight sporting clubs. Add to this the achievement of having a compass direction added to its name and still being the better-known Vermont.
But back to Vermont, the one north of Vermont South.
It’s telling that, on reflection, none of my childhood memories of Vermont actually took place in Vermont. Wobbies World, the sort of amusement park that could only exist in a time before increased litigation, was in Nunawading. Bunny’s Family Bistro, the destination for any big celebration, was in Mitcham. Forest Hill Chase, our local shopping centre, was actually in (you guessed it) Forest Hill.
Watching the cursor blink expectedly as I wrote this article, I racked my brain for Vermont-specific memories. There was school, of course; the three video shops in walking distance; the bountiful array of milk bars, also acting as video stores. This meant my brothers and I could be guaranteed a VHS of Teen Wolf or Back to the Future or Doc Hollywood (we really liked Michael J. Fox) from at least somewhere within a 1.5-kilometre radius.
I called my older brother to ask if I was missing something, some core memory of what made Vermont a star in its own right. “There’s the creek,” he said, before pausing. “But the part in which you get to fish out golf balls is actually in Ringwood.”
A call was made to my other brother, who has lived in Germany for the past decade. Video Boom. Video Ezy. “The charcoal chicken shop” (Mitcham).
My parents take offence at anything other than praise for the suburb they’ve called home for the past 40 years. Now that I’m a parent, raising a daughter in a pleasantly quiet north-eastern suburb not too dissimilar to Vermont, I wonder if I’ll be offended if she hotfoots it out of here at the first chance. At least we have a train station.
For my brothers and me, Vermont was a great place to grow up in the ’80s and ’90s. We rode our bikes down the street, played in parks and had downball competitions with the neighbourhood kids. We paid frequent visits to the milk bar, carefully selecting our bag of mixed lollies and begging Barry for the Michael J. Fox poster in the window.
It was nice, but dull. We felt content, safe. The milk bar did get robbed one night and some deviant stole the “s” from the local Red Rooster, but besides that, crime was low. I watched The Bill every Saturday night as a kid just to see what it’d be like to live in a place with action.
As teens, we craved inner-city living, or at least somewhere that allowed you to have a drink past 5pm. I moved to the inner north, my older brother to the inner south, and our younger brother went as far away as possible – both physically and metaphorically – by relocating to Berlin.
I visit my parents fairly regularly. The local milk bar has been turned into an upmarket cafe with pricey baguettes. “We have to remember we are in suburban Vermont and not the Champs-Élysées”, reads one review.
There’s still no train station, no shopping centre, no nightlife. It hasn’t changed much, bar the house prices. My parents still live in the same house they bought for $30,000 in the early ’80s. Today, the median house price in Vermont is about $200,000 less than its southern sister. It’s the bridesmaid, yet again.
First published in The Age, July 2023.
