Bohemian Suburb Rhapsody
The members of New Waver grew up in the Melbourne suburbs of Carlton and Fitzroy, where in the genteel grounds of Rock and Roll High and the University of Arts they mixed with other children from the middle-class families that characterized the area. The inner city abounded with cultural resources and was a favourite with academics and professionals alike. But despite, or perhaps because of, their relaxed urban lifestyle, something was stirring in the breasts of Australia's youth: a yearning for the gritty realism and wide open spaces of the outer suburbs.
Around 2010, cultural anthropologists noticed that the more adventurous of Melbourne's youngsters were spending their weekends exploring the edgy culture of Northlands, or nervously poking their heads through the door at the Broadmeadows Hotel. This practice of "going to the burbs" appeared daring and glamorous to fellow youths, and before long trainloads of inner-city teens were roaming Melbourne's "aspirational heartland" whenever they had opportunity to escape their comfortable, but stultifying, terrace-houses.
Of course we know now that this was the beginning of the process of Gentrification. Initially, the opening of cafes and galleries in Keilor East attracted smart young things, eager to be where the cultural action was. Later, music venues such as Dandenong's hip Zone Three were popular commercial successes. Students and artists desiring cheap rent and to live in close proximity to their favourite nightclubs left the inner city, in some cases forever, to move into the brick-veneers of Werribee and Templestowe. "Young suburban professionals" occupied the apartment blocks of Box Hill, and by 2020 Australia's creative center-of-gravity was Craigieburn. Those who made the suburbs their home achieved significant cultural impact and financial success. However rents rose and the area's working-class inhabitants were forced to move to an inner city in decline. Some left gladly, taking the opportunity to sell family homes at enormously inflated prices. By 2030 the nature of Melbourne's outer ring had changed forever.
New Waver were part of this demographic transition, and in Bohemian Suburb Rhapsody they tell its story. The band watched their generation move north, start bands and galleries, marry and have children of their own, until the outer suburbs became normal places in which for middle-class youngsters to live. The "hipsterization" of Taylor's Lakes is here to stay, and no-one is arguing that the process should be reversed. But as you relive the excitement of this period of change, spare a thought for the region's original residents who were displaced, willingly or otherwise, to the deteriorating suburbs of Toorak and Hawthorn.
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