My suburb has what could be Melbourne’s most famous landmark. But nobody knows it’s here

July 13, 2026 — 6:59pm

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.

Remove items from your saved list to add more.

In some ways my suburb is peak Melbourne – within 50 metres of where I live is a secular wedding chapel that also does funerals, an artisan shoemaker, a craft brewery, and a record store. Sometimes whole weddings promenade down the street between chapel and brewery. There’s also the mysterious shop, rarely open, which purports to sell only spray paint and hotdogs.

This is all on Johnston Street, a fairly unlovely traffic chute, but one that is increasingly lively, especially at night. Those of us who like to be in bed by 9.30pm get up in the morning and marvel over the tokens of debauchery left from the night before — some more palatable than others.

Abbotsford hadn’t been our first choice. Moving from Brisbane (before that Sydney, before that Adelaide), we couldn’t crack the rental market in Clifton Hill, where a particular school catchment was calling. Abbotsford seemed a reasonable fallback – a mix of fine-grained terrace housing, street trees, adapted post-industrial buildings, and open space, close to the trails and urban bushland along the Yarra. Having now lived here for nine years, I’ve realised that it has everything I ever wanted from Melbourne.

I love the walls of graffiti down by the river, frescoes across the massive concrete retaining walls and concrete bridges. Likewise, I love waking to the sight of hot air balloons, the roar of their burners overhead, close enough to wave. Once one of them landed on Victoria Park oval, as if an alien had descended, which was fairly alarming. The basket dragged crazily across the grassy surface with the people still clinging........

© The Age