My suburb lacks the cool factor but growing up here was a blessing

A few years ago a former colleague who’d recently moved to my suburb from Mont Albert confided to me that she was struggling to adjust to its outer-suburban sleepiness.

Searching for the word to describe a mid-week visit to our shopping strip, she finally landed on the right descriptor.

“It just feels a bit tired,” she said.

In some ways, she was right. The retail offerings on Croydon’s Main Street are rather measly, occupied by a smattering of semi-open banks, a real estate agency and post office.

But hearing this from a newcomer was jarring and – although I knew she didn’t mean to offend – I felt a little protective of Croydon. It’s like that saying about dysfunctional families: I’m allowed to talk down my suburb, but I don’t like it when you do.

As a born-and-bred local, I can certainly see the suburb’s shortfalls. It lacks the cool factor and nightlife draw of the inner city, and polished chic of Melbourne’s wealthier inner east. Growing up, Croydon station had a reputation as a hotbed of heroin addicts and stabbings, and though I never saw any evidence of this, I still feared catching a late train home.

Local comedian Audie Hillman summed it up in his satirical 2012 song Christmas Time in Croydon ft. Jeremy (Local Station Rat), which catalogues the experiences of an eshay spending his summer holiday in Croydon.

“It’s Christmas time in Croydon, and in the morning at half past six, you can hear the sounds of the local heroin addicts opening up their gifts,” Hillman sings.

So although I concede my former colleague’s assessment wasn’t wrong, a quick jaunt down Main Street on the weekend offers a different picture. Locals pack out cafes and restaurants, crowd around sporting ovals, squeeze into the memorial pool and walk all types of dogs through numerous parks.

After living in the inner city and overseas for several years, I moved back into my family home in Croydon a few months ago when my rental lease ended.

And though I’m already scheming to move back closer to the CBD for its social offerings – and proximity to The Age office – the shift home has given me a fresh perspective on the area I spent my entire childhood in.

Growing up in Croydon was a blessing. Our quiet, unpaved street was perfect for games of “markers up” and the spacious front yard was ideal for at-times barbarous brotherly basketball games.

I’d catch the train one stop to Ringwood for high school, and pre-class mornings were filled with band practices. Afternoons were set aside for musical theatre rehearsals or footy training, with weekends considered holy days dominated by sports matches.

After turning 18 it was considered an informal tradition to have a night out at Dorset Gardens Hotel. Better known as the “Dirty Dorset”, the pub had a reputation for being popular with “Cougars”, the middle-aged women searching for young men (a reputation a friend of mine was pleased to find out was well-founded).

Although the Dirty Dorset once seemed like a big deal, the nightlife scene is still sub-par in Croydon and a night out often requires a lengthy train ride or a costly Uber to a livelier suburb.

The dearth of options didn’t stop us having a good time though – some of my most fun nights involved heading over to a mate’s house with a six-pack and never making it into the city.

Croydon’s food scene has also improved in the past few years with some trendy bars and eateries, like The Ten Saints record bar and Jolly Miller cafe, which were widely welcomed alongside established favourites such as Holy Basil and Littorio’s.

Other things have changed during my years away, for better and worse.

The four-screen Croydon Cinema, which sold some of Melbourne’s cheapest movie tickets at $10, where I’d go with mates for the latest releases, shut in 2023, unable to draw the crowds back post-COVID.

Like many Melbourne suburbs, rising house prices have seen the expansion of townhouse and apartment developments, though Croydon remains free of intense NIMBY debates which are common around the state government’s activity centres. Many young people who grew up in Croydon have been pushed further to the city limits or into medium-density homes, unable to afford houses like those they grew up in.

The old Croydon station was knocked down and replaced with a better designed and modern version (sans level crossing).

This year, community concern has grown over statewide crime rates, and last month an elderly man was allegedly murdered by a neighbour. The suburb took another hit to its reputation when Victoria Police on Sunday revealed the 40-year-old Hawthorn fan fined for throwing a bottle at AFL umpires after a tight preliminary final loss was one of ours. Locals were recently shocked to discover Melbourne’s tobacco wars had reached the quiet streets when a tobacconist was firebombed four weeks after opening.

Despite the changes, the Croydon of my childhood is still very much the Croydon of today. It’s true life here can move at a plodding pace, and it lacks the vibe of the inner city. But that also makes it immune to influencer culture that send favourites viral, or gentrification rapidly upending its suburban character.

Croydon’s ordinariness is its strength. The great access to schools, the public Maroondah Hospital, a designated train station and proximity to nature like the Dandenong Ranges – all while never being more than an hour from the CBD – make it a suburb easily overlooked by outsiders but never underappreciated by locals.

Which is to say it has a leafy, village charm that it shares with much of Melbourne’s outer east. And if that makes it “tired”, then that suits us just fine.

Magda Szubanski, best known for playing Sharon Strzelecki in Kath and Kim, grew up in Croydon North. Sharon plays second fiddle to the show’s titular best friends in a way that reminds me of the way Croydon is often defined by its proximity to Ringwood or end-of-the-line Lilydale.

And that rather sums up Croydon – a place of sports-obsessed Aussie battlers wedged between louder and better-known neighbours. And much-loved all the same.

Angus Delaney is a state political reporter at The Age.

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