Long ago, my beloved once stood for federal Parliament across town, for inscrutable reasons of his own. What he promised the voters in those leafy suburbs was that if they voted for him, he would lead them to the Promised Land. What he meant by this was our home town of Footscray. I appreciated the combined joke and compliment. His would-be constituents were mostly bewildered; but some of them understood, and voted for him.
Footscray was always industrial, Protestant, unfavoured, but accepting of others. Once upon a time it seemed that Melbourne would be a twin city, like St Paul/Minneapolis, separated by the turbid waters of the Maribyrnong River. But Melbourne didn’t want us. They drew aside their skirts as from a soiled garment, and pretended that we were their unmentionable and unwanted relative. Yet we prospered nonetheless: unfashionable, hard-working, and accepting. My father was a foreman stevedore. He worked absurd shifts on the wharves to keep his family fed. He raised me like a son, taught me how to tie sailors’ knots, took me fishing, and taught me the difference between ships, sloops, barques and barquentines. And he encouraged me to study hard and follow my dreams.
I was the first student from Maribyrnong High School to study Law at Melbourne University. My parents were proud of me. My headmaster rather less so. He did not appreciate humanities in any form, and refused to put my name on the Honours Board as dux of my year. It rankled, but not for long. This was the Footscray way, after all. No, the top end of town is not our friend. We have only each other. No-one else cares about us, so we must link arms as comrades. I moved back to Footscray as a young woman, after a brief sojourn in Carlton, and here I have lived ever since. It is my home. And I have seen its improbable blossoming. When I moved back in to forgotten Seddon it was a post-industrial slum. A lot of the heavy industry had moved out. Seddon was a resentful wasteland. Yet little by little we began to flower anew.
Seddon nowadays is where everyone wants to live. There are more cafés in my village than the mind can comfortably imagine. When I came here there was only one: a villainous Café Conspiracy where old men drank Greek coffee and played cards. Yet the young urban professionals who colonised us did not obliterate what they found here. They took the measure of the place and succumbed to our welcoming ways. For us, we had accepted migrants from over a hundred nations. Would we treat yuppies any differently? No, we would not.
Here is a snippet of cultural history nobody talks about. Yet it is a fact. I visited Thessaloniki in the 90s and gaped at the treasury of Vergina: the recently unearthed tomb of Alexander the Great’s father Phillip. I remember thinking that trouble would come of it. Sure enough both Greeks and Macedonians both wanted to claim it as their own: in particular the twelve-pointed Star of Vergina. Before long it flew from flagpoles in red and gold, and also in blue and white. Tempers flared. In the northern suburbs a Macedonian church was torched. Ours was not. The church of the Blessed Prophet Elijah is within walking distance of my home. Before long both flags were furled and put away. It seems there was an agreement not to fly the disputed symbol at all. This, truly, was the Footscray Way. Multiculturalism only works if everyone agrees to compromise, give something up, and respect the Other while holding fast to our own. We have always understood this. It is the lesson we have to give to the world.
The history of Footscray is, to a large extent, the history of our football club. I was born and raised within hailing distance of the Western oval. My family all attended home games, resorting at half time across the road for pies, sausage rolls and cups of tea, made by my mother. I didn’t really follow football, so I stayed home and helped Mum with the preparations. In darkest winter they would troop in, trailing mud and wet overcoats, and either rejoice, or sympathise, depending on how the match was going. What I remember most was the spasmodic roar of the crowd. It sounded to my youthful ears like the roar of the Colosseum crowd baying for the blood of the innocent. It was only later that I recognised the importance of it all in our social fabric.
In the 19th century the team was known as the Prince Imperials. Why these militantly Protestant folks should name themselves after the son of Napoleon III is for us an impenetrable mystery. Unless it was sympathy for a youth untimely dead. We weren’t allowed into the VFL until the 1920s. Our first flag did not occur until the year of my birth. In the late 80s the team had fallen on hard times. The top end of town – ever our implacable class enemies – decreed that we weren’t allowed to have a football team any more. And then, without the slightest warning, Footscray rebelled. I knew Peter Gordon, of course. He offered me a job once. Peter is from Braybrook, like Ted Whitten and Dougie Hawkins. Braybrook was even more deprived than we were, and we accepted them like a younger brother. Peter ran the Footscray Fightback from his own office. And what a battle it was.
Whispered tales spoke of how the tin-rattlers had entered Footscray Market with the most modest of expectations; and had exited, bewildered, shortly afterwards, with plastic buckets crammed with twenty-dollar notes. The Vietnamese had had outrageous lies told about them by every Tom, Dick and Harry across town. Yet we had embraced them. And someone had passed the word around that this is very important in their culture, and it’s time to give. And didn’t they just! I wasn’t surprised. It is the Footscray way. From bankruptcy the team rose in glory. They played finals year after year without ever being good enough for the Big Dance. This is what happens when a team overachieves on courage and desperation. And yet, in the year of miracles 2016, the unthinkable happened. And the whole town was painted red, white and blue.
And so I am a proud Footscray woman. We don’t boast overmuch. It’s not encouraged hereabouts. Yet I am well content to have lived my life here. We have a lesson to teach, if the rest of the world cares to listen.
Kerry Greenwood OAM