My suburb has a bottle-o, a vape shop, three massage parlours ... and no residents

My suburb has a bottle-o, a vape shop, three massage parlours ... and no residents I’m driving one weekend through my suburb with my son Hamish. We stop at the traffic lights by the train line, and consider the local shops, clocking three massage parlours, a vape shop, a bottle-o, and a closed double-fronted place that sold “mobility” vehicles, but which has since relocated to the rural town of Maryborough. “Everything you need,” says Hamish drily, before reminding me that at the 2021 census, the population of this suburb, Tottenham, was 0. The absence of a residential population explains why I’m stepping in to write this article, in this series they are usually written by someone who lives in the suburb. It’s also one of many things I find interesting about Tottenham, not least because I suspect the zero-population story is not entirely true. There are two other Melbourne suburbs with no population; Essendon Fields and Calder Park. Of these, only Tottenham gets its name from England, specifically the working-class suburb north of London, home of the Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. Our Tottenham was named when the Tottenham railway station was built in 1891. The idea of a Melbourne suburb without a resident population is intriguing, especially when, as with Tottenham, that suburb is a mere 8 kilometres west of the CBD. I don’t own one of the factories, drive a forklift at one of the shipping container facilities, nor am I running a religious congregation in one of the warehouses. But I do have a connection. Having lived in nearby Footscray for many years, I’ve driven every street in this gritty landscape. For instance, on the morning described, I’m driving with Hamish to Sunshine. He’s on his way to umpire at JR Parsons Reserve, a ground that is pure western suburbs with concrete silos that loom over the field and remind us of the area’s industrial identity. But for the most part, I don’t run or walk the dogs in Tottenham. The landscape of fenced-off probably toxic sites, stacked shipping containers and train lines hasn’t always felt inviting. Walking is how my elder son (not the umpiring kind) discovered Tottenham. Braving its thistle-covered fields, exploring its abandoned heritage factories, he got to the heart of the place. On adventures during COVID lockdown, he explored the former carpet factory on Paramount Road, a location that provided work for second world war migrants, and which in the mid-20th century became host to industries formerly located along the Maribyrnong River. Returning home with a 1970s porno mag and other treasures, he talked excitedly over dinner about Olympic/Olex Cables and the wool stores further west and south. My rebel son’s explorations of Tottenham highlight that the suburb is, and has always been, a place of work, but there’s more to it. Take Kylie, who’s worked in Tottenham for 35 years. The office where she sits each day is at Lot 102, or Allied Containers. To get there, you head down Sunshine Road past the shops and the function centre, Happy Receptions (now closed), then turn left into Olympia Street. The day I do so, I see one other pedestrian, who doesn’t seem to be in a good way, and many trucks. Melbourne residents with no idea how to place where I am from this description might remember seeing the black smoke from an industrial fire that occurred in August 2018 when a warehouse illegally laden with toxic chemicals went up in flames. The fire took 140 firefighters and more than a week to control. Within hours, dead creatures, eels, fish and birds, began turning up in Stony Creek, the waterway which runs like a damaged vein through the centre of Tottenham. Many of the reports about the fire described it as being in West Footscray, a reflection perhaps of Tottenham’s tendency to be off the radar. I walk to Stony Creek; it feels like visiting a wounded but courageous friend. The presence of trees, weeds and grasses is a testament to the creek’s resilience given the damage wreaked by the noxious industries long-associated with the area.