Avril Rolfe is a pseudonym, so I'm not really sure who she is, but I love this review of Snowtown in the scriveners fancy. Particularly this bit, in which she talks about the iconography of the Australian underclass:
...ashtrays that are full to bursting; idle Hills Hoists that are, if possible, surrounded by garbage; the insistent sound of the tune the pokies sing; a broken fluorescent light; a quiz show playing on television, which indicates either the vast gap between the aspirational folk on said shows and the characters in the film, and/or the spiritual emptiness of contemporary society...
Well spotted 99. We have a broken hills hoist at our new house and I find it satisfyingly depressing... Preston is hardly downtown Compton, but it's a country mile from the leafy green vanilla plain Eastern suburbs.
But then maybe I'm kidding myself, the Melbourne version of 'stuff white people like' points out how nearby Northcote has people (self included) duped:
Northcote does not make sense. Positioned in the heartland of suburbia, a whopping nine stops away from the city (comparable to North Brighton, Ormond and Murrumbeena) it has somehow managed to defy geography and pass itself off as a gritty inner city urban wonderland. The brilliance of this suburb is only magnified when you go there and discover it’s mostly just a few kebab joints and a massive indoor shopping centre with Kmart, two Coles, Donut King and a fucking Bakers Delight. This is stuff the wrong white Melburnians like! I don’t know how, but Northcote has brainwashed Melbourne white people. Go there to experience genius.
It's true, that Northcote plaza is a dive and has one too many Coles.
But I'd still like to live there.
Kitty x
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