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How many stories are there to be told about Melbourne? To adapt an old line, there are at least 5 million of them in this city, one for each of us.
In The Age’ s hit series, Life in the ’Burbs, we invite ordinary Melburnians to share their story of what it’s really like where they live, and they have embraced the opportunity.
Whether they are a professional writer, a food truck owner, an accountant, a schoolteacher, a speech pathologist, a singer-songwriter, a nurse, an interior designer, a horticulturalist, an organist or a game designer, in this series everyone has the opportunity to celebrate and affectionately poke fun at the streets that surround their homes.
This week, we proudly celebrate the 100th instalment of Life in the ’Burbs with a new interactive feature for readers to easily search our story archive. Take a look at the map below to see which of Melbourne’s hundreds of suburbs have so far been featured, and type your suburb’s name into the search bar to find the story.
In February 2023, we published an impassioned opinion piece by writer Lyndall Thomas in defence of her home suburb of Frankston. The beachside neighbourhood was, she wrote, much more than a place full of bogans driving Monaros. Thomas’ affectionate and mocking defence of her community instantly struck a chord.
The good-natured rivalry between Melbourne’s suburbs has been a distinctive feature of the city almost since its inception – name a well-known suburb and most Melburnians can instantly reel off a reputational cliche or two. As Thomas wrote, a defining feature of this city is “that it matters where you live. I’ve known Melburnians who care whether people live on the wrong side of the river, the wrong side of the highway and even the wrong side of a creek.”
We asked 10 more Melburnians to write about their suburb, whether the cliches about it are true and how life has changed there in the past 20 years. We titled the limited series “Life in the ’Burbs”.
Readers loved it, and our city’s writers were inspired, so we kept the series going, publishing a new piece online every Monday night and in print on Tuesday. We anticipated it might last another month or two, but Life in the ’Burbs continued growing, and quickly became one of The Age ’s most read and talked about pieces each week.
The series, now managed by deputy opinion editor Damien Nowicki, has covered 100 Melbourne suburbs, from Caroline Springs to Coburg North, Toorak to Tarneit, Brunswick to Brighton. It is one of the longest-running and most successful series in The Age ’s history.
It draws on talents from across our newsroom – from Nowicki’s work helping Melburnians from all walks of life tell their tale (as well as making sure all the landmarks referred to are in the actual suburb!), to our award-winning photographers who capture each suburb’s personality, from our crack digital editors, in particular Eliza Sum, who gather historical photographs into online galleries and find the perfect headline for each piece, to our visual stories team members who have created this new interactive so that readers can search for their suburb – and of course, the generous Melburnians happy to gently mock their own suburb at the risk of offending their neighbours.
In two years’ time we hope to be celebrating reaching 200 suburbs. We have so enjoyed bringing you this series, and we’re glad you have loved it, and shared your comments on the pieces, too. You, The Age ’s community of subscribers, have made the series such a success. If your suburb is yet to be covered, it’s time to get writing. What makes this series special is your voices. Email your pitch to [email protected]
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