BOOK REVIEW:Making Modern Melbourne

Jenny Lee’s Making Modern Melbourne is a punchy little introduction to the history of Melbourne’s settlement and evolution, from the first landing by Lieutenant John Murray in 1802 through to the current day.

More colourful than comprehensive, it is the ideal Sunday afternoon read for anyone interested in finding out more about the city without committing to a weightier tome.

Lee’s book skims through time, providing solid consideration to the 1800s and accelerating through the twentieth century. Peppered with loveable rogues, corrupt bureaucrats and well-meaning, but myopic, libertarians, it charts the good, bad and the ugly of Melbourne’s history, shedding light on why it is what it is today.

It tells the devastating truth about what happened to the indigenous population of Kulin people and draws a realistic picture of what it might have been like to live during those rough and ready days of early settlement.

As a relative newcomer to Melbourne, I was particularly drawn to Lee’s sections on the development of the city’s distinct ‘villages’ and how these characteristics have been retained.

For example, Toorak, as one can imagine, has always been posh, chosen for its elevation ‘to escape the effects of primitive drainage and periodic floods’ it ‘literally looked down on working-class Richmond and Collingwood.’

It was also insightful to read how town planning directives to separate the civic from the residential by creating suburban enclaves have led to the current problems of stretched transport systems, choked roads and an over-reliance on cars.

Seemingly written with a local audience in mind, Lee could do more to navigate the reader around the city and to connect places from the past to their current locality. This would be especially relevant to tourists to the city, who could find the book a useful companion to a weekend’s sightseeing.

Despite this, Lee has included some fascinating ‘before and after’ shots from around town, namely the St Kilda Esplanade, St Kilda Road, a shot looking down the Yarra from Studley Park to East Collingwood, the Royal Terrace on Nicholson Street in Fitzroy and the road into Templestowe.

But the originality of Lee’s book comes through the inclusion of her opinions and anecdotes about her life in Melbourne, her hometown since 1979. As the book progresses into modern day, the prose becomes more enlivened by these excursions into the writer’s own life and what she holds dear about the city.

The history, albeit well researched, is potted, with emphasis in line with Lee’s penchants and interests. However, this brevity can be forgiven against Lee’s genuine love and concern for the city.

Lee should also be commended on her consideration of lesser-charted histories such as the disenfranchisement and loneliness of immigrant populations and the trials and tribulations of women, who where the last in Australia to receive the vote when the Victorian Council finally conceded suffrage in 1908.

Making Modern Melbourne could be described as a companion read with Lee an informative and likeable companion narrator. Published by Arcade Publications, a new local publisher specialising in ‘short reads about Melbourne’s illustrious urban history’, this delightful little book serves as an enjoyable jumping off point for deeper reading about particular points in local history and has certainly helped me see Melbourne in a fresh light.

Making Modern Melbourne
Published by Arcade Publications
Available at all good bookstores or online at http://www.booktopia.com.au/making-modern-melbourne/prod9780980436716.html