National

Victoria

Life in the ’burbs

Opinion

Ronnie Scott Writer October 27, 2025 — 7.00pm

I used to think it was noteworthy that “my Collingwood” was divided between the one I haunted in my 20s, when I would make out with guys in a particular laundry room on Ballarat Street in a house that hosted kick-ons, and the Collingwood I lived in through my 30s, where my public life was spent mostly buying groceries and other daylight business.

More recently, I’ve realised that psychic division is a normal condition of life in Collingwood – the suburb of Melbourne that most closely realises the communal image of a dense, layered inner city, and the conflicts of meaning that go on there.

On a political map, Collingwood looks die-cut by machine: an almost-perfect rectangle, bordered on t

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