Remembering where they sat: the making and remaking of an Aboriginal place

In inner city Melbourne, a place known colloquially as ‘the park’ has been an important Aboriginal community meeting place for decades. This place is simply a group of seats around a small paved area, sheltered by trees, and located within the landscaped grounds of a high-rise public housing estate ‘Atherton Gardens’ built in the mid-1960s that replaced a neighbourhood of nineteenth century houses condemned as a slum. This area was then home to Aboriginal people who had moved into working class Fitzroy from a variety of missions and reserves from across Victoria. Soon after the public housing estate was completed, Aboriginal people started gathering in the ‘park’, occupying a group of seats and making it into their ‘meeting place’. It served as an informal welcome centre for Aboriginal people newly arrived in Melbourne, a place where homeless Aboriginal people slept, and a place to sit around the fire, to smoke, drink and talk – and to express a traditional culture of sharing. In essence, it became a space apart from the everyday life of the suburb – a liminal space. It became ‘Aboriginal land’. In 2013, redevelopment of the park and meeting place was proposed. This paper looked at personal and collective identity, the reasons for the intense resistance to change, and the ways that this place and its meanings have continued to be celebrated and expressed, most recently through new public art.