DANDENONG - THE LAST GREAT COMMUNITY (OR, Millwood attempts to draw tenuous links between corporations and the state of social decay)

As you may know, I've worked at a record store in the mighty Dandenong Massive for almost two years now, and it's certainly had its fair share of low points. Drunks, prostitutes, rambunctious children, drunk prostitutes with rambunctious children, and even voodoo witch doctors looking for ABBA cassettes*. It's quite a melting pot really. But there's one aspect of this fine suburb that didn't occur to me until this afternoon.

Having grown up in Huntingdale; half way between Clayton and Oakleigh, I've become accustomed to a melange of cultures and races. This mixture of minorities tends to lead to a fairly strong sense of community.. On Saturday the Italian men sit around smoking cigars out the front of the cafe` while their wives do the shopping. Retailers will frequently visit each other’s stores and chat for a while. Groups of women will get their nails done at the same salon on the same day each week. My mother, for example has been going to a local coffee lounge for around ten years now, and is on a first name basis with not only the staff, but most of the regular customers too. Just walking through the mall you'll see random people stopping and talking, asking about each other’s lives and what not. I realize this is all sounding a tad Edward Scissorhands, but don't worry, I haven’t succumb to Howard's fifties ideals. Yet. That said, I can't help but feel that this kind of communal interaction is gradually becoming a thing of the past.

Whilst serving one of our more pestilent regulars today, another customer sidled up to the counter. The two exchanged handshakes and shoulder pats, and continued to chat for the next forty minutes. Eventually they left, and I locked the store to go and do some shopping research at JB Hi-Fi. When I returned they were still hanging around, and had also been joined by several others. I'm fairly sure I overheard them discussing the various ways you can paralyse a man in under five seconds, but that's besides the point. This scene initially struck me as odd, but then so did my reaction.. To that. As being odd. *cough* I digress..

For as long as I can remember, Coles Fosseys has been the centre point of the shopping strip in Clayton.. Until last year when they suddenly closed, and were replaced by an Officeworks. Great! Just what you need in a quiet, centralized, lower class suburb.. A huge fuck-off warehouse for office supplies. Seems like a strange decision, right? Perhaps not.. Both Fosseys and Officeworks are owned by Coles Myer, who own at least four or five major stores in every shopping centre. Obviously they decided the area was not viable enough to monopolise, and went for the next best option; force the people to do their shopping outside of the area. It's not surprising that Clayton's a tad on the quiet side during the week now. After all, Chadstone is relatively near by, and they have Powerhouse, Coles, Myer, Target, K Mart, Liquorland and Bi-Lo.. Way more choices, all owned by the same company.


See? It's going on all over the place. Believe it or not, that's Frankston in the picture.. Recently 'revamped'. Though to be fair, that suburb totally needed a Borders, another cinema, and at least twenty more places where you can buy a muffin big enough to kill a man. Sure, the social environment may appear more clean and orderly**, but I can't help but feel those are just euphemisms for sterile and generic. And whether people consciously realize it or not, it eventually takes effect.. You could probably find the cigar-smoking Italian guy from Clayton wandering around Chadstone right about now. His friends are probably in there too somewhere, ambling about with the same glazed look over their eyes. I know I'm labouring the point pretty hard, but really, when I look out the window and see so many random people interacting so freely, in a suburb that is supposed to be the ass-end of Melbourne, I can't help but scratch my chin.

Lastly, I think the actual 'corporate mentality' has a fair bearing on the situation too. Independent businesses are owned and run by the people who, well, own and run the business. So it stands to reason that they're going to have a vested interest in building rapport with their customers, and in the process, generating a good image for their product. It's pretty hard for 14 year old Susanne working at Muffin Break to give even a miniscule of a fuck about who she serves. She's getting payed bugger all, and is only there so she can gain a semblance of self-sufficiency. She couldn't care about the business, realistically the business couldn't care about her, and the customer becomes a mere statistic in the process. I realize all this has probably been covered on Today Tonight a hundred times over (usually when there's no 'shonky builder steals from fat kid' story floating about), but I think I may have finally found a level upon which I can appreciate Dandenong. And that is something to be proud of.

* One afternoon, covered in full body paint, chakras, and the obligatory Indian 'third eye', a dishevelled man in his forties foretold the prophecy of the legendary tenth planet, from which the purple Italians would arrive to buy out all our AC/DC cassettes. Apparently they're coming back for the ABBA ones next, and that's why he was so keen to get his hands on them. I wish I was making this up.

** As proclaimed by the Mayor of Frankston, Vicki McClelland in a recent issue of the Monash Leader.

NOTE: Yes, Dandenong too has an ever-growing shopping mall at it's nexus. But the majority of stores in the area are still independent and family run. For the time being, anyway..