David Malouf

My grandmother's shop is actually still there on the corner of Melbourne Street and Edmonston Street.

But virtually the whole of Edmondson Street has disappeared.

And it was very typical of the mixture in this part of Brisbane because it had very, very large old houses, often running from one street through to the next, so that behind the house there was a tennis court, then a garden, then an orchard.

An orchard.

An orchard, yeah, with lots of fruit trees and lemon trees particularly.

A chook house, always.

Then there were cottages, but then also in Edmondson Street, on the corner of Melbourne and Edmondson Street was Simpson's Flower Factory.

And on the next corner was something called the Vulcan Can Company, which made tins.

And we used to, like after school, we would go there and get cutoffs of the long strips of tin, which you could take home and turn into various objects.

You wrote a couple of years ago that some years ago you were in Scotland, in Edinburgh, and you thought you'd better see some other part of Scotland.

So you went to Dundee and arrived at night and woke up the next morning, had your breakfast, stepped outside, and you were completely floored.

Why was that such a shocking thing?

Because it was exactly the smells, the faces of people in the street, the whole atmosphere.

could have been that of Australia in 1940.

And of course, we had changed enormously.

And Dundee had also changed, but it had changed, but nevertheless kept its habits, its style, its food, because they were original.

And we too had had that as our original food.

and over the 50 or so years had changed it so radically that you wouldn't recognise it any longer.

I know.

Where did it go?