Reflecting on the Kensington Story

Kensington sits on a hill with the Maribyrnong River flats to the west and a gentle slope down to the Moonee Ponds Creek in the east. The suburb transformed from the poverty of a “struggle town” in the 1940s to the present gentrified multicultural community, one still in transition, now from an industrial to a residential community.

In 1996 local community development academic Lesley Hoatson put together a very readable and interesting piece of historical research entitled Celebrating Community Memory: The Kensington Story –  A Snapshot of Community Organisations 1975-95. 

Lesley’s research can be accessed at the Flemington Library and the City of Melbourne library branches.

It’s useful to reflect on the past. In my experience there are often useful lessons, revelations, and comparisons to be made. We take so much for granted in our present, things that we enjoy because of the hard work, inspiration, and dedication of our predecessors.

There are some fascinating details in Lesley’s historical research. In this short piece I cannot do justice to the breadth of information she has documented; I comment here on a few things that stand out for me, assisted by a few quotes from her work.

The story of Kensington is very much one with “a theme of social action, of residents and organisations coming together planning and implementing social action campaigns that would change and improve the quality of life for people in the area”.

One of Lesley’s interviewees describes it as “a picture of coming together in coalitions, a way of working that is an expected part of the culture of Kensington organisations”.

I feel that this modus operandi still continues in the present.

Post-war migration to Australia changed Australia and Kensington forever. There was a rapid rise in population, and cultural diversity blossomed.

Religious affiliation provided some common ground between migrants and locals, so for at least 50 years Catholic and Protestant churches took on many community development tasks. The churches were, according to Lesley, “hubs of activity, both socially and politically”.

Today, in the 2020s, things have changed. While “The Brotherhood”, and “Vinnies” retain a nominal connection to their Anglican and Catholic roots, dwindling congregations and gradual secularisation of society have moved religious groups more to the background.

Early development of the community sector in Kensington featured amazing initiative and innovation, strongly facilitated by churches and diverse cultural groups. From the outset during the post-war 60s, similar to the present, service provision featured formal and informal partnerships between government and community.

As Lesley writes, “the story captures themes of innovation, creativity, community spirit and co-operation that have been the hallmarks of its growth”.

It strikes me that the variety of initiatives – many of them community conceived and many (if not most) continuing in some form in the present –­ is truly impressive.

The following rather dry, general list might communicate some of this variety; maternal and child care, housing cooperatives, legal services, local newspaper, financial counselling, hostel for the frail, community gardens, friendship groups, schools, credit coop, adventure playground, foster and overnight care, community enterprise network, public housing tenants group, after school programs, pensioners groups, community action, health care centre, youth programs, parent respite, and youth accommodation.

Lesley’s research documents all these initiatives and services, how they came to be and how they adapted to changing circumstances.

What I find interesting is the sequence where a community-born initiative is recognised as important and then taken up (or taken over) by government, because it’s seen as beneficial, both to local people and to the government’s political fortunes.

An outstanding Kensington example of this began in the mid-70s. The “Kensington Women’s Group Child Care Co-operative”, started from nothing by seven local women, transformed itself to the present award-winning Kensington Neighbourhood House.

In 1986 the John Cain Labor State Government had their “eye on the ball” and recognised the importance of neighbourhood houses and the role they played in their communities, so they established the community-wide “Neighbourhood House Scheme” to provide secure, recurrent funding for these houses.

Among many other things, Lesley’s research documents some fascinating details of different community actions. She writes that “Kensington’s capacity to gather people together to fight outside threats has been an important part of its life across the last twenty years”. 

Looking for parallels with the present, the following paragraph jumped out at me as an interesting example, given our current call for public open space in the wake of large developments.

“It [was] noted in a submission on preschool child development that the physical box-like structure of the Commission flats meant that there were no ‘in-between areas’, no extra spaces (such as a verandah or private garden), there was only the confining privacy of the flat itself or wide, open spaces of the estate grounds. This allowed few opportunities for developing neighbourliness or providing safe creative play areas for young children”.

Some quality-of-life benchmarks shift, others never change. •