Melbourne Heritage Homes: The Mysteries They Hold with Elio Sarpi

Most Melburnians have a saved search on realestate.com.au they will never act on. A terrace in Fitzroy. A cottage in West Melbourne. A Victorian on a street they drove down once and have not forgotten since. We do not just look at houses in this city. We fall in love with them.

In this episode of House of Meaning, Simon sits down with Elio Sarpi, the North Melbourne resident behind one of Melbourne's most quietly remarkable Instagram accounts: Houses of North and West Melbourne. With over 30,000 followers, Elio has spent five years uncovering what is actually inside those houses Melburnians dream about. Not the floorplans. Not the facades. The lives of ordinary people from the 1800-1900’s.

Simon and Elio explore what Melbourne's Victorian terraces tell us about the identity of the city we live in today. They move through how domestic life actually worked inside these homes, when front rooms doubled as grocers and boarding houses, when Italian and Greek families reshaped the way spaces were used, and when a single North Melbourne cottage held far more lives than most of us could imagine. The conversation turns to what Melbourne risks losing as the city grows and builds over its own history, and what it means to feel a personal responsibility to the people whose stories may otherwise disappear entirely.

You'll learn:

• Why Melbourne's heritage homes carry stories the official heritage register never captures
• How Elio traces a family's full history from a single photograph of a front door
• What immigration and commerce did to the way North and West Melbourne terraces were actually lived in
• What Melbourne stands to lose when heritage homes are demolished or altered beyond recognition
• Why the houses Melburnians romanticise hold meaning that goes far deeper than architecture

Who it's for: Melbourne homeowners, inner-city property buyers, anyone who has saved a heritage terrace on realestate.com.au and wondered about its story, and anyone who has ever stood outside an old Melbourne home and felt something they could not quite explain.

If you'd like to know more, please reach out to Sustainable Homes Melbourne or call us on 1800 683 697.

Follow Elio's work on Instagram: @housesofnorthandwestmelbourne

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you're planning to build or renovate and want a home that's sustainable, considered and built with care, you're in the right place. This is House of Meaning by Sustainable Homes Melbourne and I'm your host, Simon Clark, Australian builder with a passion for meaningful design. Since 2014, we've had our boots on the ground designing and building homes that are beautiful to live in, firmly comfortable and built to last. In each episode, we'll share practical advice, design insights, and real stories from experts in the industry to help you plan and build your dream sustainable home. Ilya, you've spent over five years studying and curating the rich history of Melbourne's heritage. How do you explain what you do to somebody that's never seen your Instagram page?

SPEAKER_01 0:45

So I basically take photos, walk the streets of the area where I live, look for beauty in the houses. And I took photos of houses at different times of the day, different times of the year. I used to be a little bit obsessive with not having cars in the front. But now I'm not as much. And I look for something that's interesting, and then I have thousands of those on my phone, on my computer, and I go back and look at those in my spare time. I work in IT, quite a stressful role across Japan and Asia Pacific. And so it's kind of my way of kind of getting away from work, having some time to myself at home. Kind of crazy, I sit in front of a computer all day and I still do that. But then I choose a photo and I start to research for a post. And I spend a couple of hours looking at who lived in the house, events that happened in the house, and sort of put together a story and kind of I use multiple sources and kind of put the pieces together. Some are easier than others, some take longer than others, but it's yeah, it's it's an interesting way of learning about where I live and the people before me. Um and I always post generally about the past, occasionally about the present, but I'm kind of keep people's privacy around where they live. It's kind of important. So um I don't I often do sometimes when people move out of a house um and I've met them, I ask them for their memories, which is really nice as well.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Yeah, wow. So you so you obviously meet people and talk with them and their story as well.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Yeah, so I didn't intentionally do that, but I get contacted by people all the time. I get invited to people's houses for lunches with other people and tell me their story. Um family gathering sometimes. I went to one family gathering of about 40 people and everyone bought their photos and spoke about their time. So it's yeah, it's really nice. It's nice to bring people together and it's nice to I think some families and people like that I kind of put their story out there so it's not lost. Um because it's sometimes in their parents or their grandparents' mind and they've spoken about it. And um, you know, otherwise when some of those people die, the stories are gone.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

My father was a a builder as well, and for years, you know, we'd drive around Melbourne and he'd we'd drive down some weird street and he'd say, Oh, I built that house, I you know, I worked on that house. It was always as a young person, it was a real bore. I was like, Oh yeah, okay, dad, okay, that but as time has gone on, and now my dad's turning 80 this year, and um I really appreciate just that perspective. And now I'm a builder myself, of course, and I'm I just yeah, I do the same thing generally, but there is just such a a rich history that we can so easily forget, and it's just such a important part of who we are. Definitely, definitely. So what what fascinates you about the homes that you do take photos of? Because I I mean you you started back in 2020 or 2021? Yes, 2020, I think. Yeah, and so when you're going through your troves of photos, what do you think typically piques your interest to then delve deeper?

SPEAKER_01 4:27

Sure. Um I've always loved houses like um since I was a little kid. I don't know, I've just had this fascination with houses and um the beauty of houses. Um so what draws to me to particular houses, I think um just the mystery behind it. Um thinking about how long's this house been there? Um is it relatively new? Like is it in the um 19th century or the 20th century? And um just thinking about, you know, even my own journey in terms of growing up as a kid, and you know, uh we didn't move very much, only a couple of times, and um, you know, thinking about the family occasions that we had in in the house, the good times, the bad times, and and just thinking about and when I started delving into houses, um I realized that in Australia, like you know, since people started to immigrate out here, our history hasn't really been that long. So when I'm going through, you know, the newspapers, family trees, um uh directories of where people live, it's not actually that far back that I'm going. Um, you know, sometimes uh I find interesting links to significant people, either in Australia or overseas, um, you know, where they've come from and so on. So it's yeah, it's just fascinating to me. Um and I guess um because people like what I do, um, it's kind of given me a bit of um uh energy to do it all. And um I'm still sort of I'd like to do it more. You know, honestly, I if I could if I could do research full-time and you know make a living out of it, I'll do it. I'll do it any day. Yeah, amazing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

So walk me through when you go from a photo of a house that you you know you've just gone by on on a walk with one of your sons, to then a story about a family from 1882.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

So typically I've kind of learnt trial and error. I'm sure some of my early posts have got lots of problems with them, but over time I've learnt um the wealth of resources that are online. Um so I usually start with um the Sands and McBell direct directories. Um they're uh a directory of who lived in a house. Um and it's online at the State Library of Victoria. And you can when I first started looking at them, I kind of didn't really understand how they worked. But the library online has got um a record for every five years. Um so what people walked around to every house in Melbourne um and basically knocked on the door and said, Oh, what's your name? And I wrote it down. Um so you've got a record of who lived there. Um and then I like the census of the day, is it? Kind of the census, yeah. It kind of is. Um and so I go through from the 1850s all the way to the 1870s when they stopped collecting this information. Um and I document who lived there every year. Wow. So if the person has an unusual name, it's usually easier to sort of track. If they're like a John White or something like that, it becomes more difficult. Um then I look at the street numbering as well when I'm looking through these directories, because in Melbourne, street numbering changed a few times, so um that kind of caught me at the at the start. Um I was looking at the current numbers and looking back in the newspapers to see, but that wasn't right. So it can get tricky. Like some houses have changed numbers three or four times. Um, and then also when you look through the directories, um if a house is on the corner, it's easier to um work out what the number was and who lived there. So a bit of work just researching that, and I start with that, and then I move on and I look at um other pieces of information that are available. Um Trove's amazing. I mean, Trove's just all of the old newspapers, local newspapers, um, national newspapers, and I guess journalism was different back then when you know someone's front um the house something happened and it would be documented. Today, those sort of things are maybe on social media, but not in the newspapers unless they're really significant. So you learn a lot more.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

Gotcha. And what's Trove? Is that a website as well?

SPEAKER_01 8:48

It's a website as well. Um it's um basically you can do searching on it with keywords. Wow. Um you kind of need to play around with it a bit. You might search on surnames, street names, combination of um bits of information that you gather from other places. Gotcha. And that can lead you into newspaper articles, um ads, um, photos. Sometimes you can find photos there as well. So that helps me a little bit. And then family trees. Um, so there's a lot of different sites. Um, there's My Heritage and lots of other paid ones. There's some free ones. So people have done their own research and put their family tree together. So that helps me. I kind of use some of that information. Um, there's studies, heritage studies that have been done in Melbourne that are on available online as well. Um there's historical societies that have put pieces of information together. So I use all of that and um sort of use other people's information and pull it together and um link it to a person. You know, sometimes you find a newspaper article that's got everything, and you kind of, you know, it's got like, you know, when someone died, they were significant member of the community. They would have when they came to Australia, they'd have where they lived, what they did for work, and it's kind of everything all in one place. But there's still other bits and pieces that you can pull together.

SPEAKER_00 10:15

Gotcha. And so and so you first start with identifying who lived in the home, of course, and then you go and search these other archives or vaults. Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

Figure out their story. Exactly. Yeah, wow. Exactly. And I give myself only a couple of hours, so um, because I could be up all night. I mean, I have occasionally um just got into a really interesting sort of story that's taken a while to put together. Wow. And sometimes I've had some really late nights. Oh wow. Um and I don't generally uh research more than a couple of hours. Um just fitting that in with my life and my work is is kind of tough.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

So that story's not out yet, I imagine. No. No, we'll we'll wait and see. Yeah. Excellent. So I mean, Melbourne, as you would know better than anyone, has a really rich history and some incredibly beautiful architectural homes and well heritage homes. I mean, whether we call them architectural or not, I think we do today, but a lot of them probably weren't intended that way, were they? You you you probably have a better view than most. But what do you think it is about these homes that actually speaks to us and speaks to you?

SPEAKER_01 11:25

I think I think um like I think homes in Australia is sort of part of our culture. I mean, people have always built family homes. Um there's a lot of um building of homes over the years that um um it's not like some places in Europe where people rent. Um and sort of it's changing obviously in Australia with the price of housing, but you know, traditionally people built a house. Um, it was made how they wanted it. Um and so I think people have a connection to home. Um and I think as you get older um you appreciate more things about the past and you know what your parents did for you and and that sort of thing. So I think homes are sort of an important thing of Australian society. Um and the wealth of homes and the the style of homes um that have been being built in Australia has really changed, you know. Um and I think originally people came here, there was housing shortages, um people could come out with their tents on a boat. Um You're saying before there's housing shortages in 1850s. Yeah, 1850s. So 1850s there wasn't enough houses couldn't be built quickly enough. Um before the gold rush, was it? Yeah, around the gold rush. Um like people coming across um the housing wouldn't keep up. So people would come out with their tents, you know, a couple might come out with their with their four kids, um, and they'd put a tent in somewhere in the city, which was a dirt road, and camp there until they could, you know, afford a home, get a job and build a home. So um, and then you know, um, I guess initial homes were fairly modest. Um, and then over the years, as wealth grew in Melbourne, um, especially in the 1880s and 1890s, um houses got more elaborate. Um, architects came out from Scotland, from England, from Ireland, um, and designed interesting homes. Um and those homes, a lot of them are still here today, though, so so well built. Um we then had timber homes that that came in, more of the mass-produced timber homes, or even just small standalone timber Victorians. Um, and some of those are still around, um, which is which is really nice. So there's a real mixture of homes around. And the area uh in North Melbourne and West Melbourne that I kind of focus on, um it's an area that's got a really mixed uh uh range of people that live there. Um there's architects, doctors, lawyers, but there's also students. There's also the housing commission there. And as I've researched, I've realized that it's always been a melting pot of people coming into North and West Melbourne. Um even in the 1950s, um, you know, some of the Greeks, Italians that came out would move into some of these old Victorians that were pretty um run down at that point and really needed to be renovated, but that's what they could afford. And, you know, people that had been in Australia for a lot longer were moving out into the suburbs with bigger homes, a garage for their car, and all this kind of stuff. So um a lot of immigrants came in and into those homes and sort of put their own touches on those houses. And some of those houses still survive, other ones no one's ever put any money into them to keep them up and have gone. But yeah, there's amazing architectural homes that I've come across. And North Melbourne hasn't really been, and West Melbourne hasn't had the money put into it. Like if you look at Fitzroy and and other suburbs, a lot of wealth has come in and they've restored everything. Um, but I still love sometimes the paint peeling off homes and and um holes in the weatherboards, or like my 90-year-old neighbour in my last house who had holes. She'd lived there since she was a little girl. Wow. But she had holes that you could see the dirt in her house underneath underneath the floorbirds.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Oh wow. And she lived there 80 years, 80 plus years.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

Yeah. Wow. Almost the age of 90, she lived there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

Um I can certainly vouch for these homes being really well built. I'm I'm incredibly surprised. You the the engineering that goes into a home today, and we've got a a home just in Fitzroy, 150 year old home, and all blue stone footings, you know, the old shale as well, and it just has not m budged at all over 150 years. It's a phenomenal. I I don't quite understand, but I'm not an engineer, don't need to. But as you're saying during this look all the time, probably post-gold rush, I'd imagine, where a lot of wealth came into Melbourne. That's right. And so people you know populated the city of Melbourne. And then a lot of businesses and these homes weren't just used as you know, like we do, just well, maybe work from homes changed out a little bit, but a lot of these homes had businesses out of them, whether boarding houses or covered many of those stories. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

So a lot of boarding houses um for people coming out alone and um all around Melbourne, and yeah, there'd be boarding houses, um, there'd be shops. Um, yeah, really intriguing stories. Like I've I've um documented one about a family um who came out from Italy um in the early, I think about around 1910 or 1915, and they started the boarding house for men who were coming out from Italy alone and were working at the wharves. Um really interesting there. And like um How many would they board, you know? I think there was about about eight people in the house. This one particular one that I was um, there's a book about it actually. A lady, it was her relatives that have were running this particular boarding house, and it was really interesting story in that um there was a at that point a really dislike for the Italian immigrants coming out because they were taking the jobs of warfish. Um and um actually um in this particular house, I found all the articles related to it, but um some guys put so the couple was asleep in their house. Um they had about eight boarders in their house with their two children all sleeping, the two kids were sleeping with them in the bed. Um someone threw a bomb into their house. A bomb. Um nobody died, thank goodness. But walls came down, windows shattered, um, everyone rushed out the front, police called, and um yeah, yeah. So um a bomb to get rid of the immigrants. Yeah, to get rid of the immigrants. Yeah, yeah. To get them to move on. Um a lot of that. And I mean a lot of that I've like seen right across our history and still happens today, not to that extent. But it's kind of interesting that anyone that was new was kind of different. And even when it was more Scottish people coming out than English people, it was like, you know, this isn't right, or the Irish and the person that threw the bomb was probably only first or second generation himself.

SPEAKER_00 18:38

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

That's right. It's wild. But amazing stories like that's about a boarding house, but even about shops. Um, you know, we've gone from um having lots of little family-run shops everywhere to big supermarket chains. Um it's kind of sad. Like when I read the stories, it's kind of for me, it's kind of sad because they had something really special about them that's kind of gone. And you know, there's a lot of people starting businesses now that are kind of that family kind of business, doing it tough. Um but yeah, there was something really special about it, and all the things that would happen in a shop, um, how they'd you know um interwine their family in the shop. So Von could work there and um yeah, lots of really interesting stories. A lot of young kids working there at seven and that's right. Yeah, and horses, you know, having most families having a horse at the back in the shed, and then um the evolution to cars when that came about. Yeah, um, so really um different worlds to what we lived in today.

SPEAKER_00 19:38

Yeah. It's very sort of sad in in in ways that that we've gone. You know, I've just walked past what Coles and Woolies, yeah, you know, the two places what 90% of people chop and go on in the days of individual, you know, grocer or m butcher. That's right. Butchers are probably one that have survived in certain ways. And yeah, gross um fruit and veg is probably a bit smaller, a bit harder.

SPEAKER_01 20:04

Yes. But we had in like Queensbury strip there was a time when there was like four or five butchers in one short strip. One of them specialized in pork. Oh wow. Uh some of the other ones in beef. And so um yeah, there was space for lots of different businesses. Yeah. You remember this time? Or is this long ago? No, I don't remember. No, no, no, no. Remember it's a long time ago. Um, no, I don't no, I don't remember that at all. Yeah, got it. I was definitely a supermarket kind of error that I grew up in. Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 20:35

So if we were to walk down Queensbury Street now, what would you point out that like myself and many others would walk straight past?

SPEAKER_01 20:43

Um the original post office, probably. Um that's kind of um 1870 maybe uh the original post office. So in operations? No, no. So um that's now a warehouse, a guy that sells office furniture in their um kind of designer kind of um secondhand office furniture. But um they built a new post office across the road, which is part of the Melbourne North Melbourne Town Hall, um later. Um but that's there, old butcher shops, um but even in more recent history, there's like uh significant French restaurant there that the guy that used to run John Jacques by the Sea. Um so I kind of evolved to covering sort of um stories from the 19th century, um, early 20th century to even more recent stuff. The 70s, the 80s, video shops that were, you know, um when I moved to the area, I mean I'd go and rent CDs and videos and and they're gone. Um so yeah, it's kind of constantly changing and evolving. But down Queensbury Street, there was hardware stores, um, there was drapers, um, just individual sort of uh Everyday items that you wouldn't today go to the supermarket for, um fruit and vegetable shops. There was a um a supermarket chain um that started in North Melbourne. Um uh that's now a bookshop. Oh wow. But it's it's it's interesting. Instagram, so um uh people sort of add to my stories, but like you know, I often descendants of the original families that were there often find my post and start telling me some more about their family members, or you know, one particular lady um she's a um she sells books and so she goes to this bookshop in North Melbourne, she goes there on a regular basis, but she never realized her descendants actually ran a supermarket in that place.

SPEAKER_00 22:46

Oh wow, yeah, that's incredible. So yeah, I know with just about all of your posts, there's always somebody that can relate to that house. I read yesterday. I knew I was halfway to my friend's place when I passed that house. Yes. I mean, you'd see so many of them. It's quite astounding just how much we relate to these homes, whether they're a landmark or whether they're deep histories of bygone eras.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

But people don't know about their own families. This is the thing that sort of shocks me sometimes is that um, you know, maybe they know two generations back, but past that a lot of people don't know. Um we've got a a guy in North Melbourne who's in his 80s, and I haven't posted this story yet, but he um we've become friends. He runs that furniture shop, and I bought a dining table from him once and walked past, and he's been there since I think 70s. Um he's in his 80s now. But um I went and sat with him a couple of Sundays ago and asked him about himself, and I wanted to know his story and about his shop, and and he in the last three years recently found out that his dad wasn't actually his dad. Oh wow. So he's 80. In his yeah, he just found out three years ago. Wow. And he's like, um, all I know is I've got this photo that he was a US serviceman. Yeah. Um and he showed me the photo. His daughters went inside and got the photo out and showed me, and he said, I've been able to find this was his name, um, but I haven't been able to find anything else. So I said, Oh let me let me go home and let me do some research. Yeah, wow. Within about 40 minutes, yeah, I'm pretty sure I found his dad. Oh, jeez. And so um I found his dad's grave. Um I found um siblings, I found his uncles. Wow, and on his dad's uncle, uh one of his uncles on the gravesite, there's a photo of his uncle as a serviceman, it looks just like him. And he's like he's gone his whole life, and the story's interesting as well because it was during the war. So his his um his mother was in Melbourne and his father went off to war. Right. And uh his mother met a serviceman, an American serviceman. Yep, you know. They got together and she got pregnant. Yeah, wow. And he went back to the US. Yep. Um and she's and he started his own family. Yep. And she um obviously told her husband when he came back and they kept it a secret their whole life.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

Yeah, wow, that's incredible. What a geez, what a story. And there's so many I mean, it feels like without people like yourself, you know, exposing these really stories of ordinary people that we all have, you know. The window's kind of the house, really, isn't it? Yes. Really comes back to the stories that that only the people really have lived uh through it. So do you feel we may be at risk of losing part of this history in Melbourne? Is Melbourne's now becoming a really big city? Yes. And there's a lot of, again, beautiful rich heritage homes. Um there are a lot that you document. Yeah. Um Yeah, do you feel like we're at risk of losing it?

SPEAKER_01 25:51

Definitely. Definitely. I I sometimes I guess what people do to homes I'm horrified with. Like, I mean, I know a lot of the old homes are really difficult to live in. Um, you know, the earlier homes didn't have many windows. Um some of the cottages, uh, you know, I lived in a work worker's cottage in West Melbourne, and um a lot of the heritage stuff when I bought it had gone. They'd knocked it out and sort of done an 80s renovation. Um sometimes it's really sad. People don't appreciate kind of the architecture sometimes or um what's gone into it. Um and you know uh knowing it or not knowing it or not appreciate it, they want to make it livable for today, um, for their family of today and what they see, how other people live.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

Um but yeah, I think and you can do that without, you know, yes. You can yeah, you do need to be much more considerate because there's oh I mean, where we walk into some renovations, this has been, as you're saying, just bastardized. Yes, just especially 80s and 90s, there was a period there where I don't know it was owner builder or what it was, but Bills just didn't give us stuff and just it feels like we lost a bit of respect for the way we used to build things, and and you can't I mean we don't build like that anymore. You just don't we've exposed this bluestone wall. I don't know if you've seen on our Instagram of this home, uh 150-year-old home in Fitroy, and the clients actually went through and scoured every uh blue every bit of bluestones in this wall, and it's like a a mishmash, but it's just absolutely gorgeous, and you never do it today, it will never be repeated. No, um so just to recognise and appreciate that, it's yeah, it's it's and it's really valuable. I mean, it's if we can talk about money, it's it's valuable monetarily, but it's really valuable for from a cultural perspective. I agree. Yeah, and the pride that you take in restoring this thing that's 150 years old. And now it's gonna extend its life for another 150. Exactly. It's incredible.

SPEAKER_01 28:00

Yeah, and I sort of have grown to appreciate houses of other eras as well. Like, I mean, my parents built a house in the 1950s after they'd came out to Australia, and I grew up in that house and um they sold it at some point and we built a 1980s house. Um, but I've gone back to that house and I love it. Like I wish that someone would buy it and restore it. Um because, you know, pink bath, pink bath, pink um bathroom cabinet, kitchen sort of cupboards in timber and all different colours. But even 80s homes, you know, there's some amazing 80s homes that um you look at today and you think, wow, it's really interesting. And I hope that does get preserved as well. Um, you know, even even some homes out in the suburbs where um you know ethnic families had these big brown brick homes that today there's some people that are kind of including that in in their renovation, which I think's amazing. Celebrating it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

That's really cool. Yeah, we used to be a lot more colourful. Yes. What what what happened? It's it's everything's white.

SPEAKER_01 29:10

I know. It's it's kind of sad. It is. But you know, there's a house um that sold in North Melbourne um about two weekends ago, and it was um I found the architect, um, but it was uh a horsing family that originally built it, and it was I think around the 1890s that it was built. Um and this house is beautiful, like it's um very richly decorated Victorian, um, and it sold for like over three million dollars. But um one of the families that had lived there contacted me um after the sale and sent me a photo um they're a Maltese family, and their dad bought it because it was quite cheap at the time. And he he'd painted it mauve um with the white picket fence. Oh wow. And he remembers his friends um uh calling it the birthday house because it looked a bit like a birthday cake. Um but yeah, um so it went from this richly decorated Victorian to this kind of birthday cake. Um and they even had like a trompole inside um of this kind of Italian uh um village scene in one of the walls. So he went to see it when it was sold, and it was all white interiors. Um it still had some original features, the floorboards look beautiful, and the outside had been beautifully restored. Um so it was a it was a it's a great house. Um but it's interesting how how they evolve and and so on.

SPEAKER_00 30:39

People just trying to shrink it down to people just don't want to stand out, I think, today. It's yeah, I think so. There's something about that. I think so. How's this changed the way you look at home? I I imagine I mean it seems to be a deep-rooted thing in in your life. If you were talking about earlier as a kid, you were you got involved with your builder when your parents bought a house?

SPEAKER_01 30:59

Yeah, so my parents had built this 1950s house and then in the 80s they wanted a bigger home. So I was in my I don't know, maybe 14 or 15, but they realized I had a passion for maybe design, even though I don't work in an industry or design and houses. So they let me work with the engineer, which is kind of I can't imagine my kids working with an engineer and architect, but um around the design and selecting things. So I kind of was a big part of that. They kind of gave me free reign. So that kind of led me to, you know, um buying my own place and sort of restoring that. Yeah. I bought a a one-bedroom art deco apartment in Flemington in my 20s. My parents were horrified because the the price I paid for a one-bedroom apartment, I could have bought a three-bedroom house out in the suburbs. Yeah, wow. Yeah. Um, but um, yeah, I kind of restored it, um, but with kind of a modern sort of touch, um, made it really livable. Yep. And um, yeah, that's kind of how I sort of started, and then I sold that and bought my first house, um, which I kept for a long time. But um uh yeah, but but the city's changed, like we were living in West Melbourne and it um I had two young kids at the time, and um we had a lot of Airbnb come in, um, which has really changed housing as well, you know. Um and so we had constant parties around our house. So um we thought I decided it was the time to move on. But yeah, wow.

SPEAKER_00 32:26

Yeah, but yeah. And so how do you think we honour this, you know, the pr honour and preserve, I suppose, the history of these homes that you, you know, that would be part of your life and you're capturing on the daily.

SPEAKER_01 32:41

Uh I'd love to have some sort of register really of a house. Um I was thinking about having each house should have its own register and and when you move out, you document core memories, maybe, you know, of your time in that house.

SPEAKER_00 32:53

Yeah, wow.

SPEAKER_01 32:54

Um I think that would be pretty special, and it'll be something that'll be amazing for a a um you know, homeowners look through when you buy a house and sort of you know look through that history. Like a guessbook. Kind of a guest book, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:07

Yeah. Yeah. And it's a very common thing, just uh at sort of random.

SPEAKER_01 33:13

Yes. Um maybe an online, an online guessbook that could document key things. Because you think about your own life and what you've done in a house and you know, um I look back, I got married in the house in West Melbourne where I lived, and you know, sort of a significant event. Or you know, I remember I remember my um my 85-year-old uncle coming past um after my son was born, and he wanted to have a look around the backyard and had a pond, and he didn't realise he walked straight into it. Um but you know, like little things that happen, yeah, um that's just itched in your memory. It's in your memory. And that house just brings it back every time, doesn't it? And somehow um when you look back, houses you your memory thinks places were bigger than what they were, and you go back and it's like, wow, that's pretty small that place. Yeah, wow, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:02

Yeah, I get it. So it's pretty clear that you you've you know you start on this journey of documenting homes and then it has migrated toward really documenting people and and ordinary people, which I and that's actually a thing to sort of mention is that you're not sort of focused on documenting these grand McMansions of the past. These are these are ordinary, beautiful at the same time, homes of everyday Australians from you know the 19th and 20th century. That's right. Um yeah, so it's definitely has it has, hasn't it? It's changed from just the architecture, appreciating that to really um understanding and documenting people's lives.

SPEAKER_01 34:43

That's right, that's right. So yeah, I used to look up, try and find the architect and the builder. Yeah, and I still do that because it's important to some of my audience. Because I think I've got quite a mixed audience, sort of ranges from about uh probably about 18 to about 80. Um but there's a lot of architects and builders and um but just local people that um yeah, so it has changed. And so I I try and mix it up a bit in terms of what I'm doing, but the stories are generally about people and their lives and how they lived, and you know, it makes me reflect on what happens today in the world and that some things have changed, some haven't, you know. Um the the wealth um is still there and and the poverty is still there in some pockets. Um and uh, you know, how different groups of people live together um and sort of bring a community together. Um yeah, that that's kind of really interesting. And it's kind of like you know, North Melbourne and West Melbourne, people often that live there call it like a country town. Um even though it's like only a few kilometres from the centre of Melbourne, it is kind of isolated. It is kind of isolated between the main roads and sort of thing, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. And people don't sell that often, like it's kind of stayed, houses have stayed in families for a long time. Sometimes when researching a house, I find that a family's lived there for 60 years. Yeah, well, or their parents had it, you know. There's one particular grocery shop where a lady, I think it was from the 1870s, had run it, and then her daughter took it over, and then her daughter built a new house at the start, start of the 1900s, a new house and um and shop with stables, and that's still there today, and so it's like you know, huge amount of time that people have been there. But yeah, it has that feeling of a country town where people know each other and so on. So, yeah, it's really interesting.

SPEAKER_00 36:40

I I get the feeling you feel a deep respect for these people, and you really want to honour their story, definitely, their life story, definitely, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:50

Sacrifices people have made to have what they have. Um and yeah, difficulties, different times where different things have happened in the neighborhood, you know, and we're close to the Vic Market, and there's uh quite a few homes that I've linked to people in Mafia. Oh wow, which has been fascinating to read because I didn't really know that much about it, but it's been intriguing. Recently I posted a house um um that had a connection with the mafia, and one of the guys' descendants had found it and sent me a message and said, I had no idea. Oh, really? Like, you know, um this was my relative, I had no idea that this actually happened. Can you send me all the individual links? Yeah, wow. I'm like, yeah, sure. But um, yeah, you kind of don't maybe know and you don't appreciate kind of what was next door or what was the there before you, or you know, um what's the story that sticks with you? Um there's a couple, but there's there's a um there's there's two actually that really stick with me. Um one is an old pub um from uh probably around 1870s. Um and it's now a home. And um the like I mentioned earlier, that I didn't really take photos with cars out the front in the past, and I'm always worried about number plates showing number plates and so on. But this particular place, this pub, had had its facade done recently, uh well, many years ago, it had its facade done, and the person had a really bright orange car. And when I took the photo, it actually looked good together. And so I thought I can't post this without getting the owner's permission. And I rarely ever knock on anyone's door, okay, but I did this time, and so the owners invited me in um and said, Oh, we'll show you some things. And they showed me a bluestone wall with the name of the pub on the inside that they uncovered when they were doing renovations. And then they said, We also found a photo in the um in a wardrobe when we moved here. And so they went and got the photo and bought it out. And um it was by a really significant uh photographer, and it was taken inside the um inside the pub, but in the 1950s when it was an Italian grocer shop. And it's kind of the photo's sensational, like it should be in a gallery, and it's um basically a guy with an apron on standing behind the counter, there's all like salami hanging from the roof, um, there's fresh breads. Um it's basically an Italian belly, but kind of almost for a photo shoot in the 1950s. Yeah, wow. Um, so that was that was really interesting. But I then researched this guy and what I found was he eventually sold and they moved to Essendon or Nidri, somewhere like that, near the airport. Um but I also found that there was huge tragedy in this guy's life after that. His brother lived in a house nearby and an airplane in the 19. So his brother lived in a house, he'd sold his house, they're about to move out. Um they're moving out to a farm in the country. Aeroplane crashed on their house and murder and killed his wife and his five children. Oh so like insane, the lynx. And him? He wasn't there. He he was out looking at the property at the farm. He drove into his street and there's ambulances, fire brigade. Umrific. That's a wild story. Horrific. But that that was a pretty significant one. Um and another one was an Italian family that um did really well near the market. They had a music shop, so they sold records. Um, Italian migrants wanting to buy Italian records. They had queues out the shop all the way down Victoria Street to the Vic Market. And the family told me that, because they got in touch with me, they used to take garbage bags full of cash to the bank. Um, they had they were making so much money during that time. Yeah. Insane. The kids walking down to the bank. That's right. But I they'd built a house in Queensbury Street, and it was a cream brick house. Um, and the mother, um, she was still alive, and so the children um sort of put me in contact with her, and we were able to work out the architect of the house. I'd contacted RMIT and um um Melbourne City Council. We couldn't work out the architect's name, but with her help, we did, and she described and her family described what the house was like inside um when they built it, and it's like sensational. Yeah, wow. Like they had like a a pink terracotta um rooftop that's no longer there, and um yeah, they just described every detail. And I documented that in my post. Sorry, what we use this? That was probably built in the 1950s. Yeah, we're mid-century.

SPEAKER_00 41:42

Do you so I mean we're at this point in time, you know, 2026? Yeah, fast forward to what would it be? Tw 2100, 2150? Yeah. Do you think people have care or have a want to explore our lives us?

SPEAKER_01 42:05

I think so. I think so. I think so. Um it will be quite difficult in some ways. Like that looking at who lives in a house every five years. Um I guess if records are made available, um maybe we you know you can find that sort of stuff. So yeah, maybe, maybe with AI.

SPEAKER_00 42:21

It's almost like saturated now, isn't it? It's saturated, that's kind of like why would you? We we know so much about so many. Yeah, why would we even care to dive into a specific person and maybe, maybe, but we know kind of what the media's put together, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 42:40

Um and I feel maybe back in the day the media wasn't as um invested in getting stories and uh sensationalizing stuff. Um so I I kind of feel that the everyday stories will be lost because they might be in people's Instagrams, maybe, um, but not everyone uses Instagram. And uh so those everyday stories that I'm able to find nowadays, um maybe they'll be lost. But I think uh look AI is changing the world. I work in in tech, um, and um like gobsmacked with what can be done. Um for the better? Uh some things will be for the better, some things no. I mean I just um I think like you know, in the medical fields, I think it will be uh amazing. Like, you know, all these people studying cures and and things that people try bringing that all together globally um quickly, you know, um is will be, you know, maybe we'll get cures from cancer and and other things. Um some things will be hard, like what will people how will people work, you know, when a lot of jobs will be cut. Um you know, accountants, lawyers, everyday jobs that are kind Of can be just done in a few seconds with AI.

SPEAKER_00 44:06

Hopefully there's more time for passion projects, maybe such as this, appreciating our past, that's right, and designing a better future. Yes, I hope so. I hope so. So what's the home that you carry with you, the personal home that you know resonates with you the most? And what is it about that home that makes you feel the way it does?

SPEAKER_01 44:28

I've got many. So like it sort of changes over time. Like I kind of um I I find a home and I'm like, oh my god, this is amazing. Um there there's many. Um there's many of the early stories of arriving in Melbourne and some of those homes and the success of people in a really short amount of time. Um which you know people say doesn't happen today. Um, but I don't know, I challenge that. Like, you know, my wife works at a local school and um with the Ukrainian war, um, they had quite a few Ukrainian students and parents come in, and you know, just on the weekend we're driving around, and my wife's telling me that one of those Ukrainian families has just bought a house. And I'm like, wow, that's amazing. It's you know, it's the same sort of thing that happened, you know, um many years ago with the Italians, the Greeks, the Chinese, the Vietnamese, the Scottish, the Irish. Um, they worked really hard, um, sometimes working multiple jobs and were able to buy a house. And you know, if you think about housing prices at the moment, this Ukrainian family buying a house today is just amazing. So there's lots of homes that really stick with me, but it's those ones about, you know, how difficult people had it and and their stories of resilience that really stick with me. Um, and especially when I've learned more about my own family and our story um um makes me think about you know how resilient people are. There's a lot of sort of sad stories that you could really harp on, but I try and always I do include them, like I do do both. But you know, I think people's resilience, people's ability to change um is inspiring. And I think we should um, you know, take hold of those stories and try and think of the positive more rather than the negative, you know. Um even the market, for example, like the Vic market, it's really changed, and there's lots of people that are devastated by how it's changed. But if you look at at shopping, and if you look at we all go to supermarkets and you know, people, the ability to run a store, the market's really changed. Um a lot of people blame the government and the people that run the market, but I kind of feel like you know, the world's changed, and so it kind of things need to change and homes need to change and evolution, isn't it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:01

At least the the markets are great. I mean, my view it's a great market. And it does really support, as I understand it, you know, the smaller business. If you go there, you don't get your you know your big franchises, which is why people go there. That's right. But sorry, I you've you've obviously seen so many homes, but what's the home that you your family home that really resonates with you that that comes back to mind? Yeah, so as you say.

SPEAKER_01 47:30

So one home that um really stands out for me is there's a there's a big home. It's a um it's it's a mansion for the for really, but it's had an architect living in it for a long time. He was um an architect at Melbourne University. Is this home you lived in? No. Are you asking you how I look at it? Yeah, ah, home that I lived in. Yeah. Ah, there you go. Um, home that I lived in. That really stands out. Probably my West Melbourne home where my kids were born. Um uh that sort of stands out. Yeah. Um we I had it for 17 years. I owned it when I just started working and um I was a bachelor um and could just walk into the city, um, occasionally come home drunk. Um but then I read your lost uh you lock your keys.

SPEAKER_00 48:20

Yes in it. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 48:22

When I first met my wife, actually, we um yeah, we we went out. Oh well, when she we first met, she'd moved in actually, and we had some friends over and we we invited them over for dinner, we all had a bit much to drink and decided to go out for more drinks to a local place. Oh good. And we got back home and we'd lost the keys. Yeah. So uh yeah, but that home really stands out. I mean, all the memories um that that we built in there. So I know people keep asking about a book. Is it is it is it on the agenda? What's the honesty? Not anytime soon. Um one day I'd love to. I'd love to do it today. Um, but um I've got a fairly uh uh job that takes a lot of my time. Um so and that's kind of how I earn my living, you know, um send my kids to school, everyday expenses, so I don't make any money out of my Instagram. It's pretty much a passion project. Um but yes, I would like to do a book one day. I've got all the content for it. That's right. It's just a matter of putting together the photos, and um my wife's an English teacher, so she could it she could help with it. Yeah. So definitely, yes. Perfect. Where can people find you? Yeah, so just um on my Instagram, Houses of North and West Melbourne.

SPEAKER_00 49:34

Yep. Um yeah. One of the more longer names of the most popular page, I think, is around Melbourne. Yes. Very good. Definitely a long name. Excellent. Thank you, Elia. Thank you for joining me today. No problems. That's excellent. Excellent. Yes, thanks, Lou. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks for listening to the House of Meaning podcast by Sustainable Homes Melbourne. If you got something out of this episode, subscribe so you don't miss the next one. And if you know someone planning a renovation or new build, send it their way. You can find us at sustainable homesmarbourne.com.au. Thanks for listening. This is House of Meaning. Until next time.