By Carolyn Webb
In the late ’70s, a friend offered Marianne Latham tickets to see raucous indie music acts such as the Birthday Party, JAB and La Femme at the Crystal Ballroom in St Kilda’s George Hotel.
Latham declined and today regrets it.
‘I love it here’: Marianne Latham has made a documentary about St Kilda.Credit: Simon Schluter
“I think they would have been fantastic. I think I would have had fun,” says the journalist and filmmaker. “But I was too scared to go. I was a bit wary; I guess I was a little straight. They were out there.”
St Kilda in those days was also not for everyone, according to Latham’s new documentary, The Posh and the Riff Raff.
The film recalls the suburb’s cool music scene and bohemian community, as well as the sleaze, criminal consorting and drug dealing – sometimes all in the one venue.
Nick Cave and the Birthday Party, pictured here in London in 1981, played at the George’s Crystal Ballroom in its heyday.Credit: David Corio/Getty Images
It’s all part of the roller coaster that is St Kilda’s history.
Latham, a resident of the suburb for 40 years, started filming the documentary locally during COVID-19 restrictions.
She says that while researching St Kilda’s early history and its 19th-century mansions, she “realised how wealthy the people were”.
After it was built in 1857, the George Hotel housed rich visitors on summer holidays and held society parties and weddings in its ballroom.
For St Kilda’s class-conscious residents, the bayside playground “was not too far from town for them, but far enough to keep out the riff-raff”.
“It was only once the cable tram came [in 1891] that working-class people could come down for a swim,” Latham says.
But the depressions of the 1890s and 1930s hit St Kilda hard; mansions were either demolished or turned into increasingly decrepit boarding houses. Apartment blocks replaced mansion gardens.
In some ways, St Kilda has come full circle in the 21st century due to gentrification and development. Affluent people live in renovated flats and houses. The George, which was closed in 1987, now has upmarket apartments. Its ballroom once again hosts posh weddings and parties.
Latham says the documentary is “a lesson in what happens when greed is allowed to prosper, unchecked”.
Locals have fought back against development, too. Protests led to the cancellation of a massive development for the “triangle” site near Luna Park and a big height reduction for a skyscraper behind the Esplanade Hotel.
While Latham regrets not going to those gigs in the 1970s, she doesn’t regret buying an Edwardian house in West St Kilda in 1982, when she couldn’t afford to buy in Middle Park or Albert Park.
“I used to say, if this house ever reaches $1 million [in value], I’m selling. But I love it here too much to move.
A still from the documentary shows protests against the proposed Triangle site development.
“I can walk to all my friends’ places, walk to the beach; on the light rail or tram you’re in town or the Arts Centre in 10 or 15 minutes … There’s the sea, all this beautiful vegetation, great restaurants, bars and cafes.
“Where else would you want to live in Melbourne?”
The Posh and the Riff Raff will screen at Carlton’s Cinema Nova on August 4 as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival.
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