Many moons ago, two grubby students walked up to a bar in Brunswick. A grubby beard greeted them. After some banter (perhaps some pretend-apathetic flirting), the beard asked the students where they lived. Begrudgingly, they replied. "Armadale". The beard held up his two index fingers in a cross, and extended it towards them, as in, "Get back! You be vampires." And he backed away, never to serve them again.

Richmond: kind of Melbourne's Switzerland. Credit:Justin McManus

This is a true, unembellished story. I was one of the grubby students. The other was my housemate at the time. The beard was a bartender at Howler. Little did he know, we lived in a bashed up old house, overrun with mice and cracks. But that’s beside the point.

I refer to this story because it is one of the best examples of the north-south Melbourne divide. A divide that I have fiercely (though usually ironically) perpetuated. A divide I have been reflecting upon because it has always been such a huge part of my experience of Melbourne life - and it is now changing. As life tends to do.

I don’t remember exactly when I first heard of the north-south divide. Certainly it wasn’t before I moved to Melbourne. My first house here, a classic Gumtree share house where one of my housemates deep-fried everything except hash browns (which he cooked in the toaster), where someone lived in the tiny garden shed, and where the carport was filled with couches covered in ciggie-holes, was in Richmond.