Smash and grab abandoned house Melbourne

The suburban house stays lifelessly quiet. The wind blows a shuffling curtain and through the broken glass and filtered light briefly enters a former bedroom. The house no longer sits amongst its residential friends as surrounding land use changes. Double storey buildings now peer over and surround the block. Its now a shell of house, empty but filled with the belongings of visitors and squatters. The garden overgrown a shadow of its former glory. The  Hills Hoist washing line, an icon of the Australian housing dream without wet clothes it remains motionless.

Standing in the way of progress the house remains temporarily defiant before the inevitable development begins.  

 

300th post-Bradmill

Bradmill sits as a hollow empty shell where life was once abundant with workers in the cotton textile factory. The industrial complex silent, filled now with the sounds of the busier then ever West Gate Freeway and the occasional train. The building stands as a monument of the west sides former blue collar workforce. Yarraville history and origin fades with relics of its former glory like Bradmill stand still amongst the 'progress' and development of residential urban sprawl. Capturing infill development of spaces rezoned for much needed housing, even though we don't pause to consider the increasingly affluent aspirations of the middle class. 

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Rural tennis courts

Abandoned, north central Victoria

 

Jewel Spiders upon entrance

Seeking abandoned building addresses

 Seeking abandoned buildings email me australiagraff@gmail.com

Abandoned Bridgestone Preston

Half of Melbourne has likely funnelled past the old empty Bridgestone shop. Cars race along the east-west connect of Bell st to avoid notorious peak hour traffic jams. Much has changed in 10 years as the shop lays silent, stagnant and empty. Trains fly through the sky and their stations float along the Mernda line after the city wide level crossing removal. Public housing of Heidelberg West was flattened to make way for a major housing re-development project. The old Conga Foods building is a distant memory and now home to Bunnings, with its newfound fame of hosting a Peking Duk rave. The concrete and gravel pit of the new North-east link looks like some sort of post-apocalyptic dystopian future. Whatever the future holds inevitably change will be a part of it. Demolition, construction, production and so called progress. 

Prix, AFP crew, always pushing style boundaries and keeping it fresh in the process.

Props to the prolific Cola and World appearing on a rooftop in a city near you

 

West side abandoned

 

Frankston gentrified

Frankston has long held onto a reputation larger than life as a suburb of strugglers in the south-east. It's in period of transition. The Big Picture Festival established in 2018 has transformed the city streets. Where street and graffiti artists have chance to paint multistorey buildings in a attempt to revitalise the streetscape. However this comes at a cost. Graffiti usually pioneers the places that make street art socially and culturally acceptable whether it be Newtown in Sydney or Fitzroy in Melbourne or Hobart in Tasmania. A boom in street art is often followed by a squeeze in graffiti. Suddenly tours for street art pop up in Frankston where graffiti has long been ignored, misunderstood and left with neglected interest. Here we argue graffiti is under-valued and under-appreciated and often becomes victim to street art. In saying that many places where street art can flourish, graffiti rarely reaches. Murals that stand two to three stories high have Buckley's chance of seeing a lick of paint unless you live in Sao Paulo, Brazil where height is no limitation. 

The other aspect of change is development and proposed high rises in the Frankston CBD with waterfront views of Port Phillip Bay. What the residents have dubbed the Great Wall of Frankston. The approved high rises that will tower over the existing buildings will dominate and change the landscape. The Frankston Door Centre currently abandoned and in limbo before construction the site lays as a relict of a former era. These places become graffiti destinations. Just like the derelict art deco baths in Hobart or the Collingwood Silos years of inoccupation of this Frankston relict gives rise to art before gentrification inevitability swoops in. Over 14 years of accumulated graffiti history here. Go back through street view and you'll see.

An earlier version of Nost & Prix

Nufevah, active around Melbourne 2014ish

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