Following on from Robyn Annear's Adrift in Melbourne, the historian brings more stories – both alarming and entertaining – of Melbourne's early years.

In this new history of Melbourne by much loved writer Robyn Annear, the overarching theme is street corners. Before home entertainment – radio, television, the internet – people took to the streets to keep themselves amused. The streets were loud, noisy, crowded, exciting and dangerous. Drunks, chancers, larrikins, sex workers, snake oil merchants and pickpockets, among other unsavoury types, thronged the inner city. Life was lived very much in public in the 19th century, which could create problems such as marauding gangs (the larrikin phenomenon) and street congestion: people hung around street corners in large numbers and simply didn't move on. The sheer volume of people that would turn up for public meetings and flamboyant street performers could easily reach the thousands. Many street corners carried their own pet names and reputations.  “Puppy-Dog corner”, as it was known during its heyday, on the corner of Swanston and Collins, was a hangout for foppish young men who liked to ogle passing young women.

While Corners of Melbourne ostensibly sticks to street corners as its theme, the book ranges over subjects such as city sanitation (or lack thereof), rudimentary water systems and shoddy buildings, some simply collapsing under their own poor construction. The sections of the book dealing with toilet waste are stomach churning. Human waste (and all sorts of other garbage) was often simply dumped in what are now public parks. Men relieved themselves in alleyways (Melbourne didn't get its first public urinal until 1859) and the urine ran freely in the streets. In summer the smell was intolerable.
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Robyn Annear brings her usual wit and eye for a cracking good story to Corners. The book is full of characters and incidents gleaned from the newspapers of the day, including The Argus and The Herald. There's never a dull moment in this gritty yet humorous history which manages to truly bring the streets of early Melbourne alive. An interesting place to read about, but one which you may not want to visit!  

Corners of Melbourne, by Robyn Annear. Published by Text. $35

Review by Chris Saliba

Finance journalist Alan Kohler looks at Australia's current housing crisis

According to Alan Kohler Australia's housing crisis is some twenty years in the making and is so baked in it will take at least a decade to unravel. And that unravelling will require not the current policy drift, but firm action and consensus from the electorate. As it currently stands, the majority of the electorate either own outright or have a mortgage, meaning any change to the status quo, that is, lower prices, is against their financial interests.

Alan Kohler takes two historical views, the longer and the more recent. Australian property in early settler days was pretty much a land grab. Land was often gifted in large slabs by the British Crown. Some simply squatted on land and claimed it as their own, without a murmur from government. Australia was considered terra nullius – it was free for the taking.

The shorter historical view, starting around the early 2000s, illustrates how the seeds of the current crisis were sown. A mixture of tax breaks and increased immigration under the Howard Government was rocket fuel to house prices. Everyone was happy – until they weren't. Prices were increasing at a rate of knots; it was money on a loop. Even if you hadn't entered the market, there was cheerful news that once you did, a pot of gold awaited.

The results of those twenty years of rampant price increases are now in. What has turned housing into such a wicked problem is how entrenched it has become. It will take years to build our way back to housing affordability. It will also require national focus, of which Kohler says there is little, if any.

A brilliantly lucid essay that explains how we arrived at such a mess.

The Great Divide: Australia's Housing Mess and How to Fix it: Quarterly Essay 92, by Alan Kohler. Published by Black Inc. $27.99

Review by Chris Saliba

A recently bereaved woman decides on a sea change.
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Zoe and her husband Nick have recently seen their investment portfolio tank, due to stock market volatility. Re-assessing their lives, they decide to sell up their lovingly restored inner city Federation villa and move to the country. Their plan is to vaguely become part of a regional community and shrug off their middle-class entitlement, “tut-tutting at the television and taking expensive holidays.” 

They start looking online for a country property and come across an old church, cheap as chips and with a view of the vineyards. Zoe's not so keen. The idea of converting the church is more than a little daunting. But Nick is gung-ho. Their plans remain under consideration when Nick is killed in an accident.  Suddenly bereaved, Zoe takes the plunge and decides to take on the church herself. It's a way of dealing with her grief, but in many ways she doesn't really know what she's doing. Nevertheless, she starts to make connections with people in the town, especially with an extroverted teacher named Melanie who wants to turn the church into a temporary theatre space. Zoe's new friendships, and the eerie experience of living in the church, help her exorcise some personal demons.
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The Conversion is an accessible and straight forward story of grief and isolation, of how dramatic changes in life, of location and people and atmosphere, have the power to heal and transform us. Many readers will see themselves in Amanda Lohrey's descriptions of contemporary Australia, its people and customs and attitudes. The dialogue and the narrator's observations are often wryly humourous, leavening the story's gravity with some delightfully lighter moments.

A gentle journey into the dark night of the soul, performed with a light but sure touch.

​The Conversion, by Amanda Lohrey. Published by Text. $32.99

Review by Chris Saliba