My suburb is the middle child who finally found its voice

If Melbourne’s inner-west was a family, my suburb would be the middle child.

It’s the independent one, sometimes overlooked, and accustomed to being introduced as “the one between”. To the north, Yarraville, the trendy younger sibling with the Sun Theatre, bookshops, and Instagrammable village streets lined with cafes and restaurants.

To the south, Williamstown, older and more refined, rich in history and carrying itself with the assuredness of someone whose mortgage is paid off and superannuation secured.

My suburb, Newport, sits between them, unfussed and getting on with things.

I usually have to introduce it by relating it to somewhere else. It’s “just down Melbourne Road from Yarraville” or “just before you get to Williamstown”, but this does Newport a disservice. And I have to admit, I was once one of the chief offenders.

My wife and I lived in Yarraville for years and thought little about Newport. It was a mere blur through a train window or a stretch of road on the way to the Williamstown shops.

Then in 2021 my brother-in-law’s family moved there and it worked its way into our lives. There was the discovery of yet another good cafe down a side street. A Sunday with our golden retriever at Newport Lakes. Before long, we had drifted down Melbourne Road to buy our first home here.

Newport, about 12 kilometres south-west of the CBD, has an industrial past of workshops, quarries, and power stations, but is changing. The old quarries have been turned into a number of reserves peppered between a mix of classic weatherboard cottages, solid 1960s brick bungalows, and the new townhouses that seem to pop up by the minute.

The warehouses and workshops are being gradually transformed into more homes, cafes, and businesses. This is perfectly typified by the beautiful and imposing Victorian edifice of the Substation, built more than a century ago to convert power for Melbourne’s suburban railway. Towering over the railway station, it was abandoned and fell into disrepair in the 1960s before the local community campaigned in the ’90s to save it and it was restored and reopened as an arts centre in 2008. This year it starred as the setting of new ABC comedy Bad Company , about a struggling theatre group.

The Newport Railway Workshops, a sprawling expanse of sheds, tracks, and rolling stock of all kinds in the suburb’s south, has been a centre for repair and maintenance since the 1880s. Working railway facilities sit alongside heritage workshops and the Railway Museum is a reminder that the railway helped make the place.

As young families and professionals have arrived, we haven’t buffed away every rough edge. This is best illustrated by Newport’s version of the old argument: which side of the tracks is better? On the east side by the river, life is a little more polished. Leafy streets lined with large stately homes run towards the water and the sporting fields that stretch out along the bay.

But even in this idyllic setting there are many reminders of Newport’s industry. Along the northern edge of the suburb are the fuel terminals and factories that carry over into Spotswood .