St Kilda Original Still Blames Scotty Cam For All These Fuckwit Yuppies Moving In

CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT

Local motorocycle mechanic, Duke Inkerman (70) has lived in St Kilda since well before the invention of the Myki card.

He stood in the smoky music halls of Acland street during the rise of Paul Kelly and the Hunters and Collectors.

He bore witness to Mirka Mora painting murals in the Tolarno Bistro on Fitzroy street, and he was there in the nineties when a young Shane Warne could be found playing poker with drag queens in The Prince of Wales

Once a melting pot of pub rock bands and conceptual artists, the cultural engine room of St Kilda has since been absorbed by the sterilising tide of inner-city gentrification.

As a central suburb peppered with street art and eccentric local characters, it was only a matter of time until the real estate agents began braving the needle-strewn back alleys of Melbourne’s most iconic red light district.

But Duke never thought it would happen so fast.

Seemingly overnight, the cafes that once hosted Australia’s great authors and activists were replaced by saunas full of slick-haired property developers that call each other ‘bro’.

Even the AFL players that once frequented this area had a bit of flair about them, nowadays it’s just tall and boring aryan men with their heavily botoxed WAGS driving Range Rovers and and hummer prams.

In a place that was once renowned for it’s radical fringe of LGBTI rights and war protesting, it seems the most radical thing about St Kilda nowadays is just how quickly the counterculture has been eradicated by the unquenchable Melbourne property market.

And Duke blames one man.

“That bloody Scotty Cam”

As Duke points out, the ‘before and after’ moment for his beloved South-East was season 15 of channel Nine’s renovation reality show, THE BLOCK

In 2018, TV host Scotty Cam oversaw the transformation of the long-standing 80-bed rooming house Gatwick Private Hotel, on the iconic but contentious Fitzroy Street in St Kilda, into six luxury apartments.

The “Gatty” as it was commonly known to locals and tenants – was notorious for it’s squatters, sex workers, and occasional violent murdrs.

The Gatty was flipped into 6 neo-Georgian terrace houses, and sold for “fucken millions” – according to Duke.

“But it wasn’t just that they kicked out all the dealers and pros” he says.

“It was that they put St Kilda on the map as a place where seemingly normal people might want to live. The bastards”

“Before Scotty Cam, the only thing anyone knew about St Kilda was the injecting rooms and a footy team that never won”