When I was in Melbourne at the beginning of October, I walked past where the theatre called the Pram Factory once stood. The two-story brick building was originally built as a livery stable. Over the years, it was variously a dance hall, a coke den and a panelbeaters. In the 1980s, the Pram Factory was pulled down, and the block is now a carpark for shoppers visiting Woolworths or seeing a movie at Lygon Court’s Cinema Nova.

When the Australian Performing Group moved into the Pram in 1970 and stayed for a decade, it was open-all-hours carnival. There were new Australian plays on almost every night of the week, there was a flea market downstairs on weekends, where actors searched second hand clothes stalls for costumes. In the mornings, there could be a rehearsal for street theatre that would be performed at a demonstration that afternoon. Skyhooks played one of their earliest shows there, the first tents for what would become Circus OZ were sewn in its basement.