Melbourne, postmodernism and how today’s politics were born in the 1980s

One winter evening at the very end of the 1980s, we gathered in the main room of the old Arena building in Melbourne’s Fitzroy, a triangular wedge at the point where Brunswick Street became St Georges Road. It had once been a funeral parlour, with a huge front door wide enough to bear out the bereaved—and for us to take in printing equipment—and Arena’s output was sufficiently heavy at the time for there to be unkind comparisons from some of our detractors. ‘Arena, you live in a funeral parlour’, one rejected author threatened to spray paint on the white walls. He was a big Smiths fan.