I came from Hastings, on Westernport Bay, a place not unlike St Leonards. It was originally a fishing town and it’s a place that holds many of my own stories; stories I share with my sisters, cousins and, friends since kinder; and the stories of my family over many generations.
For me stories connect us, they help us to understand each other and they shape the places we live.
My working life in child protection and youth justice, and later as a volunteer advocate with people with a disability living in group homes, has taught me a lot about how important stories are in giving voice to those who are often not heard.
Although I am not a writer, I have come to know that stories can be powerful. They are about being heard – and everyone has a story. Collectively they shape who we are as a community; they can carry knowledge, wisdom and our history; they can make us laugh and make us cry; they can change the way we see things; they can foster understanding and they can connect us.
I first lived in St Leonards in the late eighties and early nineties, so coming back ten years ago after years of being away I was keen to find a way to gather up and share the old stories and new – because that’s who we are as Humans of St Leonards.
Hello, I am Steve Morris and I look after the Humans In St Leonards web site and take the photographs that accompany the stories we publish. I grew up in the northern suburbs of Melbourne. I went to the local Primary and High schools in Pascoe Vale/Hadfield and then lived in the neighbouring suburb of Oak Park when I married in 1985. I’d never ventured very far from that part of town.
Around 2017, my wife Glenda and I were out for a walk on a summer’s evening when I asked her if she still wanted to be in the same house in five years. “No”, she answered,”what about you?” I agreed, but neither of us had any viable options for moving out of Oak Park. When we first moved there, the streets were quiet, tree lined and it was a great place to live and raise a family. But in 2017, the streets were getting busier, noisier and clogged with parked cars. We’d started to not like living there. The hustle and bustle of Melbourne was beginning to intrude on our neighbourhood. I had started my working life as a draftsman and then moved into IT and was thinking about what our life together would look like post retirement.
Our daughter was living and working in Noosa for the IronMan organisation and was in Geelong for the 2018 triathlon as part of her job. We drove down to Geelong to catch up with her and then decided to go for a bit of a drive and explore the Bellarine Peninsula. We ended up in the main street of St Leonards having fish ‘n’ chips for lunch and it was a picture-perfect day with not a cloud in the sky and a gentle cool breeze. Glenda and I both realised that “Gee, we could actually live here!”
To cut a long story short, the purchase of a block of land soon followed, a house was built and we arrived in St Leonards with the COVID lockdowns and everything that went along with that. I’ve since found out that we are not the only refugees from Pascoe Vale/Oak Park/Glenroy and that in fact there are quite a few of us here in St Leonards.
And I hope that my photos manage to capture the qualities of our story tellers and do justice to their stories.
Humans in St Leonards 