Brunswick Street

This guide to Brunswick Street follows a young mother in a 1977 Fitzroy share house who turned her own diary into Helen Garner's first novel, Monkey Grip, setting its wrecking love story right along this street. It traces the working class shopping strip Garner captured, thick with pubs for factory workers before squatters and idealists moved into the emptied buildings, and the writers, musicians and drifters drawn there by cheap rent. You'll hear how the book was received when it appeared in 1978, and how closely its plot tracked Garner's own life. Look for the old shopfronts among the cafes as you walk.