I wish I had lived on Argyle Street in the inner bayside suburb of Melbourne—not as it is now, but in the 1940s, when cars were scarce, adolescent palms lined the footpaths, and interwar homes still wore their glazed terracotta roofs. And when my great-grandmother’s rented home had only a young hedge beginning to creep up the woven wire front fence. Most of all, I want to experience the warmth of a close-knit community where family and friends lived within a one-kilometre radius of one another.
I’m prompted to reflect on the way my ancestors lived for two reasons. One is that I’ve recently read my great-aunt’s diaries, which provide mesmerising insights into how relatives and neighbours interacted before the advent of social media, smartphones, and the assumption that everyone would own a car. I’m not viewing my great-aunt Faye (Pearlman) Green’s era through rose-tinted glasses; there would have been complex social problems hidden behind some of those doors. Yet it’s important to learn how past generations connected, given an accumulation of research showing that people, particularly younger people, are feeling increasingly socially isolated.
Some of this research is highlighted in Why We Feel Lonely, published in 2024 by the national non-profit organisation Ending Loneliness Together. Drawing on data from a 2023 longitudinal study, researchers including Professor Ben Smith of the University of Sydney and Professor Pamela Qualter of the University of Manchester found that one in three Australians feel lonely at any given time, and one in six report severe loneliness. The report also indicates that one in four people experience persistent loneliness, meaning they are unable to resolve their loneliness within an eight-week period.
The Ending Loneliness Together report cites a range of reasons why people experience social exclusion and loneliness. Age is a factor: Australians aged 18 to 24 are at higher risk of persistent loneliness, while those aged 45 to 54 are in danger of having reduced social contact. Disability and mental health also play a role. These Australian findings mirror similar research overseas.
Michelle Lim, CEO and Scientific Chair of Ending Loneliness Together, says there are ways to combat this. In the 2024 report, she writes: ‘We can start with a culture of connection — a society which helps us to start, maintain and strengthen meaningful healthy social connections. Individuals can act by strengthening their relationships with family, friends, colleagues and neighbours.’
I can see these sentiments reflected in the way my great-aunt Faye lived on Argyle Street in St Kilda. The following snippets, gleaned from her diaries, reveal details of her daily life and interactions while living with my great-grandmother Rose Pearlman during the war years.
In aerial photographs, Argyle Street resembles a long stream with tributaries of narrow lanes flowing into it, a perfect setup for my great-grandmother. Friends and neighbours could easily find her home at number 121, and she could stroll to theirs while awaiting letters about the safety of her four children serving overseas in World War II. My mum tells me — and I also learned this from Faye’s diaries — that Sarah Rubin, a close friend, comforted Rose with food and gossip.
“Rose, I have vanilla slices from Patersons,” Sarah would call out from Rose’s unlocked front door, before clickity-clacking down the hallway floorboards to the compact kitchen.
“Tea, Sarah?” Rose would ask.
“Yes, please. Have you heard, Rose, that Mark Goldman and Helen Perlberg are engaged? I thought Mark was going to marry that Shirley girl,” Sarah, a short and stout woman, would say while waving her hands about.
Faye’s wartime writings paint a portrait of interconnected families and friends—the Vidors, Batagols, Rosenbaums, and even the Spencers, a Catholic family. From her diaries, I can picture Rose, Faye, and their neighbours weaving through St Kilda, pausing to share the latest news about an engagement, a bar mitzvah, or a new matzoh supplier, then setting off again along their network of trails.
These comforting routines helped the Argyle Street community endure the war years. Faye’s diaries describe how Rose and her neighbours strolled to Mr Goldfarb and Gluecksmann’s Continental Kosher Butcher at 343 High Street to buy lamb chops. Just steps away was the kosher chicken shop, where an old woman dressed in black plucked the feathers from the birds. The women typically bought older hens or fowls; although they took longer to cook, they were cheaper than roasting chickens and made a more flavourful soup.
After returning home, Rose and her neighbours would rub salt over the birds and leave them for an hour before washing them again. Then the fowl would be boiled with peppercorns, onions, and carrots; the cooked flesh was never discarded but torn into pieces and dropped into the soup alongside homemade matzoh balls. I can almost smell that fragrant broth drifting along Argyle Street.
There were other routines as well. Families, including the Pearlmans, waited each week for the ice-delivery man to drop off big blocks of ice for their ice-chests. Children woke early to watch the milkman deliver fresh milk from his horse and cart, then dashed up Argyle Street to the corner of High Street for milkshakes brimming with ice cream and blue syrup at the Ideal Dairy. During their weekly or twice-weekly outings to the pictures, Rose and Faye often bumped into friends on the No. 78 tram along Chapel Street—encounters Faye recorded in her diary:
px.jpg)
“When I came home [after work], Mum and I decided to go to The Astor. On the tram, we met Sid and Mary Levy, who were heading there too. We also saw Kath and Mrs Porter. They intended going to see Claudia at the Windsor, but decided to join us instead. We saw a good show at The Astor—an English picture The Adventures of Tartu with Robert Donat and Valerie Hobson, and a revived picture Stronger Than Desire with Walter Pidgeon and Virginia Bruce.”
If Rose wasn’t going to the movies after tea, she might play cards with friends and family — either at No. 121 or at other homes, including that of her daughter Millie, who lived across the street at No. 122. Sometimes she would visit the Porters to hear the British actress and singer Gracie Fields on 3AW. Or, having turned sixty-four at the start of the war, she might be minding grandchildren and babies for the Allans, Kleins, Southwicks, and Rosengartens, who lived on Somerset Avenue, another tributary off Argyle Street. On special occasions, Rose, along with her son Lloyd and his wife Edie, would attend the Colgate-Palmolive Variety Radio Show at the St Kilda Town Hall.
If Faye — then in her late teens and early twenties — didn’t go out after work, she would note it in her diary: “Did not go out but wrote to Sonia Grant” (12/4/1944). Occasionally, she would simply pen “uneventful” (14 September 1944), though rarely. Between her job, her Rangers group (part of the Girl Guides), the Jewish tennis club, and her warden duty (her contribution to the war effort), Faye had plenty of families and friends to visit, including Kath, Denise, and Adele, all living on her street or just around the corner. If she wasn’t getting her hair done, she would walk a short distance to St Kilda Synagogue on Saturdays and note in her diary whom she saw there. On special occasions she shopped at Myer—once spotting Dame Enid Lyons there in April 1944.
Family and friends on the street also observed the Jewish seasons and festivals, despite the war. Although No. 121 had just four rooms, Rose hosted a steady stream of visitors, even under wartime gas restrictions and rationing. In September 1944, Faye listed in her diary the family and St Kilda friends who came to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, at Rose’s home:
“This afternoon Lloyd and Edie came in for a few minutes, as did Ette, Mrs Salmanov and Harold (who was already here for dinner), Anthony, Beverley, Auntie Leah and Letty, Celia, Barry, Roberta, Sam and Millie and Ann Vidor—so we had a houseful. Gertie Bryer called in for a few minutes about five o’clock.”
Although this was a special occasion, many of these visitors appeared regularly at No. 121. Faye’s daughter, Lynda, also marvels at Argyle Street’s strong sense of community and believes there is much to learn from the diaries about belonging. Rose suffered great anxiety during this period, awaiting news of her children overseas (one son, Leslie, was killed in Rabaul), but her family and friends surrounded her with warmth. Faye’s diaries are a poignant reminder of that closeness. Rose never left 121 Argyle Street; when Faye married in 1949, her husband—a Dunera boy—simply moved in with them.
It’s clear that reaching out to family and friends, joining clubs, celebrating religious festivals, and walking around the neighbourhood all helped Rose and Faye combat loneliness. My mum also lived on Argyle Street, directly opposite her grandmother, and remained there for four more years after Rose died. She says that on Argyle Street, no one was ever truly alone.
In my own apartment block, I know most of the neighbours on my floor, and an older couple down the hallway look out for me. My mum lives in the next suburb, St Kilda, but friends and family are scattered across Melbourne. We lead more fragmented lives now.
But still, there’s a tangible warmth in the way people carve out pockets of community. Moreso perhaps, given the rising tide of isolation. And while the 1940s world of close-living relatives from Argyle Street may be a thing of the past, that same spirit of community endures. It’s there whenever we pause to greet one another, knock on a neighbour’s door, share anything from a slice of cake to a story. It’s in the smallest of gestures that reminds someone that although their family may be far, they are far from alone.
Dr Erica Cervini is a freelance journalist and sessional academic.