When I was a kid, my world was very small. Living at 91 Mundy Street, I kicked around with friends who lived nearby… like Sergio Vigone, Bob Adams and Chris Griffin (and when I was adventurous, some of the guys up the road in exotic locales like Kelso Street).

When I was young we played in our backyards or on the street which had a lot of dirt on it back then. And when I was a little older, we’d hop on our bikes and ride to City View Shops or Blue Hills to buy lollies and play pinnies, then back home for driveway cricket, cicada catching and Astro Boy on TV.

And across all of that time, St John’s Orphanage towered over the area like a castle. In fact that’s what I thought it was for years, something like the mysterious buildings I’d seen on Scooby Doo dominating the skyline like Colditz or Edinburgh Castle, providing a foreboding silhouette each night.

When I got to school I discovered that kids lived in it… that it was an orphanage. I didn’t fully understand the concept but I met and got to know many of those kids really well. They came from different places and different circumstances, but what they had in common for the most part was that they were young kids forced, through no fault of their own, to be living outside a family home environment. I can’t imagine how frightening that must have been.

Anyway, from getting to know many of the kids, I heard a few horror stories about the home, and also a lot of good stories. Knowing what we do about institutional care these days, I wouldn’t doubt there were some horrible mistreatments there over it’s long life but I also know of one nun in particular (whose name I forget) who took on caring for some of the kids in a cottage around the corner in Auburn Street. I’ve only ever heard stories about her spoken with absolute reverence, respect and love by the kids she looked after. She and others like her were an oasis at a pretty shitty time in their lives.

I got a pretty good look at the place over the later primary school years, riding past St John’s on my three-gear Malvern Star Dragster (complete with sissy bar) to and from basketball at the Recreation Area, and got an even closer inspection when I visited a few times with some of the kids as time went by. I saw some boxing and karate classes as a guest of some of the residents, went to some fetes, and the premises was more awe-inspiring than I’d imagined. Possibly not so much if you lived there, but as an outsider it was like a mansion or some stately manor.

All of these memories and others have been swirling around since the series of fires at St John’s orphanage in the last few days, weeks and months.

The people who lived there, who experienced the place first hand, will have their own memories of the place. Maybe some of them would be happy to see St John’s burned down. And for those who suffered in their time there, I don’t blame them for thinking that at all.

For mine, I was strictly an observer, an outsider.  To be honest, I didn’t/haven’t given it a lot of thought over the years but it never occurred to me that it wouldn’t be there one day. But the recent fires have reminded me of what a grand old building it is, of the potential it had and maybe, by some small miracle, still has.

As a town, we have a lot to answer for. We sold our Odeon and our Hoyts. We sold the Lilac Time Hall and we let some beautiful old buildings become run down to the point of demolition. Whether or not St John’s is salvageable or not, there are other great buildings… huge, great edifices of times gone by… that can be saved, or let deteriorate.

I don’t know what needs to be done to ensure our great buildings of heritage significance are saved. I don’t know what we need to do, but I’m certain what we do next is important.

Do we give a crap and find a way to preserve these buildings, or just shrug.

History is watching.

As we fiddle.

As Goulburn burns.