Professor Richard Mackay

For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, Melbourne's Little Lonsdale—locally known as 'Little Lon'—was notorious as a foul slum and brothel district, occupied by the itinerant and the criminal. The stereotype of 'slumdom' defined 'Little Lon' in the minds of Melbournians and became entrenched in Australian literature and popular culture. The Commonwealth Block, Melbourne tells a different story. This...