Richmond is big.
Breakfast is an operation finely geared to the timetable of the industrial system.
As the shops in Bridge Road and Swan Street open, the city's commercial day begins and the flow of goods-carrying vehicles along Richmond's main thoroughfares increases. The trendy set from the fashionable suburbs of Toorak and South Yarra have been gradually moving into Richmond, and with them the day shoppers. Talking to old-timers inevitably leads to stories of the Golden Age of simple, uncluttered Roman Catholic, working class life. Of days before the influx of migrants, of WASP trendies, of intensified industry and motorised madness. Richmond's population peak of 42,000 came and went in the 1920s.