Just ask the Dja Dja Warrung. Or the early squatters on the Ravenswood Run. Or the diggers. Or the textile factory workers. Or the typewriter mechanics, corner store retailers, bread deliverers, the milkos.

I came to live here 27 years ago, but I already knew Bendigo was morphing into something new.

The reason I knew that was that I was born and grew up near Mildura, and every year on our annual holidays to Nana and Pa in Oakleigh, we’d stop in View Street and have fish and chips… before all the verandahs were outrageously destroyed.

But by 1987, not only had many  verandahs disappeared, so had the fish shop and View Street was a dog-eared example of regional decline. It was nicely positioned for change.

View Street’s fortunes have been spun 180-degrees and it’s a catalyst for one of the most amazing things in this city’s history: we’re cool. Posh glossy magazines and capital city newspapers brag of their charming weekends in Bendigo generally and View Street particularly. We speak coffee. We know the difference between sushi and shitzus. We know stakeholders aren’t cardboard barbie plates.

Here’s a tip: it’ll keep changing.

I have a mental “line in the sand” about when this stylish makeover began: with a bloke I often find myself thinking about: the former CEO of the City of Greater Bendigo, the late John McLean.

Some of the settings he put in place back then still dominate our thinking. For example, in Tuesday’s Addy there was talk of Bendigo’s new Residential Strategy building a powerful and populated city hub with “10-minute neighbourhoods” moving out from the centre.

John used to argue that a good city was a “federation of communities”. The philosophy dominated so much of what has happened in the decade since. It’s led to some fascinating community upgrades.

It has been said that there are two dangerous kinds of people when it comes to change: those who want everything to change and those who want nothing to change.

It’s okay to feel nostalgic too. On Facebook there’s a terrific page called Lost Bendigo, dedicated to some things and people and activities which have disappeared. But the fact that the digital page exists proves the memories remain. They’re not entirely lost.

And even the Addy’s long-running The Way We Were photograph section is a celebration of where we have been.

(Confession time: The Way We Were began about 20 years ago when we couldn’t find a suitable picture to go with anything else on the page. We had some old pix lying about and thought: this’ll do. Now, it’s one of the most loved elements of the paper.)

You’re right that Bendigo’s traffic is a bit heavier, so “peak minute” has become “peak quarter hour”.

And new communities seem to pop up like mushrooms, and it seems like there’s always some heavy-duty construction causing you to drive or walk one block further than you used to.

But surely you’d agree that this is a very interesting time? The doldrums which occupied much of the 20th Century are gone and there’s a new richness. I suspect it’s actually a new Golden Age.