In her 2017 interview with the Fitzroy History Society, Chris talked about her time teaching at North Fitzroy Primary School in the 1970s, and the changes she had seen in her time as a resident of the inner north.

In 1969 I arrived at North Fitzroy Primary School, it's address is now Fitzroy North, but it's always North Fitzroy Primary School to me.

I really enjoyed teaching there. It was a large school, in those days it had almost 1000 children. It was one of the biggest schools in the State… with very cramped conditions because there was just the old building, most of which is still there in Alfred Crescent. There were - oh, how many? 10, 12, portable classrooms in the playground.

Grade 5 were off campus, they were in the Mark Street Hall that still exists, and for playtime - it's now called recess, but it was called playtime then - the students from Grades 3 to 6 went across to the Edinburgh Gardens to play. We had large classes. I can't remember how many I had in my portable classroom which was right in the corner on Best Street next to the shoe factory, that was my classroom. Despite it being so overcrowded it actually was great fun, everybody got along well together.

The changes that I've seen in Fitzroy over the years since 1969, and North Fitzroy, have been vast. Many of the small manufacturing industries have gone, closed down or moved to other places, and many, many, many apartments have been built. Some built well and some will be the slums of the future, I'm sure.

The people who live here have changed. As I said, when I first came to North Fitzroy there were many, many Italians and people from the area then known as Yugoslavia.

[Fitzroy North Village] has had vast changes. Because there were two supermarkets there. There was Piedmonte’s which was much smaller than it is now, because on the corner where they now extend to there was Russo's Butchers and there was another shop between them and Piedmonte’s.

Opposite Piedmonte’s where the Thai restaurant and the library were, that was another supermarket called [Penolo Brothers] and there weren't nearly as many cafés. I don't think there were any that I can recall.

The Parkview pub on the corner was there, and although you wouldn't do it these days every Friday at lunchtime when I was teaching at North Fitzroy most of the staff would go up to - if you weren't on yard duty - would go up to the pub for a counter lunch and we'd have a couple of beers. But there's no way that you could do that now. But nobody minded, we still looked after the kids, we taught them well.