The drive-in demands little of its audience. You can lie down, bring your dog and talk without fear of being hushed. Mridula Amin spent a night at one of the last of a dying breed
Between a funeral parlour and a sink factory, a queue of cars slowly disappears down a driveway. Most arrive with plenty of time to spare – to turn their backseats into beds, tune their radios to the film audio and let children play on the bitumen or finish their takeaway dinner. By the time darkness falls, hundreds of cars are pointed towards a screen that has outlived almost every other drive-in in Melbourne.
“There’s something about watching a film under the stars, in the night air,” says Michael O’Neill, a car detailer who lives in Echuca, a five-hour return trip from the Coburg Drive-In.
