Desperate and homeless, they set down the only place there was land left. Lost souls pegged out their plot and erected a tent in the swamp. Almost overnight sprang up a sprawling, ramshackle suburb of canvas and mud. It stank of death and despair. They called it Canvas Town. It was harsh. It was brutal. Yet there was a strange pride in the people of Canvas Town – despite all the odds, life hadn’t beaten them. No completely. At the end of the world these settlers had made something out of nothing. By the late -1850s, Canvas town had been cleaned up. Streets stared taking shape, land was divided and sold, and settlers built cottages and terraces. But for a few brief years, South Melbourne was known by a different name – a roughshod graveyard of broken dreams, hopeless days and desperate measures. Dead Man Espresso sits on what was once the heart of Canvas Town. Like those early settlers, we’re damn proud of our little pilot of Melbourne.