In Melbourne's north-east, Cheryl McMahon watches over a very special school crossing.
The Olympic rings suspended over Alamein Road are a daily reminder to the children of West Heidelberg to strive for the Olympic ideals: faster, higher, stronger — together.
Cheryl McMahon has lived in West Heidelberg for more than 60 years, and said Olympic pride runs deep in the area.
"We're privileged to have a school with 'Olympic Village' in its name," she said.
Olympic Village Primary School was rebuilt in 2019, and the rings feature prominently in the new buildings, with approval from the International Olympic Committee.
There are more rings and mementos outside the swimming pool.
But West Heidelberg's history since 1956 has not been all glory.
When the Olympics came to Melbourne in 1956, the paddocks of West Heidelberg were transformed into the athletes' village, providing brand new accommodation for competitors from around the world.
John Bell was a young boy in 1956 and remembers his father sneaking him into the training track near the Darebin Creek, where he met Olympians including Betty Cuthbert.
"They were my heroes ever since," he said.
He went on to run marathons and competed in national events, which he credits to being inspired by the 1956 games.
"What it did, it gave me this history of wanting to achieve and make something better out of my life," he said.
"But that's only my story, there are so many stories."
Further north of the Olympic Village, in Reservoir, eight-year-old Charlene Rendina watched Cuthbert win gold on TV at the local shops.
She was inspired to become an Olympic runner.
"I said to my school teacher when I was about 12, 13, I said to my teacher, 'I'm going to be in the Olympic Games'," she said.
She did just that, setting an Olympic record for the 400 metres in her heat in Munich in 1972.
She finished sixth in the final, and went on to win gold at Commonwealth Games, and held the 800m record for 43 years.
She remembers training in the dark at the track in West Heidelberg.
"With the engine running and the lights on because we all worked full-time and you couldn't see us running around the track," she said.
Decades later, she still goes for regular runs along the Darebin Creek in West Heidelberg, and says the history is important.
"I feel it lifted the people here, gave them something to look forward to, and now even more so that part of history is here," she said.
After the games, the Housing Commission of Victoria bought 600 of the homes for public housing.
A promised train line never arrived.
Anna Ali moved to West Heidelberg in the 1970s and her parents didn't approve.
"It was rough. Very, very rough," she said.
"We had the pub on Bell Street. Drugs. Murder."
But she said the area had changed a lot since those days.
Yusuf Mohamud is part of that change.
His family came from Somalia in the early 1990s, among the earliest Somali refugees in the area.
"There was a bit of transition, but the more families that came to support one another and the more the community got to know one another, I think it's improved a lot," he said.
"The Somali community is a linchpin of the community."
He is now a lawyer at West Heidelberg Community Legal, and says he does a lot of work with public housing tenants, many of whom are still living in homes built for the 1956 games.
"A lot of the migrant community arrived about 40 years after the Olympics, and some of the relics are still around, but there are some issues with public housing and social housing, some of them were built in 1956 and they're not in a great condition at all," he said.
"There is a lot of positives, but it can be built on, and community members like me can thrive growing up in social housing in not overcrowded conditions."
Back at Olympic Village Primary School, the principal Cresten Pearce has used the Olympics to teach the children about sporting triumphs and multiculturalism, as well as their own local history.
"Life is very different now, but it's something for this community to celebrate and say we have a really big history," she said.
