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Melbourne, on a winter’s day. The guide book tells me that Melbourne is place to a greater diversity of migrant backgrounds than perhaps anywhere else in Australia. It’s difficult to establish that fact from a snapshot at commuter rush-hour, but the pavements do seem to be full of people that would make up a city called Earth. Is this really Australia? Where’s Skip?
Getting around Melbourne is a cinch. The streets are wide and taxi ranks are plentiful. Trams appear more frequently than buses and move people around effortlessly in a logical circle covered by a criss-cross of overhead power cables. Jump on the City Circle tram for free if you want to see the tourist hot-spots. The good news about Melbourne’s less than complex city centre is that everything is accessible on foot and that really is the beauty of this place. Despite being sliced in two by the Yarra, a river said to float upside down with a muddy topside (it‘s a city blessed with positives, wherever you look or listen), Melbourne embraces a series of wide and easy footpaths and cycle routes. To the casual observer the road congestion, even at rush-hour, isn’t anywhere near European standards.
On the north side of the Yarra sits Melbourne’s CBD, a collection of tall and even taller buildings, each vying for a peek of the more casual south side - Southbank and Southgate. The main shopping district, from Collins Street and north up to Bourke Street, lies close to the magnificent Flinders Street railway station and Federation Square arts complex. The Concert Hall, Victorian Arts Centre and National Gallery are just a five minute stroll across the Princes Bridge. To the west, and still within an easy 20 minute walk from the centre, you’ll find Melbourne’s Convention Centre, its huge Exhibition Centre and sporting ground, the Telstra Dome. The other sporting venues (Melbourne Cricket Ground, Rod Laver Arena and the Vodaphone Arena) fall within the green parklands to the east. In one such park you will find Government House. In all, some ten bridges at Melbourne’s centre cross the river making access a breeze. The picture I’m painting is of a city that feels more like a very large town with some very large buildings.
It’s not, of course. It’s a very large city with some very large buildings, set amongst some very large streets and surrounded by some very large parks and gardens, all accessible by someone, who by now, has very large feet. I’ve pounded the paths, perused the gift shops and pointed the camera to try to convey a sense of what Melbourne, from a punters point of view, is actually like. I’ve walked the suburbs of Carlton, Fitzroy, Collingwood, East Melbourne, South Yarra, Toorak, Armadale, St. Kilda and South Melbourne, over a couple of days, and seen where people actually chose to live. And I like what I see. It’ll be a lasting impression.
Melbourne has had its fair share of abusers on migrant and travel forums, it saddens me to say. It always rains, it’s so congested, it’s dirty, smelly and where’s the beach life anyway? Wasn’t it the case that you went to Sydney to work, Brisbane to sweat, Perth to chill, Adelaide to die and Melbourne… Ah yes, the definitive post to end all others, from a Perth local of course, and let’s face it, everything you read on forums is true, right? Pick up a guide book and everything’s a treat; food, drink, entertainment, culture. Who do you believe? I’ve got to tell you that Melbourne, from someone who has visited twice now - once as a tourist in the rain and once as a fact-finding newsletter reporter in the sun, finds this capital city and its people very agreeable.
Once the land of the Dutigalla Aborigines, it was taken away by John Batman on a sailing trip over from Tasmania, as you do. In 1835, Batman, an Australian born criminal before the event, traded roughly one-quarter of a million hectares of land (well over half a million acres) for 40 blankets, 200 handkerchiefs, 100 knives and 30 axes that the local tribe clearly found irresistible. It was an illegal act. Shareholders from Tasmania flocked to see what they had invested in and by the time the administration in Sydney got to hear about it some 2000 had taken up residence and it was impossible to arrest them all.
Today’s Melbourne is full of people from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. It rejoices in that fact and fortunately has learned to live with it, peacefully. Dandenong, for example, just 30km away from Melbourne, has about 120 different migrant groups, all working together without the friction generally associated with this type of behaviour. It’s for this reason, the bringing together of people from all over the world, and a belief that they can and do co-exist in a city like Melbourne without fear of one another, that I’ve fallen for it. I don’t feel out of place here. I don’t have to wear Union Jack shorts and a handkerchief over my head to let everyone know who I am (and incidentally, I wouldn’t anyway, but I’m just making a point), but I could. I also love the vibe of the city, on this winter’s day, its incredible architecture and embracement of the arts, out-doing every capital in Australia in this respect (it was once the capital of Australia, before Canberra was ever thought up), its easy navigation and its formidable feature to entertain at any time of the day or night. A country boy at heart, I’ll not be moving from my view across a wild landscape to a lake below quite yet, but I wouldn’t write off a vibrant city like Melbourne as a place to live to anyone. And, if the words and pictures don’t do it for you, well, I guess you’ll just have to get on a plane and see for yourself, ‘cause you don’t want to take my word for it!
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