At any given moment, I have a running dialog in my head. Observations. Which way to turn on an unfamiliar street. Things I want to write about. For some reason, I’ve been talking to myself in an Australian accent since I arrived. I practiced in my hotel room this morning, saying a couple of phrases out loud. I discovered that my out-loud voice sounds a whole lot less authentic than the one in my head.
I got into Melbourne late on Saturday night, and was surprised to see what a large city it is, rich with displays of light and architecture. I entered through a rainbow-lit tunnel, artistically designed to reduce noise through the area. Melbourne also boasts its own Ferris wheel, the Star Observation Wheel, and it greeted us with more light and pattern.
My travel agent arranged a private tour of the city the following day. It was just me and Tom, exploring. I had never done this kind of tour before, but I’d do it again in a hot minute. Melbourne is a town like many others, with fairly nondescript main roads. But the back streets. Oh, the back streets. The alleys, and the hidden speakeasy bars. That’s where the magic happens.
Each narrow alleyway is a canvas. Street art, not graffiti, lined the lanes with every imaginable shape and color. Work from artists like Sunfigo, known for his large-scale linear fence designs, and Rone, who paints haunting images, often on crumbling walls. I found work by an artist named Deb, who painted fanciful figures on brick surfaces. You could spend days wandering, and never see it all.
Rowhouse terraces are decorated with intricate cast-iron lacework, converted from bars of pig iron that was used as sailing-ship ballast in the late 1800’s. The city has also introduced a “Green Your Laneway” program, which promises to add life, vibrancy, and a whole lot of ivy to alleyways in the years ahead.
We then visited the Queen Victoria Market, an immense specialty and farmer’s market, operating since 1878. The footprint of the market covers around 17 acres! Frenzied shoppers bustled around beautiful displays of vegetables, olives, meat, and fish, which filled the endless stalls. You could buy kangaroo, crocodile, or Morton Bay Bugs, which are similar to a lobster, and I’m certain are more appetizing than their name would suggest.
We had lunch at the Abbotsford Convent, enjoying a sausage roll topped with “tomato sauce”, which we call catsup or ketchup in the states. I delivered the sauce to the roll with an ingenious “squeeze mate” packet. From a later internet search, I discovered I wasn’t the only flabbergasted user of this amazing delivery system, reading that the “Internet goes wild for Australian’s “squeeze-mate” tomato sauce packets”. It’s the little things.
From my fabulous guide, Tom, I learned many fun facts about Melbourne. Like the story of the late Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, who earned the Guinness World Record for the fastest time to down a yard of ale (11 seconds), set in 1954, and why there is chest-high tile surrounding many of the local pubs. In case you’re wondering, quitting time in Australia was five o’clock. The bars closed at six. So, patrons had one hour to consume as much alcohol as they could in that timeframe, which was often a lot. The tile allowed for easy clean-up after the one-hour drinkfest. I’ll never look at that type of decorative tilework in the same way again.
I later had dinner with my beautiful Kiwi friend, Storm, who moved back to Australia a couple of years ago. She is a jewelry designer, teacher, dancer, and adventurer, who is simply one of my favorite people on earth. It was such fun to see a familiar face in an unfamiliar city. We laughed, told stories, and ate great food, and I had my first pavlova of the trip. It won’t be my last.
This afternoon, I’m off to my next adventure at Phillip Island, where I will see penguins and seals and sand. Until next time … cheers!