City of graffiti and glam

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Walking tour of Melbourne

I have one day to be a tourist in Melbourne. Up to this point, for the entire last week, I’ve been in workshops, meetings, and in just plain work. But today is Saturday and tomorrow I leave to head back to Brisbane, my temporary home here in Australia. To commemorate this day, I decide to dress in a flowy dress that is a bit too summery for this chilly overcast day and I determine not to take an umbrella with me. I prefer Romantic visions of my thinly-clad self skedaddling from a downpour to take refuge under a Victorian awning or in an art gallery or in a bustling café rather than lugging around an umbrella all day and banging into things. We’ll see if I pay for my foolishness.

I’m on a walking tour today and head south from my hosts’ home in Fitzroy North to the Queen Victoria Market in downtown. I’ve been told it’s quite a sight. I stop over in a café for a quick flat white (coffee with milk) and to beat a temporary retreat from the persistent drizzle that may be ruining my hair but cannot touch my mood. Fortified by warmth, I continue to Vic Market, a sprawling open-air market (with awnings covering most of the area though) that first coalesced in the 1850’s to become the tourist attraction it is now. I almost always feel overwhelmed in large markets like this so I don’t stop to peruse but walk up and down the aisles. Like most enormous modern markets, they sell much more than food though the food section is by far the liveliest.

Soon enough, I peel away to wind my way to the river. I’ve also been told that there’s a wealth of good side lanes so I take the zigzag route, keeping my eyes and ears peeled for people, noise, and color. Soon enough, I come across a lane that is exactly what I’d been hunting. There are cafes packed in tightly in a pedestrian-only alley where daylight only slices down the narrow middle, leaving the sides in perpetual shadow. But no one seems to mind the ambient gloom. Likely it’s part of the charm. There are tables in the middle of the walkway, funneling the walking flow into two narrow streams, nearly knocking knees with the multitude of café patrons. This is the place to be on this drizzly Saturday morning, all snugged in narrowly and vibrantly. I admit I get carried away enough to actually shop for some Melbourne fashion, wooed into staying in the shop by the cheerful, relaxed girls working there.

I eventually extricate myself from that spot of vibrancy and burst into the openness of the Federation Square, the cultural heart of Melbourne’s CBD (Central Business District…they never really use “downtown” here). I pop into the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, a warren of a museum holding paintings, sculptures, installation pieces, pottery, textiles, and more. I can’t keep track of the flow of rooms and just go where I see something new, surprises and odd walls everywhere, even little nooks of displays in stairwells. As I head out of the museum, my eye is caught by a flash of color across the way. Like the magpie I am, I head for it and find myself in the famous Hosier Lane, the playground of graffiti artists in the heart of the CBD. Graffiti, street art, is plastered, emblazoned, sprawled everywhere, overlapping, spilling, jumbling. Clumps of tourists take pictures everywhere, and I endeavor to take selfies against the blaze of color. (I mildly loathe taking selfies but when you travel alone, one does what one must.)

It’s now early afternoon and I have plans to cook for my wonderful hosts and their children dinner tonight. But first I detour to a broad expanse of green that I find on the map on my phone. This is Fitzroy Gardens, inviting stretches of the classic European park with verdant grass and scattered trees. A few spots of carefully crafted wildness prevent one from seeing all the way across the enormous park. I wander and though my feet are starting to ache, my phone is showing something called Cook’s Cottage on it. And I cannot resist a historical house.

Turns out that Cook’s Cottage did not belong to the famous Captain James Cook, the first European to make (official) contact with Australia and Hawaii. Nor are historians certain he ever even lived there. Nor was the eighteenth-century cottage originally built in Australia. The cottage belonged to Cook’s parents who built it after their boy went on the ocean blue and was moved here, like pieces of a giant Lego set, in the early 1900’s by a wealthy philanthropist who wanted to preserve this indirect link with one of Australia’s legends. The Cottage is quite cute and nicely done, by the way. A good glimpse into history. But I admit that I’m getting increasingly footsore and so I decide to head back up north.

And…take a detour into a random art gallery. Looks like just another posh building but I see tourist-types going into it. I wander in to a small private gallery featuring two Aboriginal artists and there’s more staff inside than visitors. I am offered a glass of wine (don’t mind if I do!) and cheese with crackers and so I munch and sip and peruse art like the cultured person I am currently portraying. I am very grateful I do not have a big, damp umbrella tucked under my arm.

I continue heading up Swanston Street, a street I’d sampled briefly in the past week, enough to whet my appetite with its flash and dash. Sure enough, this street oozes cool. Chic coffee shops, independent designer boutiques, funky shops selling eclectic but posh knickknacks and gadgets, patrons fully aware of the edgy fashion statements they’re making. A blend of hipster, “damn the man” hippie, and fashionista. And a random enormous naked doll baby put up on one of the building fronts. Huh. There’s yet another block of graffiti. This time there are large creations reminiscent of Banksy realism. Much farther north, after my last stop of the day at the grocery store for dinner, I become completely captivated by a slice of ethereal, fantasy-style graffiti. Creations with shining eyes, winsome looks, Faerie-like wraiths move in stillness across a brick face.

White Night turns tawdry

After cooking dinner, I head out with one of my hosts to a friend’s 40^th birthday party at a local bar. I do my best to schmooze, but my current early-bedtime tendencies (and a full, full week) snag my energy. I’m trying to stay up because tonight is White Night, the second year that Melbourne has chosen one night to open its doors (at least in the cultural CBD) all night. There are performance events, film showings, DJ’s, even synchronized swimming in the State Library (what?!). The museums and galleries are staying open all night. This seems like quite the night to round out my time in Melbourne!

Well after 11, I leave with some new companions from the birthday party, and we take a taxi to get us as close as possible to the action. Federation Square is now packed as tight as a concert crowd but with more flow. Enormous colored projections illuminate famous facades. We wander through the same museum I was in earlier today but this time at 12:30AM! I go along with the flow, just content to be out and about and experiencing something new. We’re all quite looking forward to the idea of synchronized swimming in the State Library so we head north along the main pathway of events…

White Night quickly loses its veneer of glamor and mystery. The streets are littered with fast food refuse, stumbling-drunk college kids, humanity at its most pathetic. I question the wisdom of having all the fast food chains open all night too now. We all quickly become tired and fighting against the slog of people and witnessing the tawdry sights is not helping. We acknowledge that, though there may be fun explorings to be had indoors, we can’t muster the group effort to alter our course. In fact, when we reach our stated destination, our collective White Night is done. The group peels apart, and I head with two other ladies in search of a way out of this mess. A tired and frustrating endeavor that stretches into a full hour. All of Melbourne’s renowned trollies are full and come too few times to accommodate the hundreds of wiped-out would-be passengers. We end up taking the train back to one of my companion’s cars. Now, my over-walked footsies are finished.

Next time, I’ll stick to a couple of recommended night haunts!

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Photos

Typical city street
Elegantly crumbling Victorian-era rowhouses

Hosier Lane
Famous graffiti spot in CBD

Captain Cook's cottage
Transported all the way from Britain in the early 1900's

Aboriginal protest art
Landscape piece in classic-style but re-envisioned with symbols of white man's oppression (i.e. barbed wire)

Aboriginal art
Telling the story of the honeybee

Another typical city streetscape
Can't get enough of these houses!

Swanston Street
Graffiti, crumbling old buildings, and a weird enormous baby doll...

Street art or graffiti?
I think this had to have been commissioned