Melbourne

I planned to stay four days and ended up staying nearly two weeks. The thing about Melbourne is, it’s a place to “live in”. I’m told that Sydney has the instant wow factor, the ease of a tourist city, whereas Melbourne is more about the people, about the art and music scene and knowing where to go. If you rocked up to Melbourne with no prior knowledge or contacts you would most definitely end up staying in the city and assuming it is a huge network of department stores and sushi bars. You might not even find some of the little lanes that connect the main streets, stuffed with beautifully dirty coffee bars, tiny restaurants and downstairs record shops. A friend told me he knew someone who lived in Melbourne six months before stumbling across Degraves Street, hidden away between the wide tram routes. These lanes remind me of Barcelona, colourful graffiti cover the walls, a beautiful man with my favourite crazy hair serves me coffee, while a whole jazz band busk in a nearby alley.

Even around the city you would need insider information. The best places, such as E: Forty Five (an underground Internet café and bar packed with mismatched comfy furniture, art work and great music), the tiny back street spaghetti house and noddle eatery, were places I would never have found without being told where to look. Melbourne is not tourist friendly. It’s got “sites”…I visited the parks, art galleries, the Zoo (I saw Koalas!) and St Kilda pier (to watch the cutest 30cm-tall fairy penguins waddle out on the beach after dark, so close you could touch them). But it is more about the places to eat, the places to drink, the atmosphere. I’m lucky to have met some people who could show me around, and some writers too, who could provide the information I was after.

But that’s just “The City”. The city is the central point that divides the areas of St Kilda and Fitzroy. In St Kilda there is the beachfront, the palm trees, the beautiful botanical gardens and a wealth of little shops and bars. This is where a lot of the backpackers stay. Pure Pop Records was another place recommended to me, a small record shop with a tiny space out that back and packed into it an amazing live band. Fitzroy has Brunswick Street, dirtier and fantastic, with its weird and wonderful artefact and vintage shops, little bookstores and pubs. I liked Fitzroy a lot. The two are opposing sides of the river. Like North and South London I guess… You know which side of the river you fall.

Melbourne and its people just seem “very cool”, and that can be slightly intimidating. Everyone looks good and second person seems to be some sort of creative, walking around in vintage attire and a Trilby, writing in a scruffy little note book or playing a cigar box. And everyone is so happy and friendly with it. In England, we expect so many of “these types” to be aloof or pretentious but Melbourne seems a very happy place. People talk to you on the street and shop assistants always ask how your day is going. I find my English mannerisms kicking in and wishing people would mind there own business just a little bit …it can be tiring, being friendly all the time.

When I first arrived at Melbourne airport I discovered that I had lost my bankcard and that my back-up card was one that could only be used in the UK (I really should have checked this earlier). I didn’t have a phone or any Australian money what so ever. I also momentarily lost my diary (which sounds petty given the circumstances but is actually my most prized possession after my photographs and means way more to me than my bankcards). I thankfully got this back but then had to call Michelle who said I could get a taxis to the ABC Studios were she was working and she would pay for it. There I met Adam Hills, who tried to give me lots of money. (I didn’t know he was mildly known in the UK, and was way more interested in the fact that Ross Noble is his best friend). Anyway, if it hadn’t been for Michelle I’m not sure what I would have done!

Melbourne was then a surreal eleven-day episode of dubious Hostel arrangements (complete with a creepy guy who never left the dorm room), random people’s beds (contacts that I am indebted to) and Kate’s sofa. I ate mini quiches and posh cheese with people that are apparently huge deals in Australia, but I have no idea who they are (there is no point name dropping here although I wish I could! I met actors, musicians, presenters, comedians, but the only big deal for me was the guy who played the first Phamnton in Phamnton of the Opera (Anthony Warlow) because I love that opera and I actually got goosebumps when he started to sing the main love song from it.) I went to the “iconic Nicholas building” (apparently) to the office of the lead singer from The Models, “a very famous Australian band in the 70s” (apparently), while he sang a Lou Reed parody. I went for a drink with the guy who used to be the main boy in Round the Twist (loved that show!). I met some Neighbours cast members but declined a photograph with Irish Conner because he wasn’t Carl Kennedy (I felt a bit bad about that). I stayed with my friend Kate, along with a few others, in her “open house” feel apartment. Her friend used a snow globe to buy something (which is surreal in itself), Christmas lights were being turned on in the warm summer weather, I was having reverse culture shock from Asia and all the time getting by on borrowed cash, thinking how funny Melbourne was turning out to be. Cambodia felt like a million miles away.

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And a note on now….

Australia is expensive and I wasn’t prepared for this. I’ve never done this type of travelling but considering I didn’t do much trip planning things have worked out well so far. (Loosing my bankcard was a bit annoying.) I am now in Brisbane and this morning my poverty levels reached new heights when I ate my roommate’s cake out of a bin after they had left the room. (I can’t believe I just admitted to that). The two girls I stole the cake off have been in Brisbane for one week and are depressed. I’ve just taken a walk around the city and I can see why. The only thing up my street is the Botanical Gardens (which I mean literally as they are at the end of Alice St). But now Lorna has arrived, (the fiery, redheaded Glaswegon that I met in Cambodia) and all is well in the world. We could be in the skummiest place on earth and she’d fill it with her sparkling positive energy and amazing ways. She’s exploded her bag over the room and it’s instantly like old times. I will spend a few days here and then fly to Sydney. I will also try and post photos soon. My camera has broken so it does take photos but it refuses to zoom anymore. Also, it’s run out of battery and I can’t find the charger. Australia is like England but very strange (this gave me a little pang of home sickness on my arrival but I’m over it now.) Oh and on a lasting note, I’m not actually starving. It’s just I am running on borrowed cash and I hate to see a cake go to waste when everything is so damned expensive in this country. When I arrive in Sydney I will get my bankcard back and things will resume as normal.