Welcome to the land down under

 
November 23rd-26th

I sit next to a Japanese woman obsessively applying moisturiser to her face, hands and arms throughout the 3 hour flight from Christchurch to Melbourne. She is intent on using a whole tub, and when her own skin can absorb no more, she rubs the remaining cream in her husband’s hands. Find myself transfixed by the bizarre process.

My first day in Melbourne is equally odd. After three weeks of seeing more sheep than people, the crowded streets come as quite a shock. I’ve always thought of myself as a city chick, but perhaps I’m a country bumpkin after all. Just kidding! Melbourne is the fashion capital of Australia, and 48 hours later, I’ve bought a new summer wardrobe, had a pedicure and my hair blow dried - all’s well again.

Melbourne is an interesting city, but at first, I don’t find much of it attractive. The downtown towers are functional rather than aesthetically pleasing. There are enormous motorway road bridges, which obviously serve a purpose but looking good isn’t one of them. And the city also has a large working dock yard – where they invented the static cranes now used all over the world for unloading container ships. Again, not pretty. You pass all this on a 1 hour boat trip along the Yarra River from the city centre to Williamstown, the original settlement in 1837 and the spot where the river meets the sea in Hobson’s Bay. Despite the promise of attractive historic buildings here, I thought it was a bit of a dump, but I trudged past a large BAE Systems site to see the Timeball Tower – where a large stone ball used to drop from the top of the tower at 1pm each day, so that ships could set their chronometers before setting out across the ocean.

Back in the city centre, I shoot up the 92 storeys of the Skydeck in an ear-popping 30 seconds. This is the southern hemisphere’s highest viewing platform, not to be confused with the southern hemisphere’s highest tower, which Auckland claims (one of many small rivalries between the two countries – the most important being who created the Pavlova!) From this great height I could finally see the City’s green parks – all uptown of the Central Business District (CBD) and harbour areas – and taking a walk round them, they are indeed oases of calm. In Fitzroy gardens, I stumbled across “the oldest building in Australia” – which is actually Captain Cook’s cottage, built in Yorkshire in the 1700s and re-erected here in 1934! The Japanese tourists loved it. They also loved the conservatory in the same park – filled with hydrangeas and a central water feature, and obviously a setting for many wedding photographs.

Once I get used to the pace of life again, Melbourne scores highly for the city vibe. The grid system makes it easy to get around the central area on foot, and there are many buses and trams (some free) to take you further afield. The shopping is great – in particular the attractive arcades and laneways, which do meander through late 19th and early 20th century buildings. If you get tired, there are many, many cafes, restaurants and bars to while away some time, all perfect for people watching. Opposite the old brick built Flinders Street station, Federation Square – surrounded by abstract, glass fronted arts centre buildings – is a popular gathering place. A sign says “poetry is the space between silence” – in the early evening the silence is broken both by the chatter coming from the bars and from the arty cartoons projected onto a 42-sheet wall.

Suitably revived, I walk across CBD to Wednesday’s Victoria night market. By day the old market sells fresh food. But each Wednesday evening leading up to Christmas it’s transformed into Melbourne’s version of Camden crossed with Borough markets. I wander through the clothes, jewellery, and massage stalls, sample the health giving properties of the local herbal teas, and finally settle for a tasty kangaroo burger and a bottle of Boag’s blonde, a low-carb beer that can only be good for you.

Melbourne was – and remains – the gateway to many of the country’s immigrants. Their stories are well told in the fascinating Museum of Immigration. The original POMs (prisoners of the motherland) have been far exceeded by un-enforced migrants from the UK, Germany, Italy, Croatia, Greece, Cyprus, China, and increasingly from other SE Asian countries, as well as those seeking refuge from conflicts in the Middle East and Africa. 1 in 4 Australians were born overseas. As someone who remembers school friends leaving as £10 POMS, I particularly enjoy the home movie footage of families travelling from England by sea in the 60s and 70s. And the exhibits don’t forget other immigrants – some less welcome than others – including rats – reason for immigration “we go anywhere we can”; cockroaches “we eat anything we can”; and cats “looking for fresh hunting opportunities, and needed to amuse humans.”

I’ve joked about the lack of history and heritage, but I find it truly refreshing how new many things seem on this trip. In different ways, both New Zealand and Australia are immediately striking for their cleanness, freshness and brightness. The very lack of history is a large part of the appeal.