Circumspencing the Globe

After settling into the hotel and strolling down the sloping sidewalk into Melbourne’s city center, I quickly felt like this was a city I’d want to live in.  I’ll sound like a promotional brochure here, but Melbourne is nothing short of a vibrant urban oasis, designed with imagination, buzzing in its business center, serene in its parks and along its river, fanatical about its sports and passionate about its cultural scene. 

On the way from the hotel on Wednesday (December 12), I came upon the Outre gallery, a gallery whose e-newsletter I’ve been receiving for a long time.  I knew the gallery was Australian but didn’t realize it was based in Melbourne.  Outre is the first official distributor of original serigraphs by an animator called Shag, whose whimsical retro prints typically feature beatniks and jetsetters and hula girls and hipsters making music or dancing or sipping cocktails.  Perhaps you won’t be surprised to hear that Shag’s work is considered “low-brow” art, but that happens to be my favorite brow.  (Less snooty than “high” and far more attractive than “uni.”)

Further down the street, I grabbed a bite at an outdoor cafe in Federation Square.  Near the square and elsewhere in the center, 19th century buildings intermingle tastefully among modern skyscrapers.  While I ate, a lady dangling from ropes was busy fitting a huge red bow over the square’s giant outdoor video screen, adding to the abundant Christmas decor already in place.  Federation Square lies just before the Yarra River cuts through the city.  (“Yarra yarra” is Aboriginal for “flowing waters”–plurals are indicated by repeated terms.)  During the day, black swans–and Down Under the swans are black, not white!–float with the current, kayaks and crew boats slice through the river and smooching couples line the banks.  Next to Federation Square is the ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image), a complex featuring multi-media exhibits and showing classic, avant garde and student films.  The ACMI is one of many examples of Melbourne’s dedication to arts and culture.  Two musicals–“Spamalot” and “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert”–were on stage down the street.

Great, grassy parks break up the metropolitan spread and famous sporting arenas are concentrated in one portion of the city, most notable among them the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground), where cricket as well as Australian Football matches have been played since the mid-19th century.  Melbourne also hosts the Australian Open, the Asian-Pacific segment of the professional tennis Grand Slam tournament, and horse racing’s Melbourne Cup.

On my second day there, I had lunch at a busy sidewalk sushi shop that served a steady stream of men and women wearing business suits and sunglasses.  I envisioned myself as one of these strutting professionals, talking about what had transpired at the office that morning.  But when they had to disappear back into their offices, I got to continue my unconstrained outdoor exploration of Victoria’s capital city.  Who’s strutting now, I thought.

Melbourne is reputed to have the best coffee in Oz.  And it’s very good.  Nothing like my dad’s homemade cappuccino, of course, but really quite good.  Besides the business center, another part of the city that serves up great joe is Lygon Street, the Italian area, brimming with fashion boutiques and sidewalk eateries.  But I preferred Brunswick Street, full of antique shops with strange window displays, more pubs per capita than anywhere in Victoria, sidewalk guitarists and pedestrians sporting piercings and spiked hair, something like Melrose Avenue.  It was in this area that I found a rockabilly venue and encountered the pompadour-and-red-lipstick crowd and learned about local bands called Benny and the Fly-By-Niters and the Stringbusters.  I’ll bet at least a few of these folks own a Shag.

Thursday I boarded a bus to see the Great Ocean Road.  Frommers calls it one of the world’s top ten roadtrips.  Before coming to the start of the Great Ocean Road, we passed a place called Torquay, home of Ripcurl and some other surfing industry giants.  Just up the street is Bells Beach and its Point Break, the spot the movie with Patrick Swayze and Keannu Reeves is named after.  Sadly, the surf was definitely down. 

There’s a golf course near the beach and golfers there often encounter kangaroos on the green.  So frequent is this phenomenon that there’s a course rule that permits a person to remove his ball from the vicinity of a kangaroo without accruing a stroke.  As the bus traveled further north, we drove along the edge of a forest.  In the trees, we spotted a good number of koalas kicking back in the branches.  I’d thought the sloth stood in a league of its own in terms of slow-paced lifestyles, but the koala has a similar penchant for leisure, sleeping a full 18 to 19 hours a day.  No wonder they seem a bit cranky when greeted.

The Great Ocean Road winds along the south coast of Australia.  It was constructed between 1918 and 1932 by WWI vets, providing them needed income and creating an opportunity to do something as a tribute to their fallen comrades.  In that sense, some call the Great Ocean Road the world’s biggest war memorial.  Several natural sights stand just off the coast.  One group is called the 12 Apostles, a series of limestone stacks jutting out of the torquoise Southern Sea.  (There are only about 8.5 of them remaining.)  Other rock formations encountered along the way are the London Bridge, a rock archway; Razorback Lookout, a narrow, jagged cliff; and Loch Ard Gorge, a cavernous bay where a ship ran aground.  The entire area is known as Shipwreck Coast because some 80-plus vessels sank along the 120 kilometer coastline in just 40 years.

After only three nights in Melbourne, I boarded a morning train for Adelaide.  More about that city and hopefully some Melbourne pics next time…

Tags: Australia, Great Ocean Road, Melbourne, Travel, Victoria

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 1:10 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.