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[morgueatlarge] Melbourne, 'stralia
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morgue
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Jun 03, 2007 06:50 PDT
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Australia is the handsome, athletic, successful and popular older
brother. New Zealand is the frustrated younger brother. We fight,
like brothers do, but have far more in common than otherwise. Our
jousting, competitive relationship is a bit like that between Scotland
and England, but with the underarm delivery instead of Culloden.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underarm_bowling_incident_1981
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Culloden
(So not very similar at all then.)
Australia is just next door to New Zealand, as these things go. A
mere three-half hours by plane. It's also a place I'd never been,
except stopping off in Sydney airport while flying from NZ to the UK
back in '02. When this trip became a reality I was very excited.
Finally I would cross off the most obvious country in the list of
countries to visit. And so Cal and I spent five nights in Melbourne,
city of the trams.
They're proud of their trams, these Melbournites. (Melbournians?
Melbians? Melbas?) When the Commonwealth Games were held in
Melbourne last year, the opening ceremony featured a big tram with
angelic wings fluttering in to land. Having been in the thick of it,
well, yeah, I get it now. The tram is essential here. It's the
lynchpin of one of the easiest, cheapest and most efficient public
transport networks in the world. Hopping on trams and rattling
through the streets, with cars giving way on all sides and the sights
and sounds of Melbourne just through the window, was endlessly
fascinating. One of the tourist activities mentioned in all the
brochures is 'just jump on any tram and see where it goes', and it's a
great thing to do. They all go somewhere interesting.
Our first tram ride took us north to Brunswick Road. Brunswick Road
is in the suburb of Brunswick, and my sister had emailed advice about
it, namely "Don't go to Brunswick Road".
She said this to avoid confusion. Brunswick Road in Brunswick is not
to be confused with renowned hipster destination Brunswick Street,
which isn't even in Brunswick as it happens, but is instead located in
the renowned hipster suburb of Fitzroy.
(And while we're avoiding confusion, don't make the mistake of looking
for the famous Fitzroy Street in Fitzroy, because it's not there any
more than the famous Brunswick Street is in Brunswick. These
Australians, I don't know!)
Our destination was a pleasant pub with a garden bar and weekly
transvestite bingo, and it was where we met Jenn and Casey, two
friends from Edinburgh who'd returned home to Melbourne not long after
I'd returned home to Wellington. It was quite wonderful to catch up
with them, and like always when meeting up with old friends, it all
seemed perfectly normal after the first minute. We ate nachos and
drank some beer and talked about water restrictions and house prices,
which was perhaps slightly more grownup than anyone was expecting but
that's what is on the public mind in Melbourne right now. The water
restrictions in particular were a constant presence through our stay -
I never thought I'd hear so many Australian accents earnestly
discussing the merits of recycling toilet water into drinking water.
That was the first day, and it set us off to a fine start. More
catching up on the second day, this time of Irish wanderers Sadhbh and
Cat, more folk I'd met in Edinburgh and again I was desperately
excited to see them. We took the train out to Footscray and ate pasta
and I heard 18 months of gossip in one heady 18-minute burst, which I
am still just beginning to take in. Hee.
We spent the week wandering Melbourne, taking trams and going about on
foot and seeing everything we could squeeze in. We were staying
centrally, so we could walk to most places, and the trams were
plentiful when our legs got tired or if we were launching further
afield. It was all terribly easy, and very worthwhile.
The National Gallery of Victoria (and, er, say what? Victoria is a
nation now?) was quite nice but nothing spectacular. The temporary
exhibitions were the highlight for me, including an amusing three-room
display of sneakers and the true find, the Giovanni Piranesi's
_Imaginary Prisons_, a series of etchings from the mid-1700s. (See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Battista_Piranesi for more on
these.)
The Immigration Museum was pretty neat, with some excellent displays
about immigration into the country through the years, particularly
about the White Australia policy that had been in force most of the
20th century and about the experiences of very recent immigrants. I
could have done with lots more case studies of recent immigrants,
actually.
The Australian Centre for the Moving Image was wonderful. You wander
into the main hall and sit down at a weird viewing alcove and select a
short film from a range and watch. We watched a range of bits and
pieces, including films from some well-known Aussie directors at the
dawn of their careers. Downstairs is the temporary exhibition space,
which while we were there was occupied by the roaming Pompidou Centre
collection, which included three pieces that blew my head off with
coolness: Isaac Julien's _Baltimore_, a hypnotic and epic
post-_Matrix_ homage to the city of Baltimore and iconic filmmaker
Melvin Van Peebles; Pierre Huyghe's _The Third Memory_, a
discussion/reenactment of the events of _Dog Day Afternoon_ by the
actual robber intercut with footage of Pacino in the role; and Bruce
Nauman's _Going Around The Corner Piece_, participatory art in which
you chase your own televisual image endlessly around corner after
corner.
Apart from these attractions, we also explored lots of little
alleyways in the centre of Melbourne, walked through parks and along
the river and among the sports stadia, went down to the St Kilda
waterfront and explored Chinatown and the Italian Lygon Street and
Little Saigon.
And there was also quiz night with Sadhbh and Cat (the "Is this a
Tranny or a Granny?" photo puzzler is apparently a highlight every
week) and Vietnamese with Jenn and Casey and more than a few beers.
It was all very, very fun.
And then on the last day we went to the zoo. Which deserves an email
of its own.
---
Thanks Jenn and Casey! Thanks Sadhbh and Cat! It was great to see you guys!
~`morgue
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