Mel-bunn

(hw)

A couple of weeks ago we took a long weekend and ventured to Melbourne (“Melbunn”). It was an opportunity to see our friends Kelly and Andrew again, as well as my first visit to this other major contender for “Australia’s Best City”.

The rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne is heated yet good-natured, and a typical resident of either city will be ready to assert their city’s claim of superiority and offer up a joke at the expense of the other. An example:

A newcomer to Melbourne arrives on a rainy day. She gets up the next day and it's raining. It also rains the day after that, and the day after that.
She goes out to lunch and sees a young boy and, out of despair, asks, "Hey, kid, does it ever stop raining around here?"
The kid says, "How should I know? I'm only 6."

Kelly graciously toured Candace and me around the city to visit many of the attractions, accompanied by the beautiful gurgling daughter Claire and the adorable perpetual motion machine named Josh. For every mile kilometer walked forward, Josh logged an extra 5 in other directions.

Melbourne strikes me as having a feel similar to that of a Pacific Northwest city – smaller scale, artsy, independent and innovative shops, café culture, bike lanes, coffee, and books. I even saw people riding fixed-gear bikes. I felt instantly comfortable there. The climate is also apparently similar - it has a reputation for overcast skies and drizzly winter rain. We were impressed by the pervasiveness of quality public art, both officially sanctioned and guerrilla.

Andrew took us to experience a real Australian treat: a live “footy” game. In this case it was an Australian Rules football match, though the term footy can alternately refer to Rugby Union, Rugby League, and even occasionally Soccer. Here too is an example of the regional rivalry: everyone in Sydney is mad about Rugby League, everyone in Melbourne is mad about Aussie Rules Football (everyone that is except Kelly, who sat this one out).

The game is an incredibly fast-paced and athletic endeavor played by gigantic men that wear no padding or helmets. The men are huge, but lean – there are no Michael “The Fridge” Perry equivalents; every one of these guys runs and kicks like a soccer player, jumps and catches like a wide receiver, and collides like a hockey player. It’s a good game to watch combining the speed, finesse, and mayhem of various other sports. I have to say it makes U.S. football (aka “gridiron”) look boring and wimpy.

Other observations from the stadium: Cats can apparently beat Demons – who would have guessed from the names alone? The concession vendors use an excellent machine that fills an entire tray of beers at once – Homers of the world rejoice. The Australians also have a quaint custom of giving the ball back to the players when it goes into the crowd.

An unexpected highlight of the trip was experiencing Federation Square. This is a large, relatively recent, architectural project in the heart of the city. It is a grouping of buildings which define a public plaza and house a variety of public and private functions. The buildings are designed in an architectural style that I call “Huh?”; I was skeptical and expected to be under-whelmed. Turns out the plaza has a nice feel, and was definitely well used. The building massing is of a nice scale, and there are a variety of cafes and restaurants which spill out into the plaza. I still find the architectural style to be rather “Huh?”, but it was executed surprisingly well and with little expense spared. The museum houses a very nice assortment of art - contemporary, classic, and aboriginal – of very good quality. The galleries themselves were also worth the visit just to view some of the unique spaces and detailing that results from the colliding architectural forms.

The downtown has a nice pedestrian scale with wide sidewalks, lots of open air cafes, and shops lining the street level. The usual high-end boutiques and chains congregate centrally, but there is also an excellent selection of unique independent shops mixed in and found in high concentrations in the more bohemian parts of the city.

Finally, I just have to mention a particular meal. Andrew and Kelly took us to a fantastic little neighborhood Japanese restaurant that left us all in rapture. Small, reasonable and unpretentious, this restaurant had to put Andrew on the waiting list when he called 2 months in advance of our trip. Only a cancellation the day-of got us in the door. Excellent excellent meal – book now and plan your tourism around it.

While we were gone, I tied Oskar in the front yard with a sign saying “Will Shed for Food”…it seemed to work, as he was still plump and shedding when we returned 3 days later. Just joking – he stayed behind to go surfing, and knows how to work the stove and DVD player. He hardly noticed we were gone.

You can see pics of the weekend at:
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=9QbN3Lhm1Y9Q