“Marvelous Melbourne” in Profile
(Last updated Sept. 24, 2008)
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Melbourne sits at the confluence of the Yarra River and Port Philip Bay, which opens into the Bass Strait. The deep water port is a boon to the city’s economy |
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Looking south across the Yarra River at the Eureka Tower, Melbourne’s tallest |
Some Cityscapes That Define Melbourne’s Distinct Urban Character
(Images from assorted tourism websites and Bill’s photo library)
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Across the meandering Yarra, the city looms |
Modern architecture of Federation Square contrasts with St. Paul’s Cathedral and old Melbourne cityscape |
Flinders Street Station, built in 1927, is a landmark of central Melbourne.
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The Block Arcade off of Collins Street is one of several Victorian era arcades that grace central Melbourne |
The ornate Royal Arcade in central Melbourne
View across Yarra River looking at Flinders Station |
Old W-Class trams define the city’s rich history
The new trams are faster, quieter and more comfortable but don’t have the atmosphere of the W-Class relics. Melbourne has an extensive network of tram routes in and out of the city, and since we moved to Carlton Alma and I have become far less car-dependent. We have two tram lines two blocks in either direction from our house, and we use them |
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The Melbourne Savage Club, at 12 Bank Place. This once was home to a wealthy Victorian-era Melburnian’s mistress before it became home to the club where I imbibe now and then with old mates.
Bicycling to work is popular in our neighborhood. Most streets have dedicated bicycle lanes and increasingly commuters are leaving the car at home and bicycling. |
This is a typical “Federation” house (above) seen throughout Melbourne, along with the Victorian terrace cottages (below) that proliferated in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century as the workingmen’s demand for affordable housing increased. Renovated and expanded, the once economical “workers’ cottages” (below) now sell for over $1 million. The house in the photo above at 53 Davis St., North Carlton, happens to be one which Alma and I bought three years ago when we decided to abandon the leafy and comfortable (but somewhat boring) suburb of Kew to become “townies.” We have come to cherish our new urban lifestyle, within walking distance of the city centre and also close to Lisa, Jacob and the grandchildren.
Victorian Terrace Cottages across Davis Street, North Carlton, from our house. These long, thin workingmen’s cottages were common in the Victorian era are now very popular with young professional people who want to live close to the city centre. |
Covered footpaths and Victorian era shops on Rathdowne Street, around the corner from our house, are typical of the Melbourne scene
The Brandon Hotel, two blocks from our house, is a typical Melbourne pub—friendly and unassuming.
Our urban neighborhood has a village-like feel, and, indeed, it’s called Rathdowne Village because it runs along beautiful Rathdowne Street |
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The 1889 shot tower is a landmark in the Melbourne Central downtown shopping plaza. Molten lead was dropped 50 meters into water through a colander, whose holes were varied to determine the size of ball shot. Melbourne Central Plaza spans several square blocks and includes hundreds of shops and boutiques, as well as the major department stores and lots of restaurants. |
Opened in 1878, the Victoria Market is Mecca for serious food lovers, including Alma and I and Lisa and Jacob. Butchers, fishmongers, green grocers and other stall keepers try to keep up with the thousands of people who flock here every day to get the freshest food.
The old Vic Market has it all for the discerning foodie: meat, poultry, fish, vegetables, fruit, cheeses, spices etc. |
The ultra-modern design of Federation Square triggered a controversy when it was built a few years ago, but it has grown on Melburnians and its square is fast becoming a central gathering place. Museums and restaurants are inside the building.
Crowds gather at “Fed Square” for concerts, protests, speech-making or just hanging out and meeting friends alongside the Yarra River. A large screen sometimes shows major sporting events. |
Some Images that Define Melbourne’s (Sporting) Soul
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Fans cheer at an Aussie Rules “footy” game at MCG in 1995, the first game that I attended and cheered on the Carlton Blues. Home games are played here and in the roofed Telstra Dome in the Melbourne Port district |
Bill at a Carlton Blues footy game at Princess Park, one of the smaller stadiums that used to be a big part of the tribal rivalries between the city’s many teams before they moved to the larger Melbourne Cricket Ground and the roofed Telstra Dome to accommodate larger crowds |
Melbourne’s sports madness isn’t confined to spectator sports. Rowing on the Yarra River is very popular, as is amateur cricket, soccer, swimming, surfing, rugby, bicycling and just about any sport you can think of. Australians are passionate about all sports, and Melburnians take it one step further |
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100,000 people cram the MCG for footy’s Grand Final, which is Australia’s equivalent of the U.S. Super Bowl. Australian Rules football began in Melbourne, and when a team from a state other than Victoria wins the Grand Final we collectively go into mourning. The Melbourne Cricket Ground was built for the 1956 Olympic Games and was recently renovated for the Asian Games, which we attended. Membership in the Melbourne Cricket Club, which runs the MCG, is usually purchased by members for their children and is virtually impossible to obtain otherwise. Among the most famous sporting events held here is the Ashes cricket test series, in which arch-rivals England and Australia vie for the cup. |
Cricket is the national pastime, and nowhere is it followed as avidly as in Melbourne, the sports capital. Here a batsman goes down with the baseball equivalent of a strikeout as the ball hits the stumps and sends the bails flying in the air. |
Surf lifesaving, of course, is as Australian as you can get, and every beach has its club of volunteers |
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Son-in-law Jacob showed how fanatical Aussies are about sports when he went to Germany for the World Cup soccer matches to cheer Australia on. The koalaman suit was made by mother-in-law Alma, and Jacob wore it to games throughout Germany until Australia was eliminated. There’s no sport Jacob isn’t passionate about and it’s an affliction common to quite a few Australians, who routinely set their alarm clocks to wake up in the middle of the night and watch games being played in the northern hemisphere. I suppose Australia’s temperate climate and the competitive nature of its inhabitants has something to do with the country’s love of sport. For its size (20 million) it certainly excels in international events in all sports. |
The “Fanatics” show up at 2006 Wimbledon matches to cheer for Lleyton Hewitt and other Aussies on court.
A continuously revolving group of sports-mad people, the Fanatics show up at sports events of all kinds all over the world. They can usually be heard singing the country’s unofficial anthem, “Waltzing Matilda,” or chanting, “Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!” Aussie footy fans also get wound up at games, often getting stuck into game officials by yelling “White maggot!” or “scumpire!” when things get hot and heavy on the field. |
Melbourne shuts down for the annual Melbourne Cup horse race, and Melburnians traditionally let loose with wine, women and song—sometimes a bit in excess. But, hey, it’s a sport, so that’s okay, right?
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The City We Love is Better than Sydney—That’s a Fact
Yes, I know, everybody raves about Sydney and its bloody harbor and Opera House, but what do they know if they’ve never been to Melbourne and seen a real World Class metropolis that actually has a soul? And—this news just in—Melbourne is growing at a rate twice that of Sydney, with demographers predicting it will surpass Sydney in population by 2028. Take that, you smug Sydneysiders!
While Sydney has a lot of cheerless skyscrapers
to which legions of buttoned-down “suits” march to work each morning, and then at
night either flee to the suburbs or crowd into a few enormous, barn-like chrome
and glass bars in downtown, Melbourne proudly boasts hundreds of small and colorful
neighborhood pubs in great old Victorian buildings, where the pots of Victoria
Bitters flow like a waterfall and casually-dressed young people from all walks
of life mingle and actually have fun. Sydney’s Lord Mayor Clover Moore
recently admitted her city’s shortcoming, acknowledging that instead of big,
modern bars crammed with “pokies” (slot machines), Sydney should encourage
small cafes and pubs in cobblestoned side streets, like Melbourne has in
abundance. Perhaps she’s seen downtown Melbourne’s streets filled with
fun-loving diners and pub-crawlers at night, instead of emptying like Sydney’s streets do. (Although I’ll have to admit, sadly, that big nightclubs packed with
rowdy, binge-drinking young people have recently become a Melbourne problem,
too).
Although Sydney dabbles in a few sports, Melburnians passionately
consume sport around-the-clock, and all forms of sport at that. Australian
Rules football, which originated here; cricket, which has its important test
matches in the incomparable Melbourne Cricket Ground; soccer, which 
draws
large crowds of the Australian-born as well as immigrants from countries around
the world that live for soccer. Tennis is huge in Melbourne (this is where the
Australian Open is held, after all). Competitive swimming is very big at the sprawling
National Aquatics Sports Centre, and just about every suburb has its own
aquatics centre with a 50-meter Olympic-sized pool. Little wonder that
Australia, with a population of only about 20 million, won 15 medals at the
2004 Olympics at Athens, second only to the United States. Name a sport and
you’ll find it is played in or around Melbourne: cricket, baseball, rugby,
surfing, rowing, competitive cycling, lawn bowls, petanque, skiing, boxing and
the list goes on. And the important fact is that most Melburnians are avid about
almost all of these sports. It was no accident that Melbourne was chosen to
host the 1956 Olympic Games, as well as the 2006 Commonwealth Games, and is
frequently selected for world competitions in swimming and many other sports.
Australia has launched a bid for the 2018 World Cup of soccer, and Melbourne,
with two world class stadiums, would play a key role.
Football,
or “Footy” as Australian Rules football is called, is the leading local spectator
sport, of course, because this is where it began. For nearly a century and a
half footy has obsessed Melburnians to the point at which it has acquired a
tribal character, with inner suburbs (which really are urban neighborhoods)
raising competitiveness to an almost dangerous level. If you don’t believe me,
try walking through the heart of Collingwood wearing a blue-and-white Carlton Blues scarf on game day. And spectators really know the game. Often 50,000 fans
bellow in unison 
code words that
point out to the umpires the finer points of officiating football, like,
“Ball!’ when they think the ref should have awarded a free kick when a player fails
to dispose of the ball as he is tackled. People here live and breath footy, as
I found out when son-in-law Jacob took us to the Melbourne Cricket Ground
during our first visit to Australia in 1995. Jacob bought me a Carlton Blues
scarf and a Carlton hat and said, simply, “You’re barracking for the Blues.”
(see the “Footy” web page at http://www.claiborneswebsite.com/Footy.htm
). Jacob, by the way, is an extreme Australian sports fanatic. He gets up in
the middle of the night to watch all manner of sports being played in the
northern hemisphere. He lives and breaths all sport, and if he hadn’t gotten a
fairly serious eye injury playing club rugby at an age when he probably should
have given it up, he’d still be playing, I reckon. I’ve absorbed some of that
fanaticism from Jacob, although I always loved sport, too, and played it avidly
as a schoolboy. I’m a member and season-ticketholder of the Carlton Blues, and
every home game I rock up at the MCG or Telstra Dome with seatmate Dennis Floyd to cheer on the Blues. But I also continue to watch baseball and NFL (“gridiron”)
football on ESPN and Fox Sports. I’m even getting into cricket, which requires
some patience if you’re watching a five-day test match. But cricket, like
baseball, is a complex game whose major elements are geometry, bat speed,
footwork, fleetness of foot, intense psychological duels between “bowler” and
“striker,” and, above all, strategy.
Sports
aren’t all that Melbourne has to offer, of course. For one thing, it has a far
more cosmopolitan feel to it than Sydney has. I’ll admit that Sydney is in a beautiful
setting, what with its harbor, foreshore, the Rocks, the distinctive bridge,
the Opera House and beautiful beaches. But then Melbourne is also in a lovely
setting, with the Yarra River winding through it before connecting with the
huge, deepwater Port Philip Bay. It has a lovely foreshore with great beaches. It
has an abundance of gorgeous parks and gardens, with ancient oak, elm and other
European trees brought here by settlers homesick for the verdant landscape they
left. Melbourne also has far more interesting architecture than Sydney has, in
my opinion. It still has the Victorian feel that characterized the city when it
was transformed from a backwater settlement into a major metropolis by the gold
rush in the 1850s. By the 1880s Melbourne was one of the largest cities in the British Empire, and reputedly the richest city in the world, if only briefly. It acquired
the nickname “Marvelous Melbourne” and, with London and San Francisco, was
considered one of the world’s three greatest cities. Even now, although
surpassed in population by Sydney, Melbourne is consistently voted at the top
of the “world’s most livable cities” lists compiled by international
organizations like the Economist Intelligence Unit and England’s Loughborough University. Melbourne is also rich in cultural institutions, like the Arts
Centre, where Alma and I subscribe to performances by the Melbourne Theater
Company. The arts centre also is the venue for symphony orchestra concerts,
Australian Opera Company performances and other performing arts. The city has
great museums and many other cultural institutions.
One of the things that sets Melbourne apart
from other sizeable Australian cities (there are only about six of them,
remember) is its ethnic diversity, which, naturally, helps give it a more
cosmopolitan flavor, particularly in the wide range of restaurants and ethnic
food shops that are available to food lovers like us. Go to Victoria Street and
if you can’t find a very good and eminently-affordable Chinese or Vietnamese
restaurant, you have a serious vision problem. We regularly shop at Casa
Iberica, a great Spanish food store; at Mediterranean Wholesalers, for Middle 
Eastern
ingredients; Victoria Street, for Chinese and Vietnamese foods, and, of course,
at the heritage-listed Victoria Market, a colorful marketplace--part covered, part
open-air--with hundreds of meat, fish, poultry and vegetable stalls that sell
top-quality food. With 151,785 ethnic Greeks, Melbourne is said to be the
world’s third-largest Greek city in the world. In the aftermath of World War
II, Melbourne experienced a huge influx of immigrants from the Mediterranean,
particularly Italy and Lebanon, so finding great Italian and Lebanese
restaurants isn’t much of a problem for us. More recently, there has been a
sizable influx of Indian and Southeast Asian students at Melbourne’s
universities, many of whom stay on after receiving their degrees, so when you
ride a tram there’s no telling what languages you’re likely to hear along the
way. All of this guarantees an abundance of superb ethnic restaurants and food
stores, which is seventh heaven for food-lovers.
CLICK
HERE to see an interesting Melbourne web site put up by the Victoria state government. It’s chocked with travel information about the city and has
links for every aspect of Melbourne life that you could imagine.
The point of all this is that because of its demography and history, Melbourne is quite different from Sydney, different in its look and different in its feel. We like to think it is special, perhaps not as slick and modern as Sydney, but a bit more cultural than our rival metropolis to the north. So, when people in the U.S. say, “Oh, Melbourne? Is that as nice as Sydney?” I usually reply, “Sydney? Where’s that?
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There’s a precedent to the kind of Melbourne boosterism exhibited in the above essay: In 1838 an anonymous scribe penned a paean to the brash young city in the columns of the newly launched Port Phillip Gazette. He was comparing Melbourne to Adelaide, the capital of our other neighboring state, South Australia, but the same observations might well have applied to Sydney. Here’s an excerpt:
“Melbourne, the present capital, is a remarkably fine place for a township, and is surrounded with a truly delightful country…Society in Melbourne is much better than that of Adelaide, being entirely destitute of half swells, loungers &c, so prevalent in Adelaide… “Upon the whole, there are two or three houses in Melbourne capable of entertaining noblemen. Buildings generally are very much superior in Melbourne than in Adelaid; in the former place there are neither canvas tents nor wigwams—in a few words I beg to say that Melbourne is to Adelaide what gold is to dross.” ---from “The Birthplace of Melbourne,” edited By Tim Flannery
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