Melbourne Is Like The English Language
What a surprise Georgie and I got last night on an adventure that we undertook.
We met each other at Federation Square around 5.30 pm. Georgie had driven into the city with Finn, who was doing a small course until 9 pm.
The plan was to hop on our electric scooters and just go wherever our desires and fate took us.
The first leg was along the north bank of the Yarra down to the old Morell Bridge near Gate A of the Botanical Gardens. The bridge was built in 1899 and exactly 100 years later was closed to cars so now it’s a walking and cycling bridge across The Yarra.
We then entered the Botanical Gardens (through Gate A) and scooted up and down random pathways taking in as much as we could before exiting at Domain Rd, near the house where my friend Mike Hurst lived when he worked at the Gardens in the late 80s or maybe the early 90s.
This was the old Melbourne that I am so familiar with.
We had a light meal at the old Domain Hotel which is now called The Bilson.
Now the interesting part began.
We roared down the Tan past The Arbitorium and through King’s Domain, past Government House and back down to the river and then changed directions back toward the city. Under Princes Bridge and into Southbank. Now we were into a relatively newer part of Melbourne created in the1980s and 90s.
My experience with this new part of Melbourne ends at The Melbourne Exhibition Centre, sometimes known as Jeff’s Shed. Georgie and I have done exhibitions here and have also attended as visitors/observers.
For me, greater Melbourne sort of ended here. The old clipper ship “The Cutty Sark” is outside the Exhibition Centre and really that’s about the full extent of what I was aware of. It was a bit like “Go any further and you might fall off the edge of Melbourne into a dark, smelly riverworld abyss”.
Until this moment beyond that point had been unknown territory. The area is called South Wharf and it was like entering a new city.
We became somewhat akin to tourists scooting along sweeping walkways with huge residential skyscrapers looming overhead and impressive pleasure craft moored in the murky waters of the Yarra River. Restaurants, bridges, parks, businesses crammed into the bottom floors of the high-rises, people wandering aimlessly with cameras out, backpackers, locals.
This is the Melbourne that an international tourist would see. Not someone who was brought up in the anglicized version of Melbourne that I had been so familiar with throughout my life.
How many of us Melbourne boomers have any idea what’s happening along the once destitute backdrop of the Yarra River that was once no-man’s land.
A place to dump a dead dog or even the body of a wayward “crim” in the dark waters where years later the Bolte Bridge would rise as a counterpoint to The Westgate Bridge and it’s pre-curser, the asphalt topped car ferry that crossed the Yarra at the end of Williamstown Rd, pulled across by an invisible chained submerged in the river water.
Looking back at Melbourne’s tall buildings from under the Bolte Bridge was like looking at an alien landscape. More like something from a Netflix series than real life.
As we rode back towards the bottom end of Flinders St, past the old Seaman’s Mission and past Banana Alley where I played with my band, The Woz in 1968 in some long forgotten band venue situated in a bluestone vault, we once again entered the Melbourne that I have known all of my life. Familiar landmarks like Flinders St Railway Station and the Immigration Museum once again gave me the comfort of familiarity.
Melbourne is a bit like the English language. Ever changing, always evolving. Sometimes predictable and at other times like a some new hybrid word that came out of no-where.
I’m so glad I live in this wonderful ever-changing city with it’s past history, sprawling suburbs and cultural diversity topped with an evercharging landscape and evolution that is quite invigorating and exciting.
