We spent the second week of our Australian holiday in Melbourne. We had a fantastic time, meeting up with loads of friends and eating loads of food. It would be impossible to write about everything we did and everyone we saw, so instead I'm sharing some photos and a few snippets of writing. Once again, I hope they give you a bit of a feel for the place.
Melbourne is built on the traditional country of the Wurundjeri people (Woiwurrung language group), Bunurong people (Boonwurrung language group) and Wathaurong people (Wathaurung language group) who along with the Taungurong people (Daungwurrung language group) and Dja Dja Wurrung people (Dja Dja Wrung language group) form the Kulin Nation. Watch a welcome to Wurrundjeri country and learn more about Indigenous histories of the area here.
Melbourne is built on the traditional country of the Wurundjeri people (Woiwurrung language group), Bunurong people (Boonwurrung language group) and Wathaurong people (Wathaurung language group) who along with the Taungurong people (Daungwurrung language group) and Dja Dja Wurrung people (Dja Dja Wrung language group) form the Kulin Nation. Watch a welcome to Wurrundjeri country and learn more about Indigenous histories of the area here.
View of Swanston Street. Join the Druids.
 View from the window of A Minor Place, Brunswick. |  Oliver Lane, looking towards Flinders Lane. |
Buildings and ghost sign on Elizabeth Street.
Maribyrnong
We cross the Maribyrnong River on our first morning in Australia, then again as soon as we return to Melbourne after a week in East Gippsland. It’s wider than I remember, the surface laid out silvery under clear autumn skies, looping beneath concrete bridges, here presided over by the golden presence of Heavenly Queen (Mazu), there sidling along past cranes and shipping containers to join the Yarra just before Westgate Bridge.
It draws us in. We walk with our friends through Fairbairn Park and cross the river to Pipemakers Park. We pass a few afternoon dog walkers on the banks and joggers huffing along the paths. Half a dozen commuter cyclists whizz by, squinting into the sun. But the river itself is empty - or rather, it belongs entirely to the pied cormorants, wood ducks, mallards and little egrets. It strikes me as odd that nobody is on the water, but not because I’ve ever seen many people on the Maribyrnong. It’s just that the familiar has become unfamiliar. I think of how every river or canal in our south-east corner of England seems to come with a floating jumble of boats - narrowboats and barges with people living on board year round, motorboats hauled up on the banks waiting for their few weeks’ use in the summer holidays, sculling teams skimming across the early morning, weekend kayakers and canoeing school groups in raincoats and oversized life jackets, picnickers clunking their wooden rowboats in awkward circles. I wonder if there are restrictions, bylaws that keep people off the Maribyrnong, but we find a launching place down on the bank. When or if we come back to live in Melbourne, I’m going to get a pack raft and go exploring.
A couple of days later, we stop off on the way to Footscray to follow a pathway between the Maribyrnong and Edgewater Lake. The sky is flawless blue, the water still. Swallows dart above the rushes, crested pigeons and wood ducks potter around the grass, gulls and cormorants survey the park from posts and footbridge railings. The wetlands are overlooked by suburbia and a shiny new residential development, where a swanky boats rest empty in a small marina. It’s hardly secluded, yet only a handful of people pass us as we dawdle along. It feels like walking into a secret.
It draws us in. We walk with our friends through Fairbairn Park and cross the river to Pipemakers Park. We pass a few afternoon dog walkers on the banks and joggers huffing along the paths. Half a dozen commuter cyclists whizz by, squinting into the sun. But the river itself is empty - or rather, it belongs entirely to the pied cormorants, wood ducks, mallards and little egrets. It strikes me as odd that nobody is on the water, but not because I’ve ever seen many people on the Maribyrnong. It’s just that the familiar has become unfamiliar. I think of how every river or canal in our south-east corner of England seems to come with a floating jumble of boats - narrowboats and barges with people living on board year round, motorboats hauled up on the banks waiting for their few weeks’ use in the summer holidays, sculling teams skimming across the early morning, weekend kayakers and canoeing school groups in raincoats and oversized life jackets, picnickers clunking their wooden rowboats in awkward circles. I wonder if there are restrictions, bylaws that keep people off the Maribyrnong, but we find a launching place down on the bank. When or if we come back to live in Melbourne, I’m going to get a pack raft and go exploring.
A couple of days later, we stop off on the way to Footscray to follow a pathway between the Maribyrnong and Edgewater Lake. The sky is flawless blue, the water still. Swallows dart above the rushes, crested pigeons and wood ducks potter around the grass, gulls and cormorants survey the park from posts and footbridge railings. The wetlands are overlooked by suburbia and a shiny new residential development, where a swanky boats rest empty in a small marina. It’s hardly secluded, yet only a handful of people pass us as we dawdle along. It feels like walking into a secret.
Reflection of Edgewater Lake, with swallows flying overhead.
A school of tiny fishes at Altona Pier. There were thousands of fish of all different sizes and kinds.
View over the Yarra River from Fairfield Boathouse.
Paddling at Altona Beach, the view out towards Point Cook.
Brunswick
A few years ago, the height restrictions in the local planning regulations changed and low-rise apartment blocks have sprung up in almost every street. But it seems the council is keen to preserve something of the historic character of the streetscape, so many of the new blocks bubble out the back of old single-front timber clad houses, like geometric steel aliens trying and failing to fit themselves into human bodies, wearing human faces without quite getting it right.
The changes are disconcerting. This doesn't feel like the suburb I moved to when I first came to Melbourne, the homeliness has been stripped away. Driving down Union Street and Brunswick Road, some intersections are unrecognisable. The sky is hemmed in by steel, coloured concrete and glass. I mourn all the back yard lemon trees and hills hoists and despise the creeping inner-city-ness of it all. It’s all changed so quickly, I think. It’s all different. (But it’s not. There’s always been a mishmash of architecture here and I’ve always loved it. And later, when I take the streets at walking pace I start to enjoy the changes, the way the old houses with their lace-trimmed verandahs act as a familiar, friendly entrée to a menu of contemporary apartments.)
The changes are disconcerting. This doesn't feel like the suburb I moved to when I first came to Melbourne, the homeliness has been stripped away. Driving down Union Street and Brunswick Road, some intersections are unrecognisable. The sky is hemmed in by steel, coloured concrete and glass. I mourn all the back yard lemon trees and hills hoists and despise the creeping inner-city-ness of it all. It’s all changed so quickly, I think. It’s all different. (But it’s not. There’s always been a mishmash of architecture here and I’ve always loved it. And later, when I take the streets at walking pace I start to enjoy the changes, the way the old houses with their lace-trimmed verandahs act as a familiar, friendly entrée to a menu of contemporary apartments.)
A pile of carrots at Flemington Farmers' Market, Travancore.
 A delicious brunch, Yarraville. |  Doughnuts at the Vic Market, still good enough for seconds! |
 Stuffed with Ethiopian food, Footscray. |  One of many excellent soy coffees, Ascot Vale. |
 First proper Melbourne breakfast, Jerry Joy, Thornbury. |  Completely vegan "seafood" box, Cornish Arms, Brunswick. |
Drinks menu, Fairfield Boathouse. You can bet your bottom dollar I had a spider!
To everything there is a season
I've never spent time in Melbourne without living in Melbourne - not since I moved here aged 18. (Does it feel like home?) It’s strange to be a guest, to be staying in our friends’ house, to be travelling by car, to be meeting people almost every day for breakfast, brunch, lunch, afternoon tea and/or dinner. We’re very busy. (Does it feel like a holiday?) I feel out of time, plucked from the damp chilliness of early spring in East Sussex into the cooling but still-warm early autumn in Melbourne. The rain falls with more determination here, the fruit is ripe on the trees overhanging the laneways, people talk about rugging up, they breathe out with relief that summer has finally finished, but it’s still 18, 20, 23 degrees every day. (Do you want to stay?) I am split between places, longing for all my homes even when I’m in them. There are bellbirds on Merri Creek, people are catching Australian salmon on drop lines off Altona Pier, there are sunsets over Brunswick that flow warm in my throat, there is the mournful call of Australian ravens - ah, ah, aaahhhrw. The grass is greener than usual for the tail end of summer. Soon the creeks will be full. We will not be here to see it. In England, the long drawn out pause of early spring is about to break, the blackthorn will burst into white blossom, the hawthorn will unfold green, the blackcaps and swallows will arrive and the season will come tumbling too quickly to hold. I am almost superstitiously worried that we’ll miss it. (Will you come back to live?)
"I am a refugee, this is my dream: Peace" - street art in Footscray.
 Giant person / tiny broccoli tree will always amuse me. |  "The best thing on TV!" on a wall in Ascot Vale. |
"NO NO NO NO NO NO" beside the Morning Peninsula Freeway.
 Deadly tiger snake warning, Abbotsford Convent. |  Das T-Shirt Automat, Fitzroy. |
Welcome to Thornbury, High Street, Northcote. (Hm.)
Familiar
An incomplete list of things that make my heart skip with gladness to be in Melbourne: the street art in Footscray; friends; Ceres; the street smells that never include the same whiff of sewer as European cities; potato cakes of varying quality; doughnuts at the Vic Market; wide streets with parking spaces that don’t require cars to mount the pavement; cars all parked in the same direction; people only half-ironically Australianising place names (Brunnie, Knifepoint, Feddo, Flemmo, The Vale, the Oppie, Melbs, Chaddie, Woollies); the smell of eucalyptus and ti-tree; the sign advertising land for development over which someone has painted NO NO NO NO NO NO; the ears of the Daimaru building (yeah, I still think of it as that); anti-fashion fashion; cheap pizza, expensive brunch; people complaining about the trains; people saying “soy milk” instead of “soya milk”; the sound of magpies, kookaburras, currawongs, wattlebirds, parrots, bell miners - and starlings, swallows, feral pigeons; ridiculous postmodern-pastiche architecture; graffiti; verandahs; Victoria - Garden State, Victoria - On The Move, Victoria The Place To Be - and new since we left, Vic - Stay Alert Stay Alive and Victoria - The Education State; good coffee that’s not too hot to drink; phone numbers that are the right length; the lack of litter (OK, there’s some, but the roadsides are so much cleaner than SE England); the spot on the Merri Creek where, when the water is low, you can jump across the stepping stones; seeing souvlaki and dim sims advertised in chip shops; bluestone; sandstone; pedestrian crossings that go pyeeeeeew-dikka-dikka-dikka-dikka; Bonsoy; overhearing someone on the phone saying “under the clocks”; a ring tailed possum on Barkly Street; Franco Cozzo; the clean glare of the sun and how high it is in the sky; wait staff taking a coffee order ten minutes before they take a food order; all the food - so much food; tattoos; the sound of (old) trams rumbling down the street; the grid; hook turns.
Peacock, Collingwood Children's Farm.
 Fish under Altona Pier. |  Little Pied Cormorant, Edgewater Lake. |
LBJs (Little Brown Jobbies) in the wetlands near the Maribyrnong River. Is it a sparrow? It looks like a sparrow.
 Crested pigeons, or, as we call them, Punky Pigeons. |  Heliotrope moth (I think) on an everlasting, Ceres. |
Our housemate looks out across the Moonee Ponds Creek valley. (More likely: she's eyeing up the birds.)
Thank you to Esther, Gabe and Martin for hosting us and to everyone who met up with us in Melbourne for a chat (and food, of course!): Esther, Julia, Kate, Toby, Sara-Jane, Essie, Arty, David, Jane, Mimo, Molly, Nathan, Oli, Mel, Stephanie, Danni, Emma, Emily, Moya, Nika, Steve, Di, Leigh, Ashling, Steph, Kerri, Sam, Anthony, Kate, Una, Rohan, Brooke, Darren, Del, Eliza, TJ, Nathan and Michelle.
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