Visiting Victoria — Part 1: Melbourne
Arriving, the Melbourne airport doesn’t feel so big. Somehow, the labyrinthine branching gateways of Melbourne departures is greatly simplified in arrivals to one short hallway to passport control. Passport control is mostly quick and accomplished via digital scanning unless you have some complicating factor. This may all be standard and familiar from any state of the art airport, but get ready to go through the most thorough biosecurity checkpoint of anywhere I’ve been to in the world. You’ll have to dispose of any food products not professionally sealed.
Make sure you declare everything the declaration form asks about. I’ve just about won declaration-form-bingo by indicating every box on the form except one — Yes been on a farm, yes been near livestock, yes have animal products (honey), yes have tobacco products (30 Nicaraguan cigars), yes have alcohol products (this Dominican drink called mamajuana which is not what it sounds like…) the only one I haven’t been able to check off is “carrying over $10,000” (I wish!). They’ve confiscated my Kyrgyz berry wine because it looked dodgy, and much to my alarm looked very skeptically at the large drinking horn I had acquired in Guinea West Africa, but finally settled on just spraying insect spray into it and waved me through.
Stepping out of arrivals, you may be struck by how… COLD it might be. As a non-Australian I had always imagined Australia to be a perpetually and pervasively hot place, and six months spent in Queensland previously had done nothing to dissuade me from this misapprehension. Coming originally from Southern California I find anything under 20c to be questionably survivable and it turns out most of the year Melbourne is less than this. Bottom line is do bring a jacket / coat / scarf.
They tell the same jokes about Melbourne that are told about Seattle — “Don’t like the weather? Wait five minutes” and “four seasons in a day,” so even if it’s warm enough at any given moment, don’t count on it staying that way.
Like a strangely large number of airports in major cities, the airport is inexplicably not connected to the otherwise great light rail and trolly system. Just to the right when you step out of the terminal you’ll see signs for the Skybus or the big red bus itself. It costs $22 (at present moment, March 2023) to get downtown, which is disproportionately high compared to getting around the rest of the place on public transit but hey it’s cheaper than a taxi.
The airbus will take you the half hour from the airport, through ever more built up urban landscape until you get right amongst the skyscrapers of downtown, at which point it dives into a double-decker-bus sized wombat hole and you find yourself at the subterranean busport of Southern Cross Station. Up a short set of stairs and trains are coming and going from the spacious and airy main portion of the station, and just outside you can catch a trolley to anywhere in the city.
As far as lodging goes, there’s plenty of places in Melbourne if you have a large budget and/or book well ahead (maybe. personally have never tried this “booking well ahead” experiment) but I’m usually feeling like paying more than $150 a night for a hotel is just too much so I’m left looking at hostels or strangely cheap airbnbs. As to the latter, you perhaps get what you pay for, as last time I stayed in a $50 a night airbnb in Melbourne it was just someone’s dirty bachelor pad, he had apparently put all his beds on airbnb and was himself sleeping on his own couch — I imagine in a desperate bid to pay rent after losing a job or something. Though he fried us all eggs in the morning, which is more service than most places.
As to hostels, I stayed in the YHA years ago and remember it feeling clean and comfortable as far as hostels go. It’s officially a “youth hostel” but I wasn’t the only 30+ guest I saw about the place and youth didn’t seem to be a requirement. More recently I stayed in “Flinders Backpackers” and if you are young and looking to party it seemed to be full of backpackers doing exactly that but as I get old and crochety myself, despite having a room to myself I found the all-night racket to be a bit much.
Okay now you’re sorted and ready to explore! Because Australia is really far from anywhere I’m assuming you’re arriving jetlagged, so let’s not jump right into day-long expeditions the first day.
The easiest thing of all — the trolley that makes a circuit around the several blocks of the downtown area is free and has commentary on the PA about the tourist sights around the trolley. So ride it right around in one go or get off at some of stops such as “Federation Square,” toodle around and get back on to continue. You’ll find the downtown area is a mix of glassy modern skyscrapers and grand old stone Victorian era edifices.
You might want coffee by now. Melbourners are convinced, absolutely convinced, that they have the best coffee in the world. A quick glance at any travel forum inhabited by Melbourners and it will be full of them going on about how their coffee is the best in the world and putting up with lesser coffee anywhere from Italy to Ethiopia is a terrible hardship for them. Now, and I know this will wildly offend any Melbourners reading this, but as a coffee snob myself I have been absolutely baffled by this assertion of theirs — not only have I found their coffee to be nothing special, but Victorians will serve houseguests instant nescafe with a straight face, which back in America would leave the houseguest wondering if the host not-so-secretly loathed and despised them. How can a “coffee snob” love instant nescafe?? Beats me. I once grilled a friend who is an American-Australian dual citizen and therefore you’d think would know better, but was still insisting Melbourne coffee is the best in the world. Finally she admitted she only ever has a flat white (“flat whoite”), which is like a latte but without foam; whereas I, who genuinely like good coffee and not milk, drink my coffee black as my heart, a manner in which the quality of the coffee is very readily apparent. Flat whoites are immensely popular in Melbourne and so my theory as to why they think they have the best coffee is: because nowhere else specializes in flat whites and/or maybe they have better quality milk — I must confess I haven’t compared milk-saturated-coffees elsewhere. Anyway, while you’re in Melbourne try the flat whites.
On a similar note, if you’re over at a local’s house they will likely offer you a “cuppa” and ask if you’d prefer coffee or tea. Normally I’d go with coffee BUT here you have to quickly furtively scan the room and if you don’t see a big fancy coffee machine ask for tea or else they will (with a straight face!) smilingly bring you nescafe.
(and because I know some Australians will read the above and get offended, look mate one person’s critical opinion won’t kill ya. I’d probably have much more criticism for Los Angeles than I do for Melbourne so excuse me for not saying everything is the perfect flawless platonic ideal of itself; and to non-Australian readers I promise this isn’t one of those pollyanna everything-is-perfect travelogs)
But back to getting to know the city. The next thing I recommend is signing up for a Melbourne walking tour. I did one once, though I don’t recall the cost or how long it took. There’s one called “I’m Free,” maybe its free and the guides subsist on tips. I don’t know, I’m not paid enough to research what I don’t know offhand for this myself ;) But I did go on the tour once and found it a great way to learn more about the city and become a bit more familiar with it. In particular, I recall the guide drew our attention to some very nice urban art in the laneways and alleys that I might not have otherwise taken the time to admire.
Another highlight of Melbourne, which you will no doubt have been introduced to by the walking guide by now, is the laneways. What in another city might just be alleys inhabited by rodents of unusual size in Melbourne are delightful narrow “laneways” full of little cafes. “Hardware Lane” is one I know of, but there are probably others to be discovered as well. I strongly recommend popping in to one for breakfast or lunch. As for dinner there’s an extensive array of restaurants almost none of which I’ve eaten at but I’m sure they’re great*. The one I have eaten at, a Chilean place called Pastuso, I unreservedly can say is quite possibly the best restaurant in the entire world I’ve eaten at. It’s a bit pricey but worth it.
* I should note that while I’ve lived in Victoria for seven years, and this might tie some people’s brains in knots, I do not live in Melbourne. Australians tend to think of all of Victoria as synonymous with Melbourne and I’ve had Melbourners, minutes after I mentioned where I do in fact live (two hours away in the Otway rainforest) ask me “so how do you like living in Melbourne?” Growing up two hours outside Los Angeles I would never in my life say I lived in LA and it’s kind of a mystery to me that Victoria-outside-Melbourne seems to not exist in so many people’s minds. Anyway, that’s how I can live “here” for seven years and only have dinner in Melbourne once.
There is presumably a vibrant night-life in Melbourne. When I’ve tried to “hit the town,” with even native Victorians from outside Melbourne (again, yes they exist), we had a tough time of it, mainly walking along the cold streets looking unsuccessfully for a good bar. But on other times I’ve had a good time on a summer night at an outdoor bar by the river, and the one time I went on a pub crawl with an actual Melbournian the advantage of native knowledge really showed itself as we had a grand old time going from awesome pub to awesome pub (or rather, Korean restaurant with strangely strong Korean alcohol to whiskey bar to fun little hole-in-the-wall second floor pub); so the lesson here is if you have a natural nose for nightlife you might get lucky but befriending locals has been the most effective means for me.
When you wake up with a hangover the next morning, or perhaps get up early because you’re not the out late type, and besides you’re jet lagged, I can recommend the botanical garden as always a beautiful place to relax a bit. And then because I love ships I’ll recommend the Polly Woodside museum, which features a clipper ship, and down in Docklands (just off downtown, not an industrial sector as the name would imply) the replica schooner Enterprize has a special place in my heart because I love old style boats. You can go sailing out on the bay (did I mention Melbourne is on a bay?) on the Enterprize on most weekends.
Another worthwhile site to see is the Old Melbourne Gaol (Jail). Located right downtown, it operated from 1835 (when it replaced “Batman’s hut”) until 1924, it’s an impressively sort of gothic-brutalist bluestone edifice. What’s particularly entertaining about the tour is they hand everyone a card telling them their supposed crime and the tour is conducted as if the tourists are prisoners. The tourguide adopted a sort of mock-stern demeanor ribbed us all about our supposed crimes. Throughout the tour there were numerous references to this “Ned Kelly” fellow whom I’d never heard of. I kind of wanted to raise my hand and ask, but everyone there (who were all Australians) seemed to have such an attitute about the fellow as if it was the most obvious thing in the world and I felt like I’d look like an idiot asking. I kept hoping there’d be an explanatory sign around the next corner but there never was, so I left baffled as to who this celebrity prisoner was. I’ve since read Peter FitzSimmons’ excellent book on Ned Kelly and feel thus thoroughly informed. He’s a sort of Robinhood character of early Australian colonial history, famous for making himself a bulletproof plate armor suit. The first feature length movie ever made was about him. Anyway, spoiler alert but he was eventually arrested and executed. Such is life.
Tours to the Grampians, the Great Ocean Road and Philip Island all can be had starting and ending in Melbourne, so you can remain based in Melbourne for your entire visit to Victoria. Indeed, as public transit isn’t exactly comprehensive in the rural areas, it’s probably best unless you’re renting a car. However, there’s a great deal to see throughout the state if you do have a car at your disposal. Future entries in this series will obviously be from my perspective of having seen the sights via car but will also be relevant to what you might see on the Melbourne based tour buses. But that’s all for a future entry!
If you happen to be a Melbournian please definitely leave comments with anything I missed or your own advice for Melbourne. And again about the coffee I’m sorry we’re just going to have to agree to disagree please don’t be stirred up to the point of making ad hominem attacks on me in defense of your coffee.