Random notes: Melbourne
As I was looking sleepily out of the taxi window on my way from the airport at 1 o'clock in the morning after a 24-hour flight, I was struck by a silly thing: who decided that signs on motorways would be in cream lettering of a certain font against a green background? Did "they", whoever "they" might be, do tests and this emerged as the most visible option? Because this is what one sees almost the world over. And for some silly reason I was expecting to be made immediately aware, even by motorway signs, that I was in a different hemisphere and that I'd see something immediately different!
But the next day the Australianess of urban signposts, a unique mix of totally British (except distances are all metric) with a good measure of U.S. thrown in, cheered me up. The "ped xing" signs which have always amused me in the U.S., here have the same look but the words have been transformed into a more literary "pedestrian crossing".
My home for the next few days is a delightful Victorian terraced house in Clifton Hill, an area abounding with such houses set on very wide, quite, leafy streets. Those which been lovingly restored are interspersed by the occasional one which looks like a squat.
Sitting in an Italian "pasticceria" for brunch in Fitzroy (a neighbourhood I suspected was favoured by hipsters, a suspicion confirmed by The Weekly Review which puts it at the top of Melbourne's hip scale!), I wondered whether extreme thinness for women is the norm in Melbourne. Or extreme roundness. There didn't seem to be many women between either extreme. But later in the day, walking in the Central Business District (or CDB as the Australians like to refer to "downtown" or "centre ville") I was relieved to be proven wrong. Notably by the many women out on the Yarra river rowing. I counted over 40 boats: sculls, sweeps, eights, fours, twos, singles, with and without coxes. Is this a daily occurence I wonder, or just on a Thursday late afternoon.
What I expect from a museum is to come away from it wiser than when I walked in. The Melbourne Museum certainly does its job and at little cost to me. Too old for student rates, press card not accepted, but driving licence proved I'm now old enough for a “concession” i.e. free! The Museum is the biggest in Australia but as we have old dinosaur bones and stuffed animals in museums in Europe, I concentrated instead on the Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre and the section concerning the history of Melbourne.
The Bunjilaka is remarkable: short, sharp and to the point. The displays are eye-catching, there is enough to read to learn things but without being overwhelmed, the videos are entertaining and short enough that you can watch them all without your mind going blank! I had no idea at all that there existed such a rich culture and so many different languages here before the British arrived. I knew nothing about how rightly proud the descendants of these First People are today. I knew nothing about how Melbourne was founded in 1835 when John Batman (I kid you not, that was his name), claimed to have signed a deed with Aboriginal leaders for 500,000 acres at Port Philip in exchange for 20 blankets, 30 tomahawks, 100 knives, 50 pairs of scissors, 30 looking glasses, 200 handkerchiefs, 100 pounds of flour and six shirts. Even if this deed was later declared void, the damage was done and within 12 months 177 settlers and more than 26,000 sheep were in the area. Today there are 4.8 million inhabitants in Melbourne. I don't know how many sheep.
A Victorian house needs a bit of tender, loving care to become like the one next door
