Rich man, poor man

For a little zen to go with our long lovely sleep we drank delicious coffee at the Buddhist-influenced Cafe Bliss this morning. The coffee shop is part of an old estate now offering Buddhist studies and is tucked away deep on the hidden edge of one of the many parks greening the eastern part of our suburb which we explored today. Landcox park. Frequented only by coffee-carrying yummy-mummies and their under fives actively developing their muscles on the park playground equipment.

We passed their homes on our lazy walk. Many of them characterful, thought some vacant estate relics are in dire need of love and new drains. And some have done away with the old completely and replaced it all with the super modern. I particularly liked this garage idea on one of them: black paint and black ripple texture cladding: quite a clever camouflage.

For lunch we walked the very upmarket and busy Brighton town and there learned the tale of what a new nation with very little money does to boost the bank. In 1840 the struggling New South Wales government offered several packages of land allotments for sale in parts of the new colony: to stimulate development; to raise finance. One of them, an 8 square mile block in total, occupies what now is called Brighton. A block, comprised some 5,000 acres, for £1 an acre.

This was snapped up by a fellow called Henry Dendy in the UK. A trusting soul. Sight unseen, he bought it. Not ever wise. Nonetheless, Henry hopped on a ship and came out to Australia to sell off little bits of his 5,000 acres which was then called Waterville, in order to make a profit and claw back his outlay.

Sadly, Waterville was a slight misnomer. There was no water. The early settlers who were looking for land were looking for water too, to grow their produce. The block lost its Waterville name and became Dendy. But, too late, poor Henry Dendy who had built himself a smart house on the terrace overlooking the Dendy street waterfront became a bankrupt within just 5 years of his arrival in Australia. He died a pauper.

His agent, however, took over the land, which eventually came to be called Brighton, and it all managed not only to sell well, but to become one of the most expensive, even exclusive sections, in all of Melbourne.

The Brighton shopping street today is a charming enclave of expensive dress shops, smart gift shops and stylish restaurants; many hyper inflated -- but busy in spite of that, and all with a somewhat traditional air, still. Quaint in a way. Insulated. The rest of the world is out there. Somewhere. And remnant pieces of traditional architecture are highlights, especially this lovely old set of terraced shops from the 1880s which once housed a glamorous cinema.

Henry's name lives on in the little suburban townstrip. There is a Dendy Diner, selling bagels stacked with pastrami and pickle, a taste of New York, for variety, and a cosmopolitan air. And there are Dendy theatres all over Australia, today; quite popular. The cinema name likely comes via Henry, as the first Dendy cinema was founded here in Brighton where the name lingers still, and from such little things big things grow. The Dendy theatre group today is owned by Mel Gibson, aiming to encourage wide-spread cinema-going in Australia. I think Henry might have approved his entrepreneurship, albeit risky for the times.

Flowers for the zen look 

Park with a zen air

Characterful cottage

Modern update

Brighton town

Marquis de Sade just a few minutes away 

Wagyu steak selling for $160 a kilogram

Colourful bathing boxes on beachfront for better days

Unplanned, unplugged in the city

It is now November, 2017. We arrived in Melbourne after a big, big year. And as next year looks even bigger, we have had no time to make any travel plans. We have exchanged homes and cars and that is as much planning as has been done for this trip. We all need a break, so this Melbourne jaunt is likely to be completely impromptu. What we do each day will be unplanned and relaxed, I predict. We won't travel far. We shall sit a lot, talk a lot, and have much time to smell the roses.

Already, we have settled into a pattern: long sleeps, lazy breakfasts, slow walks to and from a coffee shop: north, south, east or west, for morning break, and then it is lunch time. So far we have eaten lunch out and bought ingredients for dinner. This might emerge as our daily plan. 

Though on our first day we visited old friends in their new home down in the Mornington Peninsula. Loved it. Loved their dogs. Ate grain salad with charred meat and chatted till the sun went down. Could have stayed doing that for days. Next day we woke late and took our first morning walk in Melbourne this trip: from Brighton East to McKinnon over quiet roads where wagons once used to rumble carrying cauliflower, potatoes, and onions to market. 

In early settlement days this was market garden territory. Sparse slab huts marked out small vegetable holdings, their fields enclosed with box thorn hedges. Then change. 

The railway brought settlers to the suburb, touting healthy fresh air given its proximity to the beach. The end of the wars saw this settlement mushroom. Now, being so close to the centre of the city, barely 13kms, old large homes and an ordered assortment of character homes with generous yards that lined the streets that were once wagon tracks are now being spliced up so that two houses might fit on one block. More and more homes here are now sharing a common driveway. 

So delightful, too, with lots of delicious coffee and shops with retro feel: like freshly cut chincherinchee in unpretentious old salt shakers and tiny medicine vials; or coffee displayed in vintage carriers once used to pack grapes in days long gone when many of the surrounding fields were vineyards. 

Where wire pendant lights are handmade by the owner and decorator: just wire mesh artistically rolled round and round an LED globe, then finished off with a clipping and rolled into a metallic frill at the bottom edge of each. Very clever. Very sensible.  Where a wall mural,  a reproduction of an early 50’s or 60’s photograph of a child sporting his dad's trilby and pipe, is painted on a cafe wall by a street artist who forgets to leave his signature.  Where with our coffees we eat rich fruit toast topped with urban Melbourne rooftop honey: seriously delicious. 

Not yet finished, we toured a block or two of Bentleigh town, the next suburb south. Here we tucked into a beef and green harissa gozleme served with pea shoots and toasted seeds. A combination we have not yet found in Turkey, but, mayhap, one day, we will: so good it was. This sent us looking for green harissa to take home, in a vast old-style grocery and indoor market store we came across further along the block that carried everything edible on the planet, except green harissa.  So back we went to the crisp white coated chef, only to come away with her own harissa recipe. Chuffed. 

In and out of old fashioned shops we roamed, chatting to local folk, then found an authentic looking lemon curd Italian dolce in a small street side bakery that made cannoli to order, before headed home with it for afternoon tea. 

We finished our day sitting out in the secret garden at the front of the house as the back garden has had a second home built onto it and the side access squashes all the remaining garden from the block. But it was lovely, and so clothed in tall overhanging green foliage it was private. We threw fire starters onto the BBQ and drank wine as the pink and yellow roses waved to us above long straight stalks of rosemary edging the garden beds.  A couple of easy days.  Just what we needed to download. 

Coffee at Son of Burch 

Local characterful houses

Son of Burch. Dad, up the road, is just  Burch

Home made light fittings

Smoking dad's pipe  

Cute settings

Beef gozleme with green harissa and wilted greens

Our exchange home 

On the walls of the goal

Melbourne elders soon realised they had need of a goal. Small cramped alleys and lanes off the downtown streets grew to be a hotbed of larrikins, larceny, debauchery and violence. The ‘back slums’ they were called and the Melbourne lockup, which started out as a 2-roomed hut belonging to John Batman, one of Melbourne’s founders, was eventually replaced by a more significant structure that had a roll call of nearly 60 males and 9 females on its opening in 1845, just prior to the discovery of gold.

Numbers changed over time, with the wax and wane of the gold rush. The little huts and dirt tracks of the goldfields were soon replaced by wide streets and long boulevards making room for the many immigrants, including convicts, relocating from other states, who came further afield looking for work often well removed from the government seat that was Sydney and its surrounds. With the separation from New South Wales in July, 1851 Victoria could no longer send away her serious offenders, then with the discovery of gold just a month later the population grew sevenfold in just the ten years to 1860. 

The relatively new Melbourne Goal became quickly overcrowded so an extension had to be built, and that was no sooner completed when two more floors of debtor’s cells and single cells were added in order to cope with the influx. As well, temporary stockades were set up in more populous suburbs to try to alleviate the crises. Hulks were even moored in the bay to take some of the prison overflow short term. Growth became so rapid that nine complete new prisons were built in that decade, the largest being Pentridge, which opened in Coburg in 1858.

We toured the old Magistrate’s court on one of our days when we walked in downtown Melbourne. It sits on the site of the old Supreme Court where Ned Kelly was sentenced to death, and where many of Melbourne’s most notorious criminals stood to hear their grim fates, including hanging. Many of us wore costumes of the era and enacted bits of the trial of Ned Kelly. We walked through heavily graffitied cells and found time to read some of the very poignant comments of some of the inmates, both male and female. Often in a state of hopelessness. 

We learned of the in-house violence and tragedy which highlighted the sad plight of those who were unlucky enough to have to attempt to survive in such places. Australia’s early goals were far from pleasant.

Diggers and dwellings

One thing we didn't tend to think about in history classes was how and where our early settlers in Australia lived. One of our sightseeing days in Melbourne clarified this for us somewhat. Albeit, long passed our school days.

When gold was discovered in 1851 Victoria became overrun with diggers, heading for the goldfields, as well as an influx of merchants catering to their needs. For many, if they had a home at all, it was likely a tent in a huddle of other tents which could cost something in the vicinity of five shillings a week at the time. 

As the crowds grew, the demand for housing quickly became critical. Luckily for the Aussie newcomers, the Californian gold rush had happened earlier, and manufacturers in England had already learned to cater to the demand for cheap, affordable housing that could be easily transported overseas, and easily constructed, on arrival. So that slower design phase had already passed. Aussies, then, with the will and the means, had only to go in search of a catalogue from which they might order from abroad any portable iron flatpack in any configuration they desired, from a one bedroomed home to a church, a theatre, or even a factory, if they so desired.  And they did. Hundreds upon hundreds of portable iron structures were ordered. Then it only needed the wait for the ship to arrive with their order. 

The flat packs were unloaded on the docks as complete as the original order inventoried. Some packs came with wallpaper and water closets, others with carpet and furniture included. In some constructions the external iron sheet walls were simply made to easily slide into slotted corner supports pre-cast to accept the corrugated wall sheeting and to reduce the chance of water ingress. In other cases, the very crates which held all the components were made to measure carefully so that they might became lining boards, for the walls or floors, once deconstructed. Even Ikea would likely have been very impressed.

Many of these portable homes arrived and were erected. We found three, all together, on one National Trust site in South Melbourne. Two of the smaller homes had been rescued from demolition and were moved quite recently; the other, larger one, was in situ, backing onto a street known as Tin Pan Alley, because of the proliferation of metal houses that once lined both sides of the lane. It was erected in 1853, and just two years later its value, in the Rate book, was listed as £44. And still it stands.

These metal structures were not conceived simply as temporary homes for the latest goldfields. They were the forerunner for metal structures that were to grow higher and wider than ever before, given the strength of the material. So impressed was Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s consort, at the displays at the Great Exhibition in 1851, that he ordered a good sized ballroom for Balmoral to be made of iron, 60 x 24 feet, which was packed and delivered in just weeks. 

We learned, too, not to assume that a house would have always been ready and available for some of our governors when they first stepped onto Australian shores. Charles La Trobe, first appointed superintendent of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales in 1839, then, later, lieutenant-governor of Victoria, bought his own house on the boat with him when he learned, that as yet, there was no official house built for him and his young family. 

This was earlier than the iron flatpacks of the gold rush period. La Trobe’s cottage was packaged for shipping as prefabricated panels of timber. The initial structure was for only two rooms, but his builder soon added a much needed dining room built of local material as the imported panels were raised and connected. And the house grew as the family grew with later extensions for a library and a nursery and outbuildings for kitchens and servants quarters. 

But over the many decades since then the cottage has deteriorated and what little is now left of the home has been preserved. The remainder reconstructed along the lines of the original home. And re-sited in the Botanic Gardens. Interestingly, the cottage still displays some pieces of the La Trobe family’s original furniture in the house museum run by National Trust volunteers.

Small portable iron house

Larger portable iron dwelling 

Even with the luxury of a door

 to the outside

Downstairs timberlined and fireplace

La Trobe's Cottage, renovated

La Trobe fireplace as it likely was

Upstairs rooms to order

Street walk, street art

As in other great cities there are excellent walking tours of Melbourne. We walked the lanes and byways of the city with dozens in a great group and discovered interesting little snippets about Melbourne that were new to us.

The “Paris end of Melbourne”, east of Collins street towards the treasury gardens, came to be so known when the owners of the Oriental Hotel sought permission from the council to set up a boulevard cafe on the sidewalk outside the hotel. 

At first permission was refused, but, after many a long decade, and just as the 1956 Melbourne Olympics rolled up as an international influence on the near horizon, permission was finally granted for nineteen tables to be allowed space on the sidewalk. Melbourne folk thronged to find a seat. "It is just like the Champs Elysees back in Paris” enthused the owner’s wife, who, herself, was a Parisian. And so the newspapers reported it. And so the notion came into being. And stuck, even today. But, the now dismantled Oriental was the first of them. 

The Green Brain canopy atop one of RMIT buildings in La Trobe street was pointed out to us as being commissioned as a new and creative renovation that cost millions.

It is almost as if a green sludge monster has been allowed to grow malformed and unimpeded atop the plain red brick building beneath, and captured there, cast in fixative and neon plastic. With not a hint of connectivity between the building and the canopy. So, not exactly architecture inspired by its context, unfortunately. 

Some people think it creative. Others think it such an eyesore they cannot bear to look at it.

Our guide pointed out several other interesting buildings as we came across them. The Eureka Tower, for one. Named so, after the Eureka stockade when gold miners rose up against the unfair tax being imposed by the government. Architects have integrated points of history and detail into the very fabric of the Eureka Tower to enrich its tale.

The gold tower at the top is symbolic of the gold rush, of course. The red stripe, a slash down the side of the building, represents the blood that flowed as the miners rebelled and many died. The blue glass of the building and the white slashes represent the blue and white colour of the Eureka flag. As well, the white lines across the length of the building see the whole as a surveyor’s ruler, broken into its parts by precise white horizontal measurement lines. 

To reinforce the gold connection the building has 24 carat gold plated windows on the top ten floors. A lovely building. 

Another interesting building that was pointed out to us was the William Barak apartment building. William Barak, we learned, was an early elder of one the aboriginal tribes in the area. He was actually present, it is believed, when Batman drew up his land ‘purchase’ treaty with the aboriginals. Not only that, but he became one of the wise advisors on Wurundjeri ways as well as developing into a great artist, reflecting and honouring the ways of his people. 

So great was his contribution to the area that architects sought to include his image as part of the exterior of an apartment block close to downtown Melbourne, and worked in close collaboration with aboriginal representatives to ensure his image was appropriately represented.

Barak’s ageless, timeless, expressive face is moulded into white panels of composite materials on the external facade of the building, contrasting with the black of the balconies. He watches over much of Melbourne, as he ever did. It is quite stunning. 

We then walked the graffiti covered lanes of the inner city and learned that not all graffiti is illegal. Apparently, if it is commissioned, if the property owner gives permission for that use of the wall, then the plastic bag toting, hoodie wearing, street artists may even paint in daylight. With their hoods down. 

Many streets, buildings, walls and subways throughout Melbourne attract graffiti. But, there must be something in the air in Melbourne, as some of it is not only quite exceptional, but is politically provocative and interesting. 

Actually, we seem to be coming to enjoy street art more, these days, than we do contemporary art in museums. Which we haven’t quite cottoned on to, as yet. Having said that, there are places where the squiggles of the graffiti are, still, just eyesores. And once you start allowing the hoards to paint in one place en masse, it is really hard, then, to control where else they might paint, or not. Particularly when half the thrill for the street painters is ‘the edge’ to it. Doing something that is not quite legal. 

So, that is an ongoing predicament for Melbourne. As the city fathers are really between a rock and a hard place, now, as Hosier Lane has become quite the hotspot for street art in Melbourne. And is definitely a major tourist draw in the city. Among the biggest in the city, it seems, given the crowds we saw there on several days. 

What, too, is interesting is to see the art work on some walls completely change over just two or three days. These street artists are bursting with energy and creativity -- and time. We really enjoyed so much of it. And while there is nothing remaining of Banksy’s contributions on Melbourne’s city walls, there are others who are busy filling commissions that is getting their work seen by as wide an audience. 

Take Baby Guerrilla, for instance, one of the few street artists from the female brigade currently working on her displays. She has been busy painting the walls of many of the city buildings, including Victoria University spaces, on commission. Her pieces are vibrant, massive, imaginative. She is an artist who chooses, for whatever reason, not to follow the traditional route. She is not the only one. 

Lunch was at a German bar along the Southbank precinct, looking back over the city. The German sausages came five ways, five colours, five flavours. With cabbage varied for each. And a mimosa salad on the side. Along with a selection of sharp mustards. All incredibly tasty. We are loving the food of Melbourne, too. 

Ode to William Barak 

Melbourne Arts Centre

Eureka tower

RMIT's Green Brain

Massive piece

You will know my name

Baby Guerilla's work at Victoria University

German sausage five ways

And change is good

Street art changes daily