Gold and Graffiti: Tales of Melbourne: 2017

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

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.