Gold and Graffiti: Tales of Melbourne: 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.