Time Out
Endless secrets
SHONALI MUTHALALY
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Melbourne has an array of happening secrets, just waiting to be discovered.
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Photo: Anjali M.
Delightfully different: Melbourne.
It’s a sort of Hell’s Angels meets Nigella Lawson moment. He walks in, all black leather, skull tattoos and gleaming gold rings. Bursting with equal amounts of muscle and testosterone, he kicks out a chair with his bad-boy boots. As he sits, the friendly Italian waiters at Marios fondly pat him on his back. In minutes, Mr. Handlebar Moustache is contently spooning up luscious chocolate cake served with delicate swirls of cream.
The legendary Marios at edgy Brunswick Street with its colourful clientele is a great representative of the spirit of Melbourne, arguably Australia’s most quirky city. Brewing coffee since 1986, the café has become something of an institution, soaked in both the delicious aroma of more than a century of espresso and the warmth of millions of memorable meetings, languid gossip and cheery conversations.
Typically Melbourne
Over Melbourne’s signature drink — a brimming latte laced with strong espresso and topped with thick milk foam, which you sprinkle with crunchy brown sugar — you can eye the human scenery: chic women in bright mini skirts and surfer boys in well-worn Billabong T-Shirts. Blondes in sweatshirts and men in braided hair. Divas in designer stilettos and locals in rubber slippers and fraying denim shorts. The café’s notice board bristles with flamboyant fliers and earnest notices advertising everything from classes on Tahitian Tamure at “Underbelly” to “Happy Yoga” with someone called “Guru Dudu”.
Like everywhere in Melbourne, Brunswick is the sum total of a kaleidoscope of heritage, languages, cultures and subcultures, all held together by the characteristic Aussie wit and languid good humour. Which makes it the perfect place to begin exploring quirky, flamboyant Melbourne. Where else can you stroll down the road and shop for clothes at “Nothing for Nobody” and accessories at “Kundalini Rising”? Or buy a perfume that promises to make you smell like a “Brownie”? Other fragrances include “Between the Sheets”, “Sex on the Beach” and “Cannabis”. There’s even a perfume called “Laundry”, reminiscent of freshly washed sheets. (Also available down the road at “Holy Sheet”.) And a book store that brings together bespectacled historians and multi-pierced Goths. (Polyester, proudly labelled by the Cowboy Books Publishers as “full of perverts, throw-backs and degenerate gamblers... a home-away-home for the connoisseurs of fine publishing”.)
Explore alleys
Talking of perverts and degenerates, don’t miss Melbourne’s dark alleys. Finally, a city that appreciates the romance of alleys, heightening their unique character with bars, restaurants and eccentric stores instead of just wasting them on drunken fist-fights and damp garbage. Trip into a delightful muddle of them here, beginning unexpectedly at grand old Flinders’ street.
A friendly Melbourne tourist guide (organised by the Melbourne Visitors Centre at Federation Square) walks me though Centre Place, crowded with chattering tables of hip locals, past psychedelic graffiti unabashedly sprawled across walls and quaint little stores, brimming with showy hats, chunky jewellery and classic vintage clothing. We nod hello to the genteel Ladies Who Lunch at the Hopetoun Tea Rooms, obstinately frozen in a time when lace gloves were mandatory, and Top hats stylish. Established in 1893 as a small tea room run by the Victorian Ladies Work Association, it still serves dainty vanilla slices and curiously coloured asparagus rolls in its delightfully fussy interiors.
Of course, one can’t live on finger sandwiches, Earl Grey tea and floral summer gowns alone. By sunset, all the action is at Hardware Lane, home to buzzing restaurants and a clutch of distinctively Melbournian bars. The city’s most happening places are apparently, always “secrets”. Since bar licenses aren’t as high as those in Sydney, Melbourne is lucky enough to have tiny bars constantly sprouting in the most unexpected nooks and corners, all bursting at the seams with both character and beautiful people. A Chinese whisper informs us that the bar of the moment is Charlies on Hardware Lane, which turns out to be a jam-packed basement handing out free champagne (or sparkling wine at any rate) to the women. And some confused wandering around stylishly grungy Fitzroy throws up the flamboyant Night Cat, a colourful salsa club replete with a live band and astonishingly lithe dancers.
Another Melbournian secret is the CAE, which runs short courses on a mind-boggling variety of topics including Feldenkrais “An Elegant Efficiency” to move gracefully, Couture Techniques so you can make your own bridal wear and A Kitchen Boot camp For Blokes. They also run some of the city’s best tours, dispensing fascinating information for both tourists and locals ranging from a Foodies Bus Tour (which includes tastings) to a walking tour of Melbourne’s Skyscrapers.
However, the quieter markets like Prahran, just off trendy high fashion Chapel Street, are just as much fun without a guide. Of course Perhan has the obligatory shiny fruit, plump vegetables and cooing pigeons. It also has an appropriately petite bakery for teeny cupcakes, pretty with pink icing and other impossibly cute decoration. There’s a counter for eggs: Emu and Ostrich, if you please. A Chinese man who hands out gossip magazines and neck massages. And, the gleaming, business-like “Essential Ingredient Cooking School”, the perfect place to hunt down obscure cooking instruments and mesmerising culinary courses. This year’s syllabus includes “Swine dining” for roast pork and sausages, “Sophisticated Italian” to deconstruct squid ink risotto among other things and “Knife Handling and Other Cutting Edge Fundamentals” (not to be opted for if you’re in anger management classes.)
Just what you’d expect
For an overview, try the swanky Sofitel hotel. My Melbourne guide walks me there, discussing Art Deco and pointing out impressive Neo Gothic buildings. We enter the plushly hushed lobby, gliding past men in impeccably tailored suits and women in impressively coiffured hair, and then take the lift. Emerging about 35 floors later, he suggests I peek into the bathroom. Puzzled, I walk in and then gasp in delighted amazement. The city stretched out at my feet in breathtaking splendour, thanks to a wall made entirely of glass.
The ultimate Melbourne quirk: The best (free) view of the city turns out to be from the bathroom of one of its swankiest hotels. It seems appropriate.
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