What is Melbourne?

This is not an answer in the trivia game show Jeopardy. No, this is a real question.

What is Melbourne?

Having been here for 5 days, my conclusion is that Melbourne is a parallel universe. It feels familiar rather than foreign. Everyday, common, normal. And yet it's not. Everything here is twisted, unique. Fresh. Unexplored.

So, let's explore what it is. Here I'll note that I've only been here a few days, so that hardly qualifies me to be an informed cultural commentator. Nonetheless, I've made a few observations and it's fun to draw comparisions.

Let's start with the geography. The modern city of Melbourne is a rectangle under 15 sq mi along the Yarra River, near to where it empties into Port Phillip Bay. The rectangle is such a regular grid of blocks that it's as if someone cookie-cut a section of New York's midtown and plopped it in Australia. The long blocks are parallel to the river with Flinders St separated from the river only by a set of railroad tracks. This rectangle is what everyone refers to as CBD: Central Business District. Population less than 200k. But when people talk about Melbourne, they aren't talking about CBD - they're talking about Greater Melbourne, which consists of CBD, the inner suburbs, and the outer suburbs. Greater Melbourne has a population of 5.4 million (Compare: London, 9 million; Washington DC 6 million) against an area of 4000 sq mi (London, 600 sq mi; Washington DC 5500 sq mi - and no, I did not miss a zero). So as you can see, the density of Melbourne is not very much. And when density is low, you have sprawling suburbs. More on this later. Greater Melbourne is stretched around the surprisingly gigantic Port Phillip Bay. The bay comes to an extremely narrow outlet of just a couple miles yet it takes something like 6 hours to drive the circumference. Remember how Milford Sound maxed out at 300 m deep? The max depth of Port Phillip Bay is 24 m, with an average depth of 8 m (25 ft). Extremely shallow and very well protected from the pacific.

History. Aboriginal Australians have been on this continent for thousands of years. They are organized into hundreds of "Countries", with a capital C, across the land. The British landed in modern day Sydney in 1788; this date is marked as "Australia Day" or "Invasion Day" with many many proponents of both. But this blog isn't about Sydney.

In 1835, Englishman John Batman arrived in modern day Melbourne (CBD) having come from Tazmania. He landed there and set up shop against the will of the British government in Sydney. I'm fuzzy on the specifics, but it seems like the Kulin nation was immediately impacted: Woiworung Country and Boonwurrung Country amongst others. The aborigines would attempt to barter and accommodate, but they were essentially cheated out of their homeland. Obviously these two facts (Sydney's disapproval and the displacement of the aborigines) are independent, but you can nonetheless see that Batman made a lot of enemies in a hurry.

Within six months of landing, Batman created a "treaty" deed that exchanged half a million acres of fertile pasture land for 40 pairs of blankets, 42 tomahawks, 130 knives, 62 pairs of scissors, 40 looking glasses, 250 handkerchiefs, 18 shirts, 4 jackets, 4 suits, and 150 lb flour. Needless to say, calling it a treaty was highly dubious.

People (and sheep) started flocking to Melbourne. Without Sydney's or London's support, the burgeoning government was somewhat on its own. It was like the wild west, but it nonetheless laid out the grid for CBD and successfully enticed potential settlers. In 1851, the real rush was on when gold was descovered nearby. At that point the British government chartered Victoria (Melbourne) as its own independent colony, separate from New South Wales (Sydney). And yet, the influx of settlers was on; they came from Germany, China, the US, and elsewhere. Chaos ensued. The population boomed, but everyone went to work in the mines, leaving a vacuum of tradesmen. Merchants went broke. Squalor and debauchery pervaded. Obviously, the aborigines suffered.

Ultimately gold made Melbourne in to a rich, splendid, and multicultural city. Social change came about in the late 1800s along with massive expansion to create the inner suburbs. To this day, much of the architecture in CBD and the inner suburbs is Victorian. You see a lot of the glazed brown tiles like you do in the London Tube. You also see the frilly Victorian building facades. The suburbs consist of predominantly two-story row buildings where the upper levels - broadly graffitied and cracked/crumbling plaster - feature elaborate formwork painted in cream and ochre pastel with frilly cast-iron window/porch railings. The bottom level - having gone through iterations of gentrification - are all modern store fronts. More on that later too.

But to summarize the remainder of our history, Australia federated all its colonies into one autonomous (but not independent) country in 1901. It would institute a white Australian act that effectively banned new minority immigration and essentially aimed to breed out the aborigines. As the 20th century progressed, war forced it to participate in far distant conflicts and, ultimately, modernize. Military bases along the ridiculously long coast aimed to protect the interior from the threat of the Nazis (More on that later - see a theme?). Abandoned inner suburbs became trendy as public transit boomed. Australia finally gained independence from Britain only in the 1980s. You will see that today Melbourne enjoys the benefits of being a cosmopolitan, multi-cultural, and generally progressive city built on gold and the benefits of being at the edge of the earth and still part of the British Empire. Yet beneath it all, it clearly grapples with how to appropriately address the atrocities of the not so distant past.

But what is Melbourne? It's not good enough to look at it's Victorian architecture and call it a product of the British. Americans and Chinese started arriving almost as soon as the city was founded and Australia has long looked to these non-European regions for cultural inspiration. Today the CBD is architecturally very Victorian, yes. But it's lined with fancy cafes serving top notch coffee and pastries (which, by the way, are more European rather than British), giving off vibes of being in Vienna or Paris rather than London. The streets are packed with a diversity of east and southeast Asians and the city boasts incredible sushi, ramen, Vietnamese, and other asian foods. And - not withstanding the superb public transit - Melbourne is very much an American-style car culture. The sprawling suburbs enable, nay, encourage it. Having a car is practically mandatory for getting out of the city and the many car parks are indicative of a culture where the car is king... even if they do drive on the left. [Aside, to the anglophiles out there, I will acknowledge that in Britain there's no clear standard as to which side of the sidewalk ('pavement') to walk on. But in Melbourne you would be a fool to try and walk on the right. I ran afoul of this many times. What a fool!]

The fact that I'm even writing a blog entitled "What is Melbourne?' is testament to how many times this Victorian city surprised and perplexed me. It's true that the ornate 150 year old architecture ranges from the decrepit to the magnificently maintained Flinders Street train station, but Melbourne today also shows off a flock of fascinating skyscrapers in the CBD and inner suburbs such as you'd see in many of the world's largest power cities like Shanghai or the London financial district. Some of these even feature guilded elements, a gaudy not-so-subtle testament to it's mining past.

One day, I had the opportunity to catch up with Sam and Kylie from my Keble days. One of Sam's first questions was whether I viewed Melbourne as more British or more American, a question that had already vexed British members of his book club. To them, the city isn't British. To me, the city isn't American. I think none of us would say what it is; but it's easy to say what it is not.

The residents of Melbourne take pride in this city. Five days a week, you are intimidated by the fine business fashion you see on the streets of the CBD. Ties and tailored shirts and blazers are common here, a sharp contrast to pre-covid America, let alone post. People are out and about; having coffee with colleagues or clients is expected rather than optional. I went in a variety of cafes in Melbourne and they were often packed with locals, business people in their 20s to 50s. 

They take great pride in their coffee culture here. The locals know all the roasters and are particular about only drinking coffee that was roasted within the last couple weeks. It was far and away the best coffee I've ever had anywhere; complex and multi-faceted, creamy and smooth. The latte art was obviously lovely, but they needn't rely on the art to prove their point. By the way, even if you're not drinking coffee, it's best to come in informed. I had a matcha that was equally spectacular - thick and creamy with the art. Chai comes in terms of powdered or leaf, spiced or not. I think it's not uncommon to turn one's nose up at powdered chai. Only the best in Melbourne. Oh, and yes, if you're drinking regular tea, expect to have a laundry list of options you've never heard of before. Russian Caravan? Australian Afternoon? Daintree Black? There is no shortage of fine drinking here.

Also, I found out, by accident of course, that in this parallel universe if you order iced coffee (or iced mocca), your coffee comes with a scoop of ice cream. What madness is this? Not that I complained.

The streets are busy with people, cars and trams. While I was in town, they opened a new metro line to complement their existing network. Their parks are meticulous and the streets are clean. Major cultural institutions like museums and the sports complex are easily within walking distance of CBD. The only bummer is the Yarra is a bit of a muddy mess, but the bay is definitely beautiful. 

The streets around CBD are decorated for Christmas; the 20C (75F) nights allow festive revellers to enjoy the ambiance. That is, depending if you can get behind all the cozy symbols when it's blazing hot out. At least when New York and Boston are -10C (14F) the hot chocolate is a matter of survival. So what is this alternate reality with Christmas on the beach?

Since Day One of this trip, the fauna have impressed - especially the diversity of birds. That continued here in Melbourne, where penguins gather in the same place at sunset everyday to watch the skyline fade into the dark. Still I will not attempt a full summary in this blog (more later). Rather, it was the flora that impressed. Fiji's flora was predictably tropical. New Zealand's flora was beautiful but unexpectedly straightforward. But what is Melbourne? In this city you get palms, pines, and all manner of Eucalyptus. In fact, it would appear that everything is eucalyptus since it has 700 species. When you walk down a street and catch a sweet whiff of this ancient tree (shrub?), you can't help but ask what fictional paradise you landed in. The trees all look weird, but they don't look wrong; only strange. Maybe it's the thin, smooth bark? Or the poms of foliage? But why do they look different than the northern hemisphere? After all, we have plenty of smooth-barked trees up north. It's hard to pin down what makes it different here in Melbourne, but it's definitely an alternate reality.

I think this gives you a great glimpse of what Melbourne is like. Before coming on the trip, a lot of people talke about how uninspiring Melbourne was compared to Sydney. To that, I would say au contraire! Perhaps this city lacks tons of major tourist attractions and spectacular views, but for that it is an impressively liveable city. The everyday experience of Melburnians is refined and steeped in modern tradition. Whether you're interested in the arts or parks or walks or sports or culture or folklore, there is so much to do here on a day to day basis that I think it's hard not to fall in love with this city. Indeed, do not look for the iconic, uniquely Melburnian elements because everything here seems somehow like you've seen it before. But you haven't. Because it's arguably the best of all worlds, a twisted parallel universe that pulls the best day-to-day elements of all the other places you've been into a wonderfully cosmopolitan city here at the edge of the earth.

So what is Melbourne? Who even knows, but I love it.