MELBOURNE

Melbourne came to its own when gold was discovered nearby in 1851. As it quickly grew through the late 19th century they developed a peculiar form of local mass transit – cable cars, exactly the same mechanism as we have in San Francisco, although at some point they decided to take theirs out. Also like San Francisco – but also like Brisbane and Sydney – Melbourne has a dynamic downtown central business district (or the “CBD” as Aussies call their downtowns) surrounded by distinct neighborhoods.

While the CBD has a few transit hubs, the busiest seems to be Flinders street station, a Victorian train station with a major tram hub in front. The other side of the tram stops is Federation Square, a mad jumble of post-modern architecture that contrasts strongly to the train station and other buildings nearby. Altogether the architecture in that small area is a mad jumble of styles from the 19th and 20th centuries. Oddly the crazy quilt of mismatched architectures comes together very amusingly. Quaintly old-fashioned trams (streetcars, to us Americans) offer free transit in a loop around the CBD along with a recorded commentary about local attractions.

Federation Square includes the Ian Potter Center which has a terrific collection of aboriginal art. The patterns of dots, circles, and symbols look very abstract to the untrained eye, but the symbols (some of which are easily explained) are quite definite and as one learns more about them bits of stories emerge. A number of the paintings are actually maps, showing where important sites, water, game, meeting places can be found. In this part of Australia the aboriginals call themselves “Koories” and a Koorie Cultural Heritage Trust in the CBD provides another rich collection of aboriginal art as well as a museum of Koorie history and culture. Of course the history of displacement and abuse, the story of the “Stolen Generation” figures largely into the history, and while some of the Aboriginal art is very traditional, some is extremely modern reflecting the colonization and displacement of indigenous peoples and cultures.

Fed. Square also has a restaurant that features dishes based (rather loosely, it would seem) on aboriginal cuisines. I don’t know nearly enough to be a purist about such things, but very much enjoyed a dinner that included emu, crocodile, and kangaroo.

The Melbourne Zoo is quite nice. I focused on Aussie fauna which is very different from other animals. Here are the world’s only monotremes – the platypus and the echidna – both of which are egg-laying mammals. (The term “monotreme” means that it has one excretory orifice. For my smaller nephews and nieces or other youngsters who may be reading this, that means that they pee and poop through the same hole – unlike all other mammals. This may or may not have some relevance to the fact that the monotremes lay eggs, also unlike other mammals.) And except for the dingoes which came over with the aboriginals many thousands of years ago, all the other native mammals are marsupials. All? I’ll have to check into the bats. Aus has great flying foxes among its various cheiroptera although I saw those best in Sydney. (Bats are also the only mammals that were in New Zealand before the Maoris arrived!) The Melbourne Zoo has an apiary with birds unlike any I’d ever seen. Another section features several of the 40 types of kangaroos, including tree kangaroos; also wombats, and some echidnas. Echidnas are some of the oddest critters I’ve ever seen, sort of a cross between an armadillo and a porcupine, but being a monotreme it’s not closely related to either. The Melbourne Zoo claims a platypus, but when I was there the little duckbill was hiding.

Melbourne has been a great magnet for immigrants and has the largest Greek population of any city besides Athens. Yasou! An Immigration Museum features the history of immigration to Australia, detailing with considerable frankness how racist the older policies were.

A southern suburb of Melbourne, St. Kilda, has some nice beaches, and is also famous for its restaurants, cafes, and laid-back bayside lifestyle. An old fashioned amusement park, Luna Park has a number of rides and features with an old wooden roller-coaster wrapping around the entire park. St. Kilda also has, so I was told, a colony of penguins that comes out at dusk.

A little bit north of the CBD is the Queen Victoria Market, a huge array of stalls selling everything from undies to pizza to didgeridoos to spark plugs. One can easily get lost in all that! Oh, and buying undies, they’re measured in centimeters. When you’re used to seeing your waistline measured in inches, the cm sizes (a little more than 2.5 times the inches) can look pretty unsettling!

Australia

Brisbane * Sydney * The FAA Conference

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