Melbourne, Australia: The City of Arts, Sport and Fun

By Max Hartshorne, editor of GoNOMAD.com. He writes a daily blog about the people he meets on his travels and his work as the owner of the GoNOMAD Cafe in South Deerfield, Massachusetts.

Aussie Football Blends the Best of Three Sports

I sat next to two young women on the long flight to Melbourne. One of the things they told me I should see while I was here was Australian Rules Football. So despite the jetlag, I took the tram down to Melbourne Cricket Grounds and soon I was holding a beer, chomping on a meat pie and watching the action.
It's a fun game that to me blends many of the best aspects of other sports. It has football's laterals and punts, soccer's precision passing and nonstop action, and rugby's tackling and shirt grabbing.

The action takes place in a large circular field, with four posts on either end. The men jump high to grab at the ball, which is bounced hard off the grass and then they begin lateralling, punting and passing the ball trying to get in position to boot it through the uprights.

The fans are part of the fun. Most of them were dressed in team colors, including the sponsorship logos, and are a raucous bunch, waving flags, singing songs, and drinking big cups of beer cheering everything going on down on the field.

With my $20 ticket, I was relegated to the high stands up on the fourth level, where the view of the field is excellent.
Collingwood was victorious on this Sunday game against Richmond, and when the game let out, forty thousand rabid fans all made their way to the trams, which were mobbed. But everything sorted out nicely, and I had enjoyed my first game of AFL football here on a crisp fall day in Australia.

The Twinkling of Glasses Mark's Melbourne's Prosperity

Melbourne has the prosperous feel of a city on the up and up. I got this sense right after we got off the plane and stood in a line waiting for customs. As a cute blond Labrador was walked through the line, sniffing every passenger's feet and luggage, posters up on the wall described the multi-billion dollar upgrade going on at the airport, with new terminals, parking and jetways that will accommodate the biggest plane ever built, Airbus' A380.

Last night I walked home from dinner at Taxi, an upscale Australian/Japanese restaurant where glasses of wine were priced at $12-17 each, with no shortage of takers. Entrees, (that's what they call appetizers here) were priced at about $20-25 and 'Mains' scaled up to about $45 or $55. I picked a wild Barramundi filet, which was crispy and buttery inside. This fish is farmed in Massachusetts, but the wild variety was more flavorful.

I sat at the bar and tried to get the waiter to explain the rules of Australian football. But he said that you either know art or football around here, and he fits the first category.

The walk through the busy and bustling streets showed a city full of people with money to spend on those $15 glasses of Chardonnay. That's always a good sign, full bars, people laughing and talking, sitting outside on terraces heated with gas heaters in the chill of fall here down under. There are cranes dotting the skyline, a new convention center being built and even the cabbie sounded proud of the way this city is shaping up and expanding.

"I'm Sorry" Are Two Words That Mean Everything to Aborigines

"I'm sorry." These words are everything to Australia's Aborigine community, and just a month ago, they were uttered by Australia's new liberal prime minister Kevin Rudd.

For more than a decade, the conservatives have ruled, and they were not about to apologize for what the white man has done to those who were already living here. But as I viewed photos of the new PM saying these historic words to Parliament today at the Koorie Heritage Trust in Melbourne, Dean Stewart explained to me how much they meant. He calls it a cultural tsunami, and the facts bear him out.

We walked up a stairway and past a replica of a River Red gum tree. At one time these white barked trees stood tall all over the city. But the English settlers cut them down, and with them came very important parts of the Aborigine's lives.
Dean showed me where his ancestors, members of the Wamba Wamba about four hours north, once cut the bark to make a canoe. And the possums that lived in these trees provided the pelts for the possum skin cloaks, that every native man and woman wore to keep warm.

"If you asked those kids over there playing football which tree is a river red gum tree, they'd have no idea. Nor would they know the sound of the Magpie Lark. But these things were engrained in the native people's mind. This tree provided everything, from painkillers to bark for canoes, to oil for their skin, to honey for food.

Dean turned to me and said his grandfather had played for the Australian football team that won the championship. Yet when the census was taken back then, just two generations back, native peoples were not counted as part of the humans who lived here.

"It wasn't until 1967 that Aborigines were allowed to vote, and were actually counted." He said this with a tolerant sort of incredulity that made his point eloquently.

He teaches school children about the more than 250 different languages that the original people here once spoke. So many of them were killed, on Tasmania there used to be a bounty for each native that settlers could kill. There was recently fossil evidence that put the age of the first aborigines here at 35,000 years ago. The English came in 1825.
Dean spoke excitedly about how part of the Royal conservatory a few years ago was replanted with indigenous plants, and the English ivy was torn out. Birds and bugs not seen in many years returned, sensing that this might be their new home.

As children planted the native plants, two huge predator birds swept over the garden, birds that hadn't been spotted in Melbourne in more than 40 years. They too, he said, must have sensed that the place was being returned to the way it was before the settlers changed everything.

How Much Do Things Cost in Australia?

I had an chat with a man named Murray who runs Melbourne's Best Bicycle Tours yesterday. We sat by the Yarra river and sipped lattes and talked about how much people get paid here. Then we asked the waitress how much she made, and she wasn't at all shy. "$18 to 20 minimum," she said. That's per hour.

I told her that at our cafe we have baristas who make between $8.50 and $11.00 per hour. But the coffee here is $3 minimum for a small, and I've noticed that the drinks in bars are way higher, as are the menu prices. Everything here is racheted up higher, because wages are so much higher.

The whole system, said Murray, comes from the days when Labor ran the country. So wages are set much higher, and in this country there is no tipping. There are giant apartment buildings for the unfortunate, the crippled, and those who have no homes... and there is a safety net of health insurance that isn't like a complete HMO but covers the basics.
People work as waitresses and bartenders and at service jobs for careers, because the average wage is about $50,000 a year. That means they have the money to go out for dinner, and to pay a cover charge of $32 to see a comedy show, or spend $89 for a bike tour.

It all works well for Aussies, but not as well for Americans, since we exchange our dollars for basically the same amount of Aussie dollars. But we are used to adding twenty percent on top of everything, so it's closer than we think.
One thing that Murray was not pleased about was when he tried to take his kids to an American football game in the states, and was shocked at the $65 minimum ticket price. "Here we can take the kids to a footie (Aussie football game) and it's a twenty for me and just $3 for them....so the whole family can watch the game for not that much."

The Wines Were Great But No 'Roos en Route

Today I joined a group of about twenty wine enthusiasts for a trip to the Yarra Valley's wine country. The van drove down winding roads through wooded hills and then onto more wide open areas with rolling hills and mountains in the distance.
It was a gorgeous, sunny, fall day and spirits were high as we got to know each other across the aisle of the van.

asked the mostly Aussie busmates about sports in Australia. I told them about how much fun I had at the AFL game on Sunday. Most of them, being from near Sydney, didn't share the Melbournian love of this game, they said that cricket was the really dominant sport in Oz.

"Netball is huge," they added. I had never heard of this game, but they told me that girls play it and it involves a basket and no backboard, and requires a lot of passing and shooting. There are two kinds of rugby here, union and league. The union is the pro game that is on TV, the league is a lower level version. 'Footy' is what everyone in Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane and everywhere but Sydney loves.

The hills here were quite green, owing to a few inches of rain that had fallen recently, but it was clear seeing the shrunken ponds that a serious drought was still ravaging the country.

More than sixty wineries are spread out through this vast valley, and we got a chance to sample some interesting wines like sparkling red. It's better than it sounds, but we can't buy this variety, from Chandon, in the states.

Here too, I learned that screw tops are becoming more and more popular, as winemakers have discovered that the metal tops avoid cork rot that can spoil good wines.

Our host, Nick Johansen is an avid wine lover who made the trip a lot of fun with light-hearted banter and constant jabbing at the residents of other states. "We have few interstate rivalries here, you can tell," he told me with a laugh.
Under his tutelage, we learned that swirling the glass loosens the molecules in the wine and brings out the aromas; that letting wine breathe is basically meaningless, and we perfected our sipping, sucking and swirling techniques.

It was a great way to get to know about wines and the only thing missing was a chance to see a kangaroo... The only one we spotted, I missed; it was munching grass in a field by the road. Damn!

The Convent is Just the First of Tina's Many Grand Plans

Tina Banitska paused for a moment, feeling a bit emotional when she took me through her 15-year labor of love called The Convent in Daylesford, Victoria. "Excuse me," she said, sensing that I could tell this made her emotional. She grabbed my arm and continued, "I get this way sometimes, Max," she said. I could totally relate and fell in love with this amazing woman the moment I met her.


To know Tina is to walk through this sprawling converted 1860s convent, a project of immense proportions that began two decades back when she saw the place from a distance. She knew she had to have it, and it wasn't until years later that she made her dream a reality.

Tina is a warm person, who says your name and reaches out and touches you to make her point. The scale of what she's built here is impressive -- seven beautifully sunny art galleries, a restored chapel, a large retail store, a cafe, a lounge bar and function rooms that accommodate large weddings. Oh, and gorgeous gardens, restored original nun's quarters, and her dynamic personality that radiates confidence, her belief in the power of the arts, and in the goodness of people to help her make it all work.

She has 45 fulltime employees -- gardeners, chefs, clerks, baristas, sales help and assistants, and she gives them all the power and confidence to do their jobs without her meddling. As we sipped chardonnay in the Altar Bar, she told me how glad she was that I came, with a flattering amount of conviction. I was too.

"I didn't know anything about finance," she explained, and when she signed up for a multimillion dollar mortgage at 18 percent interest, most people would have balked. But again, it's that belief, her sincere belief that creating a place where artists can show their work, and in putting such love into the restoration, and the attention to detail, it comes back to that old saying, "If you build it they will come." And they sure do!

The stairway bannisters are welded to create a piece of art, as are the details of the crenalations and stained glass windows. The massive structure begins first with Victorian style tower, then the middle section with another tower is Romanesque, and finally the side devoted to the function rooms has a modern tower. Yet they blend together and stand out on the tall hill overlooking Mount Franklin.

There are acres of polished light wood floors, and a chapel that's perfectly restored, an excellent location for weddings. She brings in more than 120 of them a year, many from overseas couples who hear about her venue and come all the way to this town outside of Melbourne to tie the knot.

"I've got a secret to tell you," she whispered, sipping her wine and smiling. "I've bought another convent, it's five times as big as this one." This new project will also take millions in loans, and despite the daunting challenge, you just know that Tina will make it all work out.

"I want to begin an artist mentoring program, where we teach artists about the business of selling their work, so they can not only create art but make a living at it."

When she saw that this second convent was up for sale, about 35 minutes away in Ballarat, she stayed up all night writing a proposal. The nuns even agreed to finance part of the deal for her. Of course they did, she's Tina Banitska, and she believes it will all work out.

Getting to Know the Pleasure Region with Josh Oakes

Josh Oakes says he is raw. Raw as in new to many aspects of running a full time tour guide business here in Melbourne. We met yesterday and he took me to a beautiful part of the country, the spa-focused region of the Macedon Ranges. Here, he said, the emphasis is on pleasure. There are mineral springs, thermal baths, hot tubs and massage therapists. There are also many restaurants that adhere to the ever more popular concept of 20-mile dining.

We stopped at an elegant inn called the Lake House, where the chef lists every vendor she works with in the back of the menu, with details about the delicious meats, produce, or other local product they offer. We dined on fresh trout with broccoli rabe, and in the garden we fed filet mignon scraps to a kookaberra bird, whose cries sound like a mocking laugh.

Josh told me about his and his wife's expanding business that caters to high-end clients, many of whom come from the US. They take people out and using all locally-raised guides, give them a taste of what's really delicious, impressive, and fun in Melbourne. They also take folks out to the hills to places like Daylesford and to the ocean on the peninsula. They'll cater their tour to whatever the client wants, including chartering private planes to spend an evening on a distant beach.
Comparing notes in the van back from the trip, we both had a lot of the same issues in common, and it was clear that business on either end of the globe are fraught with the same pitfalls, glories and hassles.

The Tiny Butterfly Club is Where Talent Begins

In Melbourne, the arts are a seriously high priority. Whether it's public art in city squares, or nurturing the art of new clothing designers or performers, the arts are a big part of the experience of visiting here. Even the highways coming into the city are lined with gigantic steel posts, angling sideways, there just to make the city look nicer.

Last night I met two men who have developed the country's most successful incubation center for new cabaret talent, and do it without a penny of government grants or other assistance. In a country where arts dollars flow freely, this is a big change. They prefer to make money with a jumping bar and sell tickets to the lucky few who can snap them up.

The Butterfly Club operates in a cramped Victorian apartment in South Melbourne, where guests stream for 600 shows a year. The one-hour cabaret performances are held in an intimate 50-seat theatre. Neville, the affable silver-haired gent in charge of the front of the house, welcomed me with a glass of wine as I mingled with the pre-show audience just before nine last night.

"We bring these artists in and about two percent of them go on tour with us to the US, London, and other cities. We have discovered some major talents here and after they hit it big in larger venues, they come back and see us. We have an extremely sharp eye for real talent."

Inside the apartment, people stream back to a bar tended by a former ballet dancer and another young man who works as a photographer's assistant.

The one-hour shows are fine tuned, each progressive performance is tweaked to be as sharp as possible, and Neville pointed out that there's nothing like working such a small room without a mike.

Strolling the Queen Vic Market and Watching Yawning Lions at the Zoo

Often I compare these journeys to eating tapas. There's a little bit here, a taste of that there, and you never really settle into a groove because it's time to go when that finally happens.

This week in Melbourne has been splendid, and I must say that Oz is as fascinating and fun as I suspected it would be. That's because I've met so many Australians in my travels and they are the reason that this a great place this is to visit.
I got a chance to sit down with a travel editor at the Age, and a web marketing guy for Tourism Victoria. Both of them shared their insights and provided me with some details into the working business of travel here in Australia.

I had time after our two-hour stroll to the Queen Victoria Market (the world's largest), so I took the tram to the Melbourne Zoo. Most of the wild beasts were sleeping, but I did have fun watching the elephants take baths and caught some of the big cats in repose.

For my final night here I was joined again by Josh Oakes who brought along his lovely wife and business partner Susan. We had dinner in a casual Italian place called Mario's on Brunswick St, one where they go a lot on their own. It didn't have the high-priced menu that we've seen so often downtown. Oh, and they didn't take credit cards.

Winding down in my giant hotel room, I did what a local Melbournian would do. I tuned in to the footy game on the telly, and watched the Western Bulldogs come back and beat the Essendon Bombers in a live match from the Telstra Dome. Getting ready for a long ride home.