Melbourne. Can I live here...Please!

By Jason Cochran

An Sydney and Melbourne have long nursed a not-so-friendly rivalry. See, for a while, Melbourne was Australia's most famous city. In fact, the first time the Olympics went Down Under, in 1956, Sydney was still warming the bench— Melbourne won them. Well, now the tables have turned somewhat, and Melbourne isn't happy about it.

To be honest, I'm not either. On my first visit to Australia, I was utterly bowled over by what a
classy, absorbing city Melbourne was. Why wasn't I more familiar with this place?

Here we have a city that checks nearly every box on the "Can I Live Here, Please" list. Easy to get around? Check—whereas Los Angeles and other American cities destroyed their comprehensive tram systems, Melbourne is still crisscrossed every which way by the comforting rumble of regular carriages. A solid ambiance? Check—In the Victorian era, Melbourne was the beneficiary of a gold rush and intense development, which mean blocks full of substantial stone buildings stuffed with gobs of completely unnecessary, but absolutely pleasing, old-style embellishments. Good food? Check—immigrants have been pouring into Melbourne for decades (Italian, Greek, Vietnamese, Indonesian) and the availability, breadth, and proficiency of the cuisine reflect it.

Granted, it's easy to have a needlessly rosy view of Melbourne, considering the fact most visitors spend their days there in a perpetual caffeine-fueled haze. The central city is laced with dozens of narrow laneways hiding cafes that are themselves populated by people who are (gasp!) actually talking to each other. Every few minutes on a stroll through town, the defenseless visitor is drawn to another lane-side table where, over another "flat white" or another "long black" coffee, he or she is induced to sit yet again and enjoy watching the other side of the world go by.

Now, plenty of nice cities are still dull enough to put you to sleep. Melbourne's not one of them. Interestingly, in terms of the arts and culture, Melbourne is by far the strongest Australian city, which bumps it from being simply a lovely place to being something lively and unboring. On the south bank of the Yarra River, which cuts through town, lies a high-rise district of fine arts museums, theatrical complexes, and restaurants that, perhaps fueled by the same coffee buzz, remains busy until the middle of the night. The neighborhoods of Fitzroy, just north of the skyscrapers, and St. Kilda, on Port Philip Bay, are famous for small-label boutiques, bookstores, and take-a-flyer-you're-invited party spots. It's not a city where you have to know someone—you will soon enough.

It's rather easy to get sidetracked into wasting a day at a café table or browsing the shops of some interesting street. I've been to Melbourne more times than I can count, yet I'm still discovering more. Last time, I took my first trip to the gargantuan trees of the aptly named Mystic Mountains, an hour east of the city, and to the Royal Botanic Gardens, a 1,000-acre idyll under the skyscrapers filled with every imaginable variety of Australia's unimaginably weird plant specimens.

Out of town, the possible daytrips pile up, which can be frustrating, since few Americans will have enough vacation days to do everything that strikes them. The Great Ocean Road is probably the most popular, with its truly awesome glimpses of the sandstone Twelve Apostles in the surf, but there's also the penguin parade of Phillip Island and the wine region of the Yarra Valley.

In many ways, Melbourne is a city to dissolve into. It's a place to revel in the dignity of traveling by tram to a century-old seaside resort, or to take a long lunch beneath the spires of a church that looks like it was stolen from Scotland. It's a place you wish you lived. Perhaps that's why Sydney hates it so.


Who is Jason Cochran?
Jason Cochran has written on travel and entertainment for publications including Entertainment Weekly, Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel, Newsweek, theNew York Daily News, the Rough Guides, Travel + Leisure, the Village Voice, the New York Post, Marie Claire, Inside, New York Sidewalk, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Arena (U.K.), Who (Australia), Scanorama, and Seasons (Sweden). He also devised questions for the first American season of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (ABC) and before that, spent nearly two years backpacking solo around the world. As a commentator, he has appeared on CNN, CNN Headline News, CNNfn, Fox TV, and MSNBC.com. He is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and New York University's Graduate Music Theatre Writing Program. He lives in Manhattan.