Melbourne - a grand 'ole time

This Sunday through Tuesday our entire Boston University program - 70-plus students and a handful of professors/directors - experienced a different large Australian city: Melbourne, which is located southwest of Sydney and is about an hour-and-a-half plane ride. We had to wake up around 4:30 a.m. on Sunday to catch a bus to the airport. We arrived at the downtown UniLodge in Melbourne around 9:30 a.m. The first thing I noticed about the city on the bus ride in was just how simple it is. Simple buildings, simple architecture, nothing flashy or boasting tourism.

Around 10:15 a.m. the directors split up the students into groups and we all made our way toward the Victoria Market. I’m not a shopper – never will be one – but the market was a great opportunity to take care of any shopping I needed to do. Very cheap prices and a sundry of items allowed me to knock off most of my Christmas shopping – which I usually wait to do until Dec. 23 – and I also picked up a cheap but very warm fleece and a Sydney Swans hat (gotta support the local team). We made our way back to the Unilodge in the afternoon to check in and then the afternoon and night was ours to enjoy.

Almost all the program’s students made their way to St. Kilda – a southern suburb of the city on the harbour – to walk around, eat, drink, and be merry. The weather reminded me of an early November day in Michigan. A strong wind gusted, making me wish I had brought my new Swans hat. We found refuge in Greasy Joe’s, a local diner, and enjoyed a very filling dinner. After braving the cold once again, we hooked up with the Esplanade (sp?) club, where we spent a grand three hours. Local bands played a variety of music, and most of the group’s students danced the night away. Around 11:30 p.m. we caught the tram back to UniLodge and crashed.

Monday began the sports portion of our time in Melbourne. After a complimentary breakfast at a local café, I joined a large group of students for a tour of the Melbourne Cricket Ground, an ancient – and very large stadium – that hosted the 1956 Olympics and hosts several other sporting events throughout the year. In fact, this Saturday the AFL championship game will be played there. Our tour guide, a nice old lady names Jan Dimmick who has done the tours for 18 years, gave us a mix of views throughout the stadium in addition to a history lesson. We saw the locker rooms, coach’s room, and press room. I was amazed at how simple they are. The locker room only contains lockers and showers – no TVs, Playstations, etc. – the coach’s room has one table, one TV, and a whiteboard, and the press room looks like it could hold maybe 20 people squished together. Much of the stadium followed this model of simplicity. There were corporate suites, but they didn’t seem that luxurious

The stadium, which was originally built in the 1830s – just years after Melbourne was founded – is made up of four levels and holds 100,000 people (including 6,000 standing-room-only seats). The stadium is broken into a handful of sections, some of which are public and some of which are reserved for members of the Melbourne Cricket Club. It was pretty neat learning about the seating arrangement, considering I haven’t seen anything like it in the States.

After we finished our tour and bid goodbye to Jan, Steve – Mike’s roommate and a good friend of mine (he’s from NH – although not the part I’m familiar with) – and I extended our sports tour, walking past Rod Laver Arena, where the Australian Open – one of tennis’ four grand slam tournaments – is held each January. To our disappointment, it was being prepped for a concert or other non-sports event and we didn’t get to see much. After walking through the Botanical Gardens, we returned to UniLodge to prepare for our afternoon bike ride.

Before I talk about our bike adventure, let me talk a minute about Melbourne’s sports culture. Unlike in Sydney, Melbourne citizens are crazy about their sports. Our directors always say that people in Sydney are too busy frequenting the beach and all the other tourist attractions to have time to be huge sports fans. In Melbourne, however, there are no exotic beaches, no Opera House, and no Harbour Bridge. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of attractions, but not enough for the Melbourne citizen to only show vague interest in the sports teams there. Rugby and AFL games routinely attract sellout crowds, and one of the directors said that on game days there is a mass movement to the stadium (similar, I believe, to game days at the Big House in Ann Arbor.

Also there seems to be a great emphasis on exercise in the city. Whereas in Sydney people always seem to be hurrying to get somewhere – and I rarely see people exercising in the park kitty corner from our residence – in Melbourne there are bikers everywhere and the Tan Track, which runs through the Botanical Gardens, attracts thousands of runners on a daily basis (more on the Tan to come later in this entry).

So when a group of six of us rented bikes on Monday afternoon, we felt right at home. We rode for three hours, the only negative being that I got us lost (good one, Jake). I had mapped out a 35-kilometer route following the Yarra River, but about five kilometers in the path stopped on the right side of the river and I decided to head up the road alongside the river, thinking we’d stay right beside it. What I failed to realize at the time was that the river veers sharply to the left at that point. To shorten the story, we ended up in a bunch of unknown neighborhoods, found a creek (which we thought was the river), found the river again, and rode along it in the wrong direction, and finally took city roads back to town. It was an adventure, no doubt, and no one seemed peeved at me for the mistake. Instead, everyone seemed to enjoy the journey.

Monday night was fairly uneventful. We ventured around the city, ate dinner at the Lord of the Fries (a joint know for its French fries), and visited a couple bars before hitting the sack rather early. I woke up Tuesday knowing I needed to gather some material for the ethnography paper we have to write about an aspect of Melbourne. I knew I wanted to focus on some aspect of Melbourne sports, but wasn’t sure which aspect. Finally I decided to focus on the MCG and Tan Track, a pair of ancient sports landmarks. I had taken several notes during Jan’s tour the day before – all I needed to do was visit the Tan. I didn’t think I was going to walk the 3.827 km track, but life has its unexpected happenings.

After testing out my new AFL football with Steve and Andrew, another good friend, on the outskirts of the Botanical Garden, I decided that the only way to experience the Tan and gather material to write about it would be to travel it. So Steve and I embarked on a one-hour journey around the famous track. It has been known as a place where famous Australian runners practice, and on Tuesday there were hundreds of runners of all different levels making their way on the simplistic, dirt path. There were also walkers, dog walkers, women with their baby carriages, men in business suits (putting their lunch hour to good use), and even a few bikers. It was a long 3.827 km, but Steve and I made it, letting out shouts of exultation upon returning to our starting mark. Nothing else we would do on our final day in Melbourne mattered. We had walked the famous Tan. Whoo!!!

After finishing my Christmas shopping, my time in Melbourne was done. It had been a grand two days. Experiencing a completely different city from Sydney was refreshing. I didn’t feel the tourism, I didn’t feel like everyone was rushed, it was just a relaxing experience in a relatively relaxed city. If I end up living in Australia down the road, I might pick Melbourne over Sydney.

jake