Melbourne most generous

MANILA, Philippines - The moment I stepped out of the hotel on my first night in Melbourne, I heard Billie Holiday purring Living for you is easy living / It’s easy to live when you’re in love / And I’m so in love / There’s nothing in life but you.  It was coming from an Italian restaurant built with glitzy glass and steel, tucked inside a Victorian structure, set inside a narrow laneway filled with Banksy-like graffiti, and proximate to a centuries-old Anglican church.  I could smell wood-fired pizza.  Designer-clad Aussies and Asian immigrants were in line.  It was cold at nine degrees.  As I peered down further, a tram rolled by the bright and leafy Swanston.  The city had spoken to me.  And I loved it.  So this was the Melbourne vibe.  I got it immediately.

The joys of travel come with epiphanies that say you’re experiencing something alien and exciting.  I remember certain places for these fleeting jolts, like the click-clacking of the wooden slippers of a geisha who was dodging my camera in a cobblestoned street of Kyoto.

3 a.m. Bangkok: Famished while working on a regional assignment, I went down a posh office building and was greeted by the scent of sticky rice and mango right outside the lobby; it was the best overtime meal I ever had. 

I thought I had found a new fave city in Melbourne on that cold night.  It spoke to me in a way that I thought was unique to me.  But the sentiment wasn’t all mine.  The other Pinoys in our group had similar stories about living with ease in Melbourne.  They loved it as much.  They all felt the generosity of Australia.

It comes as no surprise that Australia ranks as the most generous nation in the world, according to the World Giving Index 2012.  The Aussies are number 1 in donating money, volunteering time or helping out a stranger, ahead of the US and Europe.  Doing a lot of good is in the Australian DNA.  The Aussies in Melbourne work just as hard in making their city livable.  And for the last two years, the Economist Intelligence Unit recognized Melbourne as the most livable city in the world, beating Vienna, Vancouver and Toronto (three other cities from Down Under made the top 10).  

The people of Melbourne have also been kind enough to nurture an environment and a culture for travelers to enjoy. Let me try to capture a few of the many reasons why Melbourne is one of the best places to visit.

Pedestrian-friendly

Much of the Melbourne vibe is in the CBD.  It’s a grid of simple geometry that can be explored easily sans a map or GPS. The streets are wide enough to accommodate trams and two-directional traffic and parking.  Sidewalks are also wider than most other great cities, and can take in huge volume of pedestrian traffic.  These allow you to take the best choice of transport — your feet. There, the pedestrian is king.  Motorists stop as you step on the zebra crossing. Water fountains and benches are scattered in the tree-lined boulevards for the weary shopper. You can stop to eat your meat pie, drink your long black, and listen to a street performer who’s got the pop-music gene of his Anglo ascendants. Red-shirted volunteers are on hand to guide you to where you’re going. And if you’re too tired to walk further, you can just hop on a maroon tram, for free.  

The land of in-between

Could its people have been afraid to let the uniform grid pattern become a bland, identical sprawl that they filled its laneways with quirky, random stuff?  Enter a narrow alley from the main streets of Collins, Bourke, Elizabeth and Flinders, and you’ll find shops and cafés that are as unpredictable as the Melbourne weather (they say they can get all four seasons in a day).  There are hipster bars behind colorfully spray-painted metal doors.  An old printing press converted into a gourmet breakfast place.  A Victorian warehouse now housing Comme des Garçons apparel.  Shops that manage to stay in business in spite of their strange wares: marionettes; irregularly-shaped coffee mugs; all ancient fossils, emu eggs, taxidermy; vintage laboratory equipment; burlesque photobooks.   A bookshop in every corner.  I’ve never seen so much vinyl.  Melbourne has almost none of the usual tourist traps and clichés, like wax museums and tower views.  So it makes an effort to mix it up for the traveler seeking fresh discoveries.

Big spender

The city’s main aesthetic is the juxtaposition of urbane grit against urbane sophistication.  It’s bohemian — spraycan art, customized vans that double as cappuccino carts, the burst of neon in its laneways.  But art of the literal kind also thrives in the city.  I think that the city government’s culture and arts budget is as much as Novak Djokovich’s total purse from the Australian Open, times a hundredfold.  I caught the Monet’s Garden Exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria.  Exclusive to Melbourne, NGV brought in 60 huge Monets mostly from Paris.  The curating was stunning.  It captured the artist’s life and spirit chronologically, from his early drawings of lilies and family portraits, his struggles during the Great Depression, travels to Norway, repeated renditions of the same theme, to his more abstract pieces done when his sight was failing.  It culminated in a film showing of his Giverny garden, projected 180 degrees on the walls at a dark end of the gallery.  In winter, NGV recreated France in spring.

Just a mile from NGV, the Australian Center for Moving Image was having the Hollywood Costume Exhibit.   About 100 original costumes gathered from private collections were on display, including Audrey Hepburn’s Givenchy in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the Last Emperor costumes, Hitchcock’s women’s, the Blues Brothers suits, most of Meryl Streep’s characters, Satine’s in Moulin Rouge, and all the spandex from blockbuster superhero movies. The exhibit was as much as a showstopper as Cate and Judi’s Elizabethan frocks.  Harnessing cutting-edge technology, content was projected on walls, ashtrays, Sweeney Toddy’s rolling pin, overturned champagne glasses, to educate the viewer on the whole creative process of costume design.  Animated portraits of actors like De Niro, DiCaprio, and the Brokeback cowboys are mounted on top of mannequins to evoke realism.

A few blocks from ACMI, the Melbourne Film Festival was happening.  In exhibition was the restored version of the Brocka classic Maynila: Sa Kuko ng Liwanag. And just within the same walkable grid, I saw state-run initiatives for independent artists and niche audiences.  This side of Melbourne left me feeling full, and I hadn’t even sampled the blue grenadier and chippies yet.

A passion for preservation

Melbourne’s concern for preservation may seem frivolous.  Most of the structures in the CBD date to the Victorian Age, all spruced up and melded with modern architecture.  A long row of houses in St. Vincent Place is heritage-listed where strict rules apply in preserving the original architecture. The original European landscape must remain. Too obsessive, eh?  But talk to any Aussie in town, and then you’d understand all that indulgence. They’re a happy and polite lot.  Even the intoxicated Aussie I stopped for directions was very specific and made sure I got it right. They’ve proved philosopher Alain de Botton right: People are miserable if surrounded by objects of ugliness. Sure, you may argue that the Pinoy always makes the Happiness Index, in spite of an urban landscape that’s almost devoid of beauty and history, but I bet you, NAIA would have more unhappy local residents passing through, than Melbourne Airport’s.

Gourmet capital

Melbourne celebrates food as much as art. I suspect that state policies are in force to ensure the quality of food — good food is essential to Melbourne’s livability. I almost never had a bad meal, and had the greatest breakfast in Hardware Société. Coffee, like cricket, is an obsession.  The Melbourne food culture is also socially inclusive.  It embraces all the culinary traditions of its diverse immigrants. You want Chinese?  There’s hutong in the cleanest Chinatown. Churros and tapas?  Visit the Fitzroy neighborhood, especially the design oddity, Naked for Satan. Italian and Tank’s Fish and Chippery in Lygon.  Greek and Turkish in Sydney Road. The best wines and cheeses in CBD bars (especially Cumulus), and at Ackland and St. Kilda’s, where Melbourne’s beach culture lives. The culinary diversity is much like New York’s, but Melbourne serves sweeter tomatoes, and doesn’t care much about tips.

The place that would’ve been

“If you had to live elsewhere, where would it be?” is a favorite topic among us who love to travel.  I’d say Melbourne.  It’s both old and new, sophisticated and slick, casual and creative, cerebral and crazy.  It’s not at once spectacular but it slowly romances you into affection. It nurtures what’s been there, and serves you an overflowing plate — leaving you full, happy and wanting seconds.   

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E-mail the author at boboyconsunji@gmail.com. Photos by BOBOY S. CONSUNJI