Melbourne
Take a walk through the city’s famous streetscape
HE has a head full of history, a Panama hat and a writer’s eye. In my book, that makes Paul Daffey a good bet as a tour guide of Melbourne’s inner-city laneways and old arcades. I meet Paul at Federation Square for a halfday Hidden Secrets Tour with six other guests.
Hobart and Sydney, he says, are full of sandstone, but in Melbourne most of the public buildings are different.
“It’s our only bluestone city, and it’s part of what makes Melbourne feel darker, edgier and wintry.” Paul soon proves he is no history bore. Best known as a sports journalist, he values pace and cutting to the chase as we traverse the cobblestones. Hallelujah! His snappy hat makes it easy to follow him in the crowd.
Melbourne is flat, ordered, harbourless and lacks the kind of landmarks that characterise Sydney and Hobart, but Paul says the city does not dwell on its lack. It spends its time
cultivating other attractions, from sporting to culinary and arts.
Since the 1956 Olympics, it has built an identity around both mega events and laneway culture.
It’s an enticing mix that makes it a particularly exciting city on the ground.
Melbourne’s tight inner-city grid makes lane-hopping a breeze.
The first that we visit, Degraves Street, is one of the best known.
Once the home of the rag trade, its transformation was led by coffee-loving Italian Australians in the 1980s.
Today it’s a lively mix of shoebox-size cafes with alfresco seating, barber, pizzeria, burger joint, art supplies shop, an organic wine seller and more.
Our next stop, Centre Place, is one of Melbourne’s most photographed scenes.
Once the stamps and coins trading district, today the 50m laneway is mostly cafes offering affordable lunch for inner-city workers.
Other nearby bargain lunches include Union Kiosk’s $8 jaffles in Causeway Lane and Princes Pies for about $7 at Howey Place with its signature glass canopy that once sheltered a fernery and monkey house as well as a book emporium.
Between numerous laneways and arcades this morning we emerge briefly on Melbourne’s grandest shopping boulevards.
The most beautiful is Collins St, especially the so-called Paris end, with its luxury boutiques and avenue of plane trees.
We duck off Collins St into the up-market Block Arcade, so named for a local tradition of evening promenading by society ladies — also known as “doing the block” — in their finest fashions.
The elegant arcade has the largest mosaic tile floor in the country and was built mostly by Italian labour.
Its most famous tenant, the Hopetoun Tea Rooms, opened in 1892 and attracts daily lineups for its high teas and sumptuous sweet treats. Paul tells us the cafe’s huge backwall mirror was shipped from Europe in a bath of molasses that horses licked off at this end.
Our appetite whet by the window display, we head for chocolatier Koko Black’s cafe upstairs in the nearby Royal Arcade. I savour my affogato, a hot chocolate drink poured over a scoop of vanilla-bean ice-cream.
Later we see smallest bar, the Bar Americano, which caters to vintage cocktail aficionados at Presgrave Place.
Paul says it’s a great example of the kind of obscure specialist bar visitors are unlikely to stumble across.
Our tour ends at Hosier Lane, scene of many gritty music videos with its street art backdrop. Looming high on one wall is a 23mhigh mural by Matti Adnate of an Aboriginal boy gazing over the Yarra River, the waterway reflected in his left eye and the city skyline in his right.