Melbourne

They don’t play the AFL grand final in Sydney for the very good reason that the code’s sporting soul is located in Melbourne.

Wimbledon happens at Wimbledon, the Super Bowl takes place in various football-mad US cities, and the only reason they shifted the famous Dakar rally from the north African desert (to South America of all places) was that bandits kept terrorising competitors.

No one’s been terrorising anyone in Sydney or Brisbane lately, give or take a few feral bikies. So remind me again, why have we dumped one of the year’s showcase rugby league games on Melbourne for a seventh time?

Continue reading "Origin in Melbourne is like meat pie in your latté" »

News blew in late yesterday that Sydney is the 7th most expensive city in the world. Big deal. We already knew you have to be a criminal or a real estate speculator to afford to live here. Not that there’s much diff.

The real news was that Melbourne made number 8 on the list, ahead of Singapore, which is widely known as an extremely expensive city even for those who don’t habitually spit on the sidewalk.

Melbourne has always prided itself on its title of “World’s Most Liveable City”. Apparently liveability doesn’t have much to do with affordability. And now Melbourne has another claim to fame. It’s a trait which is never, ever brought up in the endless, tedious Sydney vs Melbourne fights. Here goes then…

Continue reading "A radical new twist on Melbourne vs Sydney" »

I’d like to thank the Occupy Melbourne protesters, from the bottom of my heart. They’ve opened my eyes.

It’s not about their message. I’m pretty sure I already knew about the all-too-cosy relationship between banks, corporations and the media. Hell, I was told that money was the root of all evil fairly early on at Sunday School. Nothing new there.

No, they’ve shown me, through their treatment at the hands of Lord Mayor Robert Doyle, the City of Melbourne and Victoria Police, that for all the talk of freedom of political expression and peaceful demonstration in this country, if you antagonize the wrong person in authority you can expect harassment and intimidation. If you show up a puffed-up, red-faced bully, no matter the elevated position of responsibility, they’ll reach down and thump you.

Continue reading "Bullies in suits unleash their uniformed henchmen" »

The Occupy Wall Street movement’s Australian offshoots in Melbourne and Sydney were ejected from their places of gathering on Friday and Sunday respectively. There were bloody scenes in Melbourne and in Sydney protestors awoke at 5am to find themselves being dragged away by police. That’s not the biggest problem the Occupy movement is facing though, writes Lauren Rosewarne. 

About five or six students from my year level at high school ended up at Melbourne Uni. Most of them I spotted in the first week or so; it took a year and a half for me to eye the only one I really wanted to see.

And there he was. Mid-1999. Crouched down on a footpath, scrawling out in huge letters: “Students for Chalk”. He didn’t stick around too long after that.

I was thinking about him and his postmodern protest the other day when 40-odd Occupy protestors crossed my path in Amherst, Massachusetts, where I’m currently working. One kid, probably all of nineteen, waved a giant “Fuck da Police” placard at me. A cheeky grin on his face.

Continue reading "The Occupy movement needs a point, not Kanye West" »

In the wake of yet another tragic level crossing accident in Melbourne, a Melbourne train driver gives his perspective on the often frightening view from the driver’s seat…

Express running is the worst, or running empty cars back to a depot because you are not scheduled to stop but the punters are attuned to the stopping of trains at platforms.

They assume you’re going to stop and if they quickly duck under the safety barrier they can still catch your train!

A couple of my fellow drivers have hit small children at level crossings. Imagine pulling the train to a stand still, getting out of the cab and being confronted with the grieving parent. One train driver even had the mother screaming at him and physically hitting him.

Continue reading "Fear and loathing on the Pakenham line" »

I was never really an AFL fan.  Until last year’s final I was not able to confirm with confidence if, when a ball struck the outer post, it counted as a point or not.  Yet I was surprised that the Grand Final tie did not produce as much buzz or excitement around town as I would have expected. 

The city should have been brimming with football fever during the week’s interlude between matches, but instead I found most talk of ‘footy’ sneered at as almost an embarrassing interruption to the weekend.  Though I might not have been much of a fan, I always had time for the role AFL played in the city’s spirit. 

Thus, almost in defence of the game’s apparent decline in popularity, I feel obliged to pay homage to this most definitive affirmation of Melbourne’s identity.

Continue reading "There’s nothing more Melbourne than AFL" »

A big happy birthday to the city of Melbourne, which is the ripe old age of 176.

Melbourne started as an illegal settlement in 1835. It was set up by a bunch of sheep farmers from Tasmania (then known as Van Diemen’s Land). The Governor in Sydney declared the settlers were trespassers. The town grew too quickly for him to stop it, although Sydneysiders never quite got over it.

Somewhere along the way the town became the cultural capital of Australia, scored the 1956 Olympics and developed a funny way of pronouncing the word “castle”.

Continue reading "Punch on: Open thread 30/08/2011" »

This is the third and final piece by Penbo for the Herald Sun about what Australia really thinks of Victoria.

When Melbourne hosted the Commonwealth Games in 2006 its opening ceremony was hailed as delightfully whimsical in its hometown and ridiculed as laughably provincial elsewhere.

In our coverage in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph we ran a double-page spread of flying trams and Leunig ducks under the deliberately annoying headline “And the winner is…still Sydney”, an obvious reference to Juan Antonio Samaranch’s declaration of the 2000 Olympic host city and its much more majestic and ambitious opening ceremony.

Continue reading "Trams might fly: Melbourne gets the jump on Sydney" »

This is the second instalment of Penbo’s series of columns for the Herald-Sun on what Australia really thinks of Victoria.

In his first year as prime minister the rugby league-loving St George Dragons fan John Howard was the unlikely winner of the 1996 parliamentary press gallery AFL footy tipping competition.

The rules required the winner to put a sizeable amount of cash on the parliamentary bar. Before a boozy throng of journos, Howard gave a terrific off-the-cuff speech which belied his league pedigree and offered some thoughtful and charitable insights into the place of Aussie Rules in our national identity.

Even though Howard doesn’t care for the game – he refused to barrack for the Swans in that year’s grand final because he didn’t want to seem a bandwagon-jumper – the PM said Aussie Rules was the only football code in Australia which transcended class and ethnicity.

Continue reading "The sport that transcends race, class…and humility" »

Like my fellow South Australians, I’m still upset about the poaching of Stephen Kernahan and John Platten, irritated about the theft of the Grand Prix and annoyed that the only body of water in Australia more fetid than the Yarra is the glorified drainpipe we call the Torrens.

Despite a lifetime of hard-wired antipathy towards the Vics, I’ve been kindly invited by Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper to fill its opinion page the next four Mondays. Rather than filing ad hoc pieces on issues of the day, I’ve decided to attempt a themed series about all things Victorian, through an outsider’s eyes.

My equally well-balanced Adelaideans who also have chips on both shoulders might disown me for not entitling the series Why Everyone Hates Victoria. Instead, I’ve stumped for What Australia Really Thinks About Victoria, with four pieces looking at Melbourne’s personality, the nation’s love-hate relationship with the AFL, why Melbourne has won in its rivalry with Sydney, and the 10 things which make Victoria what it is and which all Australians should know.

Continue reading "Melbourne, the club we secretly wish we could join" »

Hanging upside down at the top of a pole, wearing nothing but a black G-string, the skinny, brunette dancer has no problem attracting the attention of everyone in the venue.

With eight inch heels she then twirls down the pole – still upside down – to flip and finish with the splits at the bottom. 

Looking around, there is not one person in sight who appears to be over-intoxicated, no one throwing punches and no one who appears to be off their face on drugs either.

Continue reading "Don’t blame the nightclubs, blame lunatics on the streets" »

Ask any poor wage slave trapped in rush hour traffic or crammed like a sardine into a sweltering carriage on their hour-long daily commute and my guess is you’ll find no shortage of strong opinions on Australia’s less than terrific track record in urban planning.

As our major cities have grown in population over recent decades the unimaginative response of state governments has largely been to drive new housing towards our metropolitan fringes.

But as many of us experience daily, on the whole they’ve done so without putting in place the economic and social infrastructure to accommodate such expansion – public transport, training and employment opportunities and access to essential community services such as childcare.

Continue reading "Traffic jams? No jobs? Ghettoes? Blame poor planning" »

Returning home for summer is a continuing novelty for me. This may be explained in part by the fact the Melburnian summer exists only in myth, much like the unicorn or Dennis Lillee.

Compared to the glorious and endless parade of 35-degree days in Perth, the southern capital is a pale and moody slouch.  Yes, it may be the cultural, sporting, and nightlife epicentre of the nation, but not even Events Victoria could poach a decent summer.

Rain outside of winter does not make for happy tidings. As Thom Yorke croaked: “everything in its right place”. And that means, Melbourne, keep the damp in July and open up the summer goody bag sometime around December.

Continue reading "The real city rivalry: Melbourne v Perth" »

The Property Council of Australia - in one of those surveys aimed at getting their name on every news service - has named Adelaide Australia’s most liveable city.

‘Liveable’ is such a beige term. Talk about damned with faint praise.

They used a bunch of different characteristics such as traffic congestion and housing affordability to judge each capital city.

The fact that Canberra came in second goes to show that having a rockin’ good time wasn’t a criterion. (Oh come on, the Holy Grail doesn’t count).

Continue reading "Adelaide. It’s OK! (No, really.)" »

It was the nail-biter of all nail-biters but no one could have imagined Aussie lionheart Lleyton would surrender two match points before losing to arch rival David Nalbandian in the Australian Open’s first round.

After an epic fight lasting 4hrs 48mins at Melbourne Park last night, Hewitt finally succumbed to the powerful Argentine, who confessed he played “amazing” tennis during the five-set corker.

Hewitt’s failure to secure the win after two match points shows he is not 100 per cent confident in his form.

Continue reading "Lleyton Hewitt’s agony: finally out in the open" »

When Tiger played the Australian Masters last year, he was the only story in town. His every move was scrutinised and we tripped over each other to ask him really, really dumb questions.

This year, meh. Tiger’s playing golf somewhere, pass the pretzels.

But for those of you experiencing a major letdown at the lack of buzz over Tiger, worry not! Melbourne is world-renowned as a fabulously exciting city, especially in Melbourne itself. There really are so much attractions that don’t involve chasing around the world’s most famous philanderer and occasional golfer. Like these things!

Giant balls of string

OK, so the Chaser made this joke before I did. But that giant ball of string is out there somewhere, I’m sure. And just wait’ll this big cat finds it…

Continue reading "Ten exciting things about Melbourne that aren’t Tiger" »

When people ask me where I am from I know I’m likely to receive one of two responses when I say Craigieburn. “Sorry, I don’t know where that is” seems to be the predominant one, in which case I begin naming the surrounding areas.

As I relay my list – Roxburgh Park, Greenvale, and Broadmeadows – I am usually confronted with increasingly bewildered expressions, and I realise that these people are unfamiliar with the northern suburbs.

The second response, which on occasion is prompted by my answer to the first, usually encompasses the words “gangs” or “violence”.

Continue reading "Bored youth breed violence in North Melbourne" »

It’s the wild day of the AFL calendar – Mad Monday – and there’s a BEN-DER alert on those party animals, the Tigers.

After Richmond farewelled Ben Cousins yesterday, the players will pump up the celebrations on Mad Monday.

It was a brave last AFL game for Cousins, who racked up 21 touches while playing with a bung hamstring.

Continue reading "Cousins’ toughest task will be Mad Monday" »

Happy 175th birthday Melbourne! On this day 1835 the community of Melbourne was founded when the first settlers arrived and started clearing land on the north bank of the Yarra River.

Will you be celebrating today? Tell us all about it here.

I don’t mind admitting, I was excited when I rocked up to the polling booth. I was voting in Melbourne and Greens candidate Adam Bandt was favourite to win with the bookies.

There was no incumbent, this wasn’t a safe Liberal or Labor seat. No matter who I voted for, I felt like my vote could really make a difference.

I got my first How To Vote card from the kindly old Democrat volunteer and couldn’t help but notice they’d given their 3rd preference to the candidate from the Australian Sex Party. Way to go Democrats. I had no idea you guys were into that kind of Party!

Continue reading "How to vote in the electorate of Melbourne" »

Signs in the window of an adventure tours store on Scotchmer Street in North Fitzroy urge passersby to do two things: climb Mount Everest, and put a member of the Greens in the House of Representatives.

In most electorates these tasks would be of roughly equal difficulty. But not here in the federal seat of Melbourne, where Greens candidate Adam Bandt is the firm bookies’ favourite to win on August 21. With a well-organised campaign and an established electorate profile, Bandt’s challenge looks less like climbing a mountain and more like a sprint down Swanston Street.

“Make history Melbourne” is the campaign slogan, with the general buzz being about making Bandt the first Green elected to the House of Representatives – which would be truly historic, except that it rests on the following qualifying technicality. He would only be the first Green to win in a general election.

Continue reading "Looking for history-makers on Melbourne’s Green streets" »

If Melbourne was a person she would have been sent to Trinny and Susannah by now.

It wouldn’t be her idea of course - it’s one of those shows she would sneer at - but her loved ones would have given her that little encouraging nudge.

She’d go and be full of fake bravado, giving as much lip at Catherine Deveny on Logies night, bragging about her coffee, her restaurants, her laneways and festivals.

Continue reading "Oh Melbourne, get over yourself daaaahling" »

You’d be laughed out of town if you said that you’d moved to regional Australia for the hustle and bustle, so why do people who live in big cities spend so much time complaining how noisy it is.

Message to city-dwellers: when you choose to live in a metropolis there’s a few things that you must accept.

a) It’s never going to be easy to find a parking spot. b) You’re probably going to have a frustratingly small wheelie bin that will be stolen more than a handful or times and, c) It’s never, never, ever, ever going to be quiet. Never.

Continue reading "Hey city-slickers, stop shouting about the noise" »

There’s a laundry list of reasons Melbourne could probably already be regarded as Australia’s most prestigious city over Sydney. It hosts the Australian Open, the Melbourne Cup and various other prestige horse races, the AFL Grand Final, and the Formula 1 Grand Prix. The last time Tiger Woods came to Australia, he was in Melbourne.

What has Sydney got to compete as regular international attractions? There are a couple of world-class restaurants with obscenely-priced menus and a rarely-used, difficult-to-get-to Olympic stadium. There is the start of the Sydney to Hobart yacht race, though it should be noted that this features a bunch of people with lots of money and significant business connections getting out of the joint as fast as they possibly can.

If size does matter in the battle for status as the nation’s most prestigious city, it now looks likely Melbourne will be bigger than Sydney in the not-too-distant future. A spokesman for the developer lobby that commissioned the report remarked that Sydney had the hallmarks of “a global city in decline”.

Continue reading "Against Melbourne, housing the least of Sydney’s worries" »

After twelve months of racial intolerance and a clamp-down on live music, is Melbourne about to lose what’s left of its cultural and community flavour?

As Melburnians, we tend to differentiate ourselves as more community and culturally-minded and less greedy than other Australians.  So how is it that one of our leading community venues is looking to bring an end to one of Melbourne’s most successful experiments in community dining?

That’s right, the Abbotsford Convent has refused to renew the lease on Lentil As Anything , the innovative not-for-profit restaurant that has been the heart and soul of the convent for the last five years. Is Melbourne letting go of its once famous community culture for profits?

Continue reading "Melbourne’s soul is in danger of disappearing" »

Sydney FC fans have woken up this morning feeling like they’ve had their wallets stolen – but they’ve got no one to blame but themselves.

Melbourne Victory’s major semi-final extra-time winner yesterday afternoon was typical; clever Kevin Muscat exploiting the situation, too-quick Archie Thompson putting the ball in the back of the net.

But what were Sydney doing? Ball-watching? Waiting for the ref? Checking their haircuts? In an open and entertaining game, Melbourne always seemed most likely to grab the all-important away goals that would earn them a home grand final.

Continue reading "Melbourne slips another one past sleeping Sydney" »

Yesterday The Punch went to Footscray in Melbourne’s West to talk to its people about crime and racism following the stabbing death of a young Indian student in their suburb.

Footscray is not a particularly nice place. That’s not to say it’s a bad place, but there’s a reason the yuppies in the “run rabbit run” Melbourne tourism ads didn’t play hide and seek around Footscray station.

Footscray is the kind of suburb that is pretty typical of outer urban suburbs throughout the world: a working class suburb close enough to the city that becomes a cheap base for brand new arrivals to live and set up shop. The suburb’s density and multicultural population means it often described in terms like “cultural melting pot” by people who see it as a great source of authentic Pho soup.
It’s also the suburb where 21-year-old Nitin Garg was stabbed to death on his way to work at the local Hungry Jacks.

Continue reading "Talking crime, violence and racism with Footscray" »

If you read the headlines, late-night violence in Melbourne is out of control.

To a degree this is true, but we have little chance of curbing the problem with illogical solutions.

Take some of the measures proposed in the past fortnight, for example. Firstly, there was the party promoter who banned “metrosexuals” from the Ding Dong Lounge.

Continue reading "Idiots are the problem, not alcohol" »

The biggest problem for the AFL in getting a successful presence in Western Sydney won’t be the choice of Kevin Sheedy as coach, it won’t be the home ground or sponsorship and isn’t even the popularity of rugby league as such.

No, the largest hurdle for the AFL in setting up shop in Western Sydney is this: Australian Football is still predominantly a white Anglo/Celtic sport with a culture that doesn’t look anything like Western Sydney.

Right now the AFL doesn’t even reflect the ethnic make-up of its own Melbourne heartland, so how does it expect to sell itself to kids and their parents in the most ethnically diverse part of Australia?

Continue reading "A game white people like: the AFL’s West Sydney problem" »

The ABC has been criticised for not mentioning the “M” word in their coverage of the arrest of the alleged terrorists in Victoria, for planning an attack on the Holsworthy army base in Sydney.

There have been calls from media pundits that members of the relevant community condemn terrorism.

As a member of the relevant community I’m not afraid to use the “M” word: Melburnian.

Continue reading "As a proud Melburnian, I denounce all terrorism" »

THIS is the story of two games of football, the first of which proves that the AFL is an absolute powerhouse which is rightly the envy of sports administrators the world over, the second of which casts doubt on its ability to extend beyond its tribal powerbase in the civilised AFL states.

Carlton-St Kilda at Etihad and Sydney-Collingwood at Stadium Australia.

I was lucky enough to be at the first match. It stands as one of the greatest games of footy I have ever seen. And like many people in Sydney I could have got tickets to the second match but piked due to the drizzle, the fact that it was televised, and also because I (rightly) suspected the Swans would lose.

Continue reading "Sydney’s fair-weather fans no match for Melbourne passion" »

The actual killing itself was quite professionally done. Track him down at the coffee shop and, you know, to be waiting there as he walked in the door was quite good.

See it here.

Updated: The strange thing about big historical events, the really big stories, is that they creep up on you in increments.

They bubble away in your head as you flash a glance at the news or take a longer than usual look at the international headlines.

Like little pop-up icons in our collective consciousness, bits and pieces of news on an issue begin to coalesce and we begin to take notice.

Then it reaches its crescendo and everything changes: the wall goes down, Suharto is gone, Milosevic is ousted and Obama is elected.

Continue reading "Where’s my vote Iran?" »

This graphic from news.com.au today:

In case you’ve been buried in spreadsheets or meetings all afternoon:

JUDY Moran is one of three people arrested over the murder of her brother-in-law Desmond “Tuppence” Moran.

You can read the story here.

And this from the Herald Sun:

Police say a 43-year-old man is expected to be charged with one count of murder, while a 64-year-old woman and a 45-year-old woman are expected to be charged with being an accessory to murder.

Despite the seemingly inoperable state that Rugby League can appear to be in at times, the advent of the three-match State of Origin manages to redeem it as an amazing sporting spectacle year after year. It is also a venue in which players are still given the green light to punch on.

Although nothing quite like this anymore (keep an eye on the Blue’s 13 whose idea of tackling is just to come in swining along with a young Paul Vautin)

This year the first match is in Melbourne and some deluded weirdos argue (see below) today that Origin has no place being played in AFL’s heartland. But I say let Origin be staqed in whatever city can guarantee a packed stadium of enthusiastic fans engaging in the lost art of interstate hatred. Furthermore if Melbourne wants an annual Origin clash we should give them one.

Continue reading "Punch: play Origin in Melbourne every year" »

Tonight State of Origin travels south to Melbourne. It should be the last time it does so.

Sure, it’ll be a great chance for the several dozen Melbourne Storm fans to get together, along with several thousand ambivalent corporates who will be chatting over Crownies about whether Terry Wallace jumped or was pushed as Richmond coach.

As a spectacle though it’s an insult to real league fans in Sydney and Brisbane - which offers nothing to Melburnians who simply don’t get the game, and will no doubt be shouting “high!” and “ball!” at inappropriate junctures tonight.

Continue reading "Counterpunch: Alice Springs should host the curling" »

Coffee snobbery is getting out of control. The other night my request for a dash of milk in a post-meal espresso at a hip new eatery drew a firm shake of the head. “We do not have milk,” the French owner sniffed. She didn’t mean they’d run out - they simply don’t serve milk with coffee. Not a drop.

Much like Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi, eatery owner Catherine Chauchat sets high standards for her patrons. Her chalkboard menu vetoes soft drink, and a cup of any tea other than obscure herbal digestives is out of the question.

And you can bet if she ever puts steak on the peasant-style menu, eaters won’t have the option of it served well done.

Continue reading "Full-cream fascists: just let me have milk in my coffee" »