11.3.11 – High buildings (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia)

11.3.11 – High buildings  (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia)

The train rumbles into an underground station deep below Melbourne.  Hot, we follow the city’s workforce up the stairs and into a street that is dusty and cavernous between ridiculously high office blocks.  Traffic roars past, including, as well as the usual cars and bright yellow taxis, trolley buses and swaying tramcars.  I decide I don’t like Melbourne.

On the tram

Shielding our heads from the heat with tourist leaflets, we wait for one of these trams that will show us the city.  So far it seems to be towering block after towering block.  The tram is crushed with people.  It’s an old one, like those we had in Glasgow when I was a kid, only single storey, not double decker, like ours.  The driver steers standing in his tiny cab.  It’s similar to the one we travelled on in Christchurch, although this one is not covered in flowers.  (I wonder what has become of that other little tram now?)

The tramlines turn, taking us down to the harbour.  Here, what the driver describes as ‘stunning and somewhat bizarre architecture’ sweeps up all around us.  Crazy angled walls with blocks of colour everywhere, shiny metal artworks, concrete piazzas giving vistas of blue water between the white hulls of launches whose price tag must have been pretty extreme.  A little blond girl of about two fills the air with her misery about being crushed and rattled to her destination. 

The buildings become more and more intriguing as we arrive at Flinders Street Station – a vibrant Victorian building in red and orange stone and brick.  Victorians liked to make their stations a statement – ‘We’ve got a station!  Bet it’s bigger and fancier than yours!’

Bill and the Eureka Tower

Federation Square

The station leads onto Federation Square, which is surrounded by that combination of Victorian and very modern buildings.  The Cathedral is here, triple spires in yellowish stonework.  The triangular, pentagonal, or other zany shaped modern buildings certainly also have the ‘wow factor’.  In the background, the Eureka Building, the highest building in the Southern Hemisphere, at over 90 storeys, glints in the sun.  The Yarra River, broad and tranquil, flows below - here people are walking in the sun, sitting on the grass, and even water skiing.  This was Melbourne by day – a city of contrasts, hubbub, and sunshine. 

River Yarra, Melbourne

Bill leaves me to visit the school where Foster, another of Bill’s friends from his university days, works.  I hear later that arriving there meant a pioneering journey by tram as the train had broken down.  Rescued by willing Melbournites, he arrived at last.

Bill, Meg, Foster and Glenda

That night, Foster and Glenda Adem take us out for a meal. We drive through the city centre.  Now the startlingly tall blocks glow with light, like giant light sabres, the river shimmering below.  We drive on and on – for Melbourne is an astonishingly big city – and at last emerge onto the wideness of Port Philip Bay.  The lights glimmer on the far shores and the seagulls wheel orange in the reflection of the street lights.  We dine in a shoreside restaurant and later meander along the prom, beside the lengthy St. Kilda Beach, full of clean white sand and laughing teenagers.  I decide I like Melbourne.