tooth soup

I arrived back from Melbourne yesterday at about 7:00pm but, due to jet-lag and the soothing caress of a seven element gas heater operated somewhere to the left and behind my buttocks, I fell rather rapidly into a state of drowsiness and then ultimately unconsciousness – reveling in the (to my mind) scorching conditions of my bed. Now though, awake, refreshed from a great ten hours or so and contemplating delicously the prospect of hot coffee, I feel I can competently describe my adventures in the city on the counterbalance of this country of ours; Melbourne.

But first, that coffee.

Mm. We arrived at Avalon Airport from Perth at about 11 o’clock at night – it’s a three-and-three-quarter hour trip, plus the two hours that you gain. Avalon Airport sits in an interesting location; it’s smack-bang in the middle of nowhere about an hour out of Melbourne city. It has a departure lounge and a shed where you pick up your luggage when you arrive. Oh and a lot of parking spaces. It’s as if, perhaps during a particular bad drought or perhaps covered in locusts, a farmer got sick of farming and decided to tarmac the place and land planes there. Our humerously random bus driver remarked (on the departing trip) that there used to be sheep in one of the paddocks next to it; oh, and that they grow different coloured rocks there, but they’re faded so they look normal.

The trip into Melbourne was pretty spectacular. I was arching my head; gazing wonderingly out the side of the bus to see the city lights of Melbourne. There they were stretching like pretty candles out below the indomitably stretching feat of engineering known as the bridge. It was very picturesque and filled me with excitement at the prospect of the coming week. Then Louise tapped me on the shoulder and pointed out opposite window, which was rapidly filling with the actual cityscape of Melbourne, which was rather a lot larger than my previous view of the industrial section. And ye, did my heart filleth with even more wonder and awe. And mine stomach didst acheth with pains for something to eat, and mine intestines with the need to expel wastes after a long trip. But eventually we made it to the house where Hope lived. Once there we immediately grabbed the nearest house-mate and Hope and walked down to the bottle-o to get a carton of Cooper’s Pale Ale (apparently the only beer that Vegans can drink – oh yeah, Jarad [one of the roomies] is a vegan), a quick stop at the nearest 7-11 to get some plastic microwave food and then back to the house to drink/eat. Basically it was a meet-and-greet sort of night with the people that would be letting us intrude upon their space for the next week and a day. Bed was welcome and sleep was fairly easy.

Over the next few days we got initiated into the city of Melbourne and all of its quirks. One thing I immediately noticed was the difference in wildlife – lying in bed in the morning, I couldn’t identify any of the usual bird calls which was a very unnatural thing for me. In the city sparrows are everywhere – a pest apparently, even if they are kind of cute in a Disney-like way. Melbourne also boasts one of the most impressively large collections of stencil art in Australia, if not the world. It’s everywhere. Every corner, every street, every barely clean wall is inhabited by past-idols, strange words or abstract images whose message permanently drips over brick and mortar. It is pretty much a generally arty city – a lot of monuments, strange sidewalk projects and interesting architecture make it a lot more pretty to walk through then humble old Perth. That latter point, the architecture, was enough to have Louise subconciously rubbing drool off the corner of her mouth as she ran rampant through Federation Square; marvelling at angle and space, concept and design. It was really quite fun to see her so excited over something which a lot of us just walk into and forget about. I suppose when you’ve studied it as she has there is a much deeper appreciation for the boxes we build for ourselves.

The major places we visited were the NGV – National Gallery of Victoria, the Federation Square and the Shrine of Remembrance. The federation square gallery was great – the year twelve art awards had just been put up and some of the stuff that they’d managed to achieve was absolutely mind blowing. I find young artists a lot more interesting to look at; they don’t hide ideas behind metaphors half as much, everything is loud and out there and colourful and quick frankly, more interesting. There was another exhibition of modern jewelery which was really cool – the most interesting piece of that was some necklaces and earrings that used bones or heads from dead birds/rodents, and actually managed to look good while doing it.
The gallery of international artists had a really great exhibition on Picasso entitled Love and War which dealt with the period of time during which he was living in an apartment with Dora Maar – his lover and also an established surrealist photographer – during the World War. There were a lot of his ‘Weeping Woman’ and ‘Head of Woman’ paintings, along with step-by-step photos of some of his masterpieces taken by Dora while he was completing them. Definitely worth the twenty dollars it took to get us in there. Before we saw that however there were a couple of other exhibitions on sculpture and furniture that Louise got right into again – apparently a unit they took in second semester involved studying and creating furniture – and she explained every piece to me and how the designers of the chairs were usually architects who wanted something to ‘go’ with their house design.
The Shrine of Remembrance is one impressively sombre building. Its design is classic on the outside but amazingly modern on the inside – the toilets there being some of the best we saw the entire time we were at Melbourne. Being of a fairly unpatriotic persuasion when it comes to wars and such, it wasn’t so much an experience for me as it was a curiosity; but there was a sense of gratitude that came with seeing all these monuments to men who died in battle.

Shopping in Melbourne is insane. Actually, before I start, but still related, if you are ever going to shop in Melbourne, make sure that wherever you shop is within desperately-need-to-pee-shuffling distance to the Myer complex. Why? Because they are they only goddamn place in the entire city that has toilets. Well, that we could find and that weren’t need-to-buy-something only (thanks Hungry Jacks). Anyway, shopping. There are a lot of stores in the Melbourne Central mall that we don’t get over here and it was fun checking those out. For reference, the higher you go in the mall the more expensive it is – ending up in places where a long sleeved collared shirt costs about $200. It was tempting to run up and down the stairs and then try on a bunch of stuff and sweaty it all up, but I refrained for the sake of posterity. Oh and they have Borders there – the best bookshop cum dvd shop cum cafe in the world. I think we’ve got one now next to DJ in the city so I’ll be visiting that fairly soon. And Minotaur! The store where I could sit for hours and count up all the money I would spend on comics and assorted merchandise if I had it. It’s in a basement (what is with the predilection for comic stores with basements?) and it is beautiful.
Polar opposite to the city is the Brunswick area itself. Here you’ll find op-shops and factory outlets up to your eyeballs, and all the savings and rummaging that this entails. I ended up with two fine jackets for $16, a new pair of tartan cons for $50 and a new pair of jeans for $50 from these shops – bargains, every one.

One thing that a lot of people say about Melbourne is that it’s cold. Typically I laugh at these people; scorning their lack of internal heating methods and waving away their insistence that it’s literally freezing over there. Two incidents while we were over there had me whistling a different tune. Incident one was the only time we got lost in Melbourne. For some reason, we both remember Hope telling us that the number 96 tram or the number 86 tram were fine if we wanted to get back to our house as they both went to the same place, but one via a different street. This is certainly not the case. Like innocent lambs we wandered from shop to shop after getting off the 86 near where we thought the 96 would have ended up; one shopkeeper told us that it was “a fair walk” to where we wanted to be and we, like the newbies that we were, walked. Two and a half hours, two more tram rides and -1 degrees celcius later we stumbled into the house, dived into bed and refused to come out until the Earth had turned that part of the world to where the equator had been.
The second incident was far less dramatic and also far less outdoors. On the last night that we were staying in the house, Louise’s restlessness caused me to roll over and land my head in her hair. Something wet and cold tickled the end of my nose before the sensation faded again. I opened my eyes a touch and felt her hair for whatever it was, only to discover that there were crystals of ice weaved in amongst her strands of hair. I was at a loss for words and remain in that state now, except to say that it was that fucking cold.

The food there was pretty good. I think I mentioned before that the housemates were a combination of vegan and vegetarian that made dinners a bit of a leafy affair if we didn’t bring our own stuff or eat out. For the first few nights it was okay; we had pasta, some random italian meals and a lot of beer. Half a week or so later and it just wasn’t enough – steak was needed, and steak was needed quickly. We walked for quite a while from a tram station (yeah, we stil hadn’t quite got the hang of it) before we reached the CopperWood restaurant on Lygon Street. Wow. This was carnivore heaven. I can’t even remember what steak I had, but it had a garlic and prawn sauce and was roughly the same size as my face (with a little extra at the sides). This, accompanied by red wine and a blow-torched Creme Brulee, made for one of the more memorable nights of the trip; myself and Louise making the most of time spent together in a strange-ish city with no need to go anywhere but where we wanted to. The sensation of freedom (and wine-helped euphoria) was blissfully intense.

One of the nights we were there we had pre-arranged tickets to see The Presets at the Corner Hotel and that went fairly off. The music was awesome, the other band did a great job (Midnight…something, I want to say ‘Express’ but I know it’s wrong) and the guys went totally off by the end of the night. Turns out that the bar is also a pretty good place to watch the show from down there; a little cordoned off bit and a ramping floor meaning that the times when we were getting drinks were also the best times for seeing the awesome light display going mental and having enough room to skank around with the bar staff.

Lexei! How could I ever forget that.The final night of our stay we were invited around to have one of the most impressively organised dinners that I’ve had. Not because of the actual level of detail or anything (that was impressive in its own right) but also because of the professional way our host had everything on the go at once and still managed to be talking, smoking and running around showing me her house at the same time. It was very accomplished and stood up there with the coolest things we did while over there. Thanks Blixa!

So yes. That wraps up my trip report really. Now I’m back in (warm, gloriously warm!) Perth where university starts soon and work has rostered me on stacks in the next week or so. And right now, I’m bloody tired. So goodnight all.
p.

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