Painted Portals - The Doors of Melbourne's Brunswick Street

Over at http://www.melbourne.com.au/ they describe Fitzroy’s

Brunswick Street

area as “the café food precinct bordering the CBD that encapsulates the soul of Melbourne.” It’s tolerant and accommodating they add and is home to the rich, the poor, the Bohemian, trendy, young, the alternative and the rich. “It’s where you see someone driving an Audi TT or riding an old pushbike – someone with purple hair or someone wearing a business suit. It’s trendy, fashionable, chic and shabby all at once.

What they don’t mention, is the street art and graffiti, which seems odd given that you can’t miss it. It’s everywhere. It’s something that defines the area just as much as all of the above; and love it, or hate it, there’s no escaping it.

I love it. To me, it pays homage almost to what was once – many decades ago – a grungy working class area of low rent and cheap shops. It wasn’t until the 1970s when students, artists and fellow Bohemians moved in that it began to be popular; and today, they’ve been joined by suave hipsters, young professionals with fat wallets and baby boomers wanting to settle in an inner city Melbourne suburb close to cafes, bars and chic boutique stores.

I always visit Brunswick Street when I’m in Melbourne – as much for the street art and the people as the stores and cafes. It’s much more upmarket than Footscray (see blog post below) but still grungy enough to get my attention. I like that the place embraces a crazy mish-mash of visual expression – from creative shop window dressings and walls covered in posters and street art to the colourful, multi-cultural street wear of the inhabitants and visitors.

Most of all, I love the shop doors – colourful portals embellished by street and graffiti artists that line both sides of every street. It’s almost as if there’s a silent, accepted rebellion against the hedonistic culture of consumerism, an embracing of difference and individuality that many more sedate and pristine areas could learn from.

There doesn’t appear to be any anxiety about the graffiti and wall murals. Shop owners haven’t gone out of their way to paint out the colourful swirls that pop-up overnight. Its as if they’ve accepted – even welcomed – the additional, unsolicited graphics that make their store stand out.

In fact, in Brunswick Sreet, you stand out if you *don’t* have graffiti and/or street art plastered across your premises. I like that. And I’m always much more likely to spend money in a place like

Brunswick Street

(or in Melbourne’s graffiti-covered back laneways), than I am in the sanitised department stores of

Bourke Street

, or the sleek, stylish streets of Toorak.

Discovering Footscray - Multicultural Melbourne

Every time I visit Melbourne, I spend a lot of time on the V/Line trains – mostly going up and down the Bendigo Line, as I visit the city (from Woodend), or go exploring further north. I am in love with the V/Line trains and the fabulous commuter service they provide all over the state of Victoria and I’m always intrigued by the towns and suburbs I pass on any one journey.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve regularly passed the Melbourne suburb of Footscray and this trip (September-October), I finally made a point of stopping to explore the streets that stretch back from the station. I wasn’t disappointed. “It’s very Vietnamese,” someone had told me; “Lots of Africans,” said another; so I knew I would be happy there. I like the older parts of any city – all the more when they are filled with ethnic diversity and cultural interest.

Located just 5km north of central Melbourne, Footscray has a population of around 12,000 people – maybe more – and its residents reflect the successive waves of immigration - from the early Italian and Yugoslav migrants to the current influx of Vietnamese, Indian and East Africans, who now call this shabby-yet-fascinating place, home.

Footscray was originally home to the Woimurrung and Boonwurrung Aboriginal tribes of the Kulin nation, who had occupied the area for over 40,000 years. When Europeans began settling the area in the 1830s, many within the Aboriginal community succumbed to European diseases. Things are very different today. In 2006, less than half of Footscray’s total population (41.1%) was born in Australia. Since 2000, there has been a dramatic increase in residents from Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Burma, many of them refugees.

Suffice to say, if you have white skin, you stand out in Footscray, so I tried very hard to be inconspicuous with my camera. It wasn’t easy and in the end, having wandered the streets and the huge Footscray Market, I settled down in a corner café, isolated one section of footpath through the open door and photographed everyone who walked past. The photos here are just a tiny portion of the passing parade of nationalities that came into view. It was a very satisfying exercise and one I’m bound to repeat on my next visit to Melbourne.

http://www.vline.com.au/

Exploring Melbourne's Cultural Quarter - A Short Photo Parade

 

Every time I come to Melbourne, I spend a lot of time around the Cultural Quarter - the creative zone that stretches from Federation Square (opposite Flinders Street Railway Station), down to the National Gallery of Victoria. I've been there twice this week and the above photographs are a tiny sample of the hundreds I took. The first images relate to the NGV of course, where I went to see  Vienna Art & Design, marvellous exhibition which is due to finish any day. From there I wandered down to Federation Square (the hefty grey buildings shown above), which I've written about several times before on this blog. (You can read that by clicking on Federation Square in the label lines below).

That's where you'll find NGV's Ian Potter Centre and the Australian Centre for Moving Image, along with crowds of people enjoying the terrific public spaces. The entire area is marvellous for people-watching and photography and I will be sad to say goodbye to them when I leave Australia in two days' time.

Back to wobbly old Christchurch and reality.