Melbourne

APEC was just a few days off and I commuted as usual, chatting to one of my British roommates as the train glided through our shared stops. I missed the first sentence the stranger spoke, in the clack-and-rattle of the train and the surprise of being addressed in stick-to-yourself peak hours in Sydney.

"Sorry, love?" I said, affecting the Australian term of snide endearment.

"Why don't you go home and take George with you," she reasserted more forcefully. My companion's mouth dropped open. I was struck dumb. My fellow commuters couldn't tell whether to hiss or cheer. It was then that I started counting down the hours until my last-minute flight to Melbourne.

There's this thing among Australian city-dwellers. You're supposed to be either a "Melbourne type" or "Sydney type." You're not allowed to like both equally, and refraining from declaring some kind of allegiance is the same as pretending that all flavors of ice cream are just as appealing. Having never been to Melbourne (or any state capital other than Sydney), I was nervous/excited to see which type I was.

Where Sydney perches around harbours, prim and beautiful in its blue-over-white cityscapes, Melbourne sprawls hugely across green squares and red bricks. Sydney is glass skyscrapers tapering down into ramshackle terraces; Melbourne is imposing Victorian elegance spreading endlessly into carefully sectioned suburbs with some Gothic revival sprinkled in for good measure. My first day I was happy to remember that lockers still exist in bus stations outside of New York. Had I carried my pack all the miles it took to walk from one district to another, I might have collapsed on the street.

I saw the Gaol, where prisoners were stored when Australia was England's Guatanamo Bay. It being Thursday, I stood giant alongside packs of school children on excursions, straining my ears to pick up bits of their tour. Where they screamed at the death masks I only gasped. Where they jumped on the trap door that opened onto hundreds of certain deaths, I clung to the edge of the metal balcony and thought: the executioners were drawn from among their own.

I saw the Supreme Court library, straight from a movie or storybook, right down to the stained glass lamps and the ladders that slip down an entire collection with a scholar riding on board. I saw Cook's cabin, with its British flag still proudly waving these hundreds of years later. In yet another foreign city I found myself drawn inside the largest and most intimidating church, playing again into the hands of some religious fascination that I cannot understand or shake. Then I saw my friends, a year later, and still the same.

My second day I went to the aquarium and stood awed as the deadliest creatures in the sea waved right above me, just an arch of glass between me and those rows of dangling teeth and sharp stingers. I saw the Leafy Sea Dragon, the most extraordinary creature my eyes have ever beheld, and I stood in the middle of a group trying unsuccessfully to take a picture that captured its ability to be both seaweed and seahorse at the same time. Afterwards we went to the National Gallery. The Australian Gallery. The endless halls of art that I don't understand but either hate or love for some reason. I saw aboriginal artwork, crazy spirals and dots on bark and leaf, slapped up on straight white walls. It looked all wrong.

We spent the weekend down on the Mornington Peninsula, singularly the most naturally beautiful piece of land that I have ever traveled through. Down there it's still the 40s with big cars and beach hair and people grinning in the ocean air. My friend and tour guide pointed out the place where a Prime Minister walked into the ocean for a swim and disappeared. I didn't even know that had happened. Imagine if we lost a President? I mean into thin air. Or blue water.

The AFL finals are on, and my team (the Swans) were out of it as of this Saturday. But we saw the Bourne Ultimatum (good) and stoked a fire at my friend's parents' beach house (great), passing the night petting dogs and cats and talking about where it is that we're going to travel next. On Sunday we went to the sort of open air market where you can scrutinize everything and don't feel the pressure to buy anything but tomatoes, and then we went home and I cooked a dinner that made my hosts rave. All of that good feeling was momentarily crushed by a sudden realization that I was flirting with a close friend if only because I believe he deserves better than his current situation. Because his current situation says things like, "I don't speak Asian," and "I wish everything here weren't so Australian" and "I have no interest in going to Europe - it's been done to death" without letting the smallest wince of shame cross her pretty, tiny face. I winced plenty.

Monday I was back in the city, sampling Melbourne's famous shopping. Out of the vacuum of country living I found out about how The Chasers boys (think Jackass with a brain) got past two points of APEC security in a fake caravan, stickered in front with the Canadian flag and packed in back with a guy dressed in an Osama bin Laden disguise. There's millions of dollars of security for you. They put up fences in the city that made its citizens feel like dogs. Someone went to the wrong side of it and they're talking about putting those Chasers boys in jail. It should be said that they turned back voluntarily. Two shirts, one pair of shorts, and some news later, I boarded the skybus back to the airport. The first flecks of Melbourne rain hit the windshield as we approached the departure gate. Melbourne's weather is famously bad, but you couldn't tell by talking to me.

I was happy to fly back in above my city's lights, that wild little grid with big black holes where the harbour cuts in. I can say now that I understand the pull of Melbourne, but Sydney has me roped and dragged. Come visit.

Comments

[Peter]

I could spend a month in some of these places where you spend only hours, and still not notice the things that you do.

[toby]

Hello Amanda, haven't been here for a while.
I read about that bin Laden stunt in UK newspaper. Funny and shocking in equal measure.
Your friend's girlfriend is a nightmare. She must please him very much in other ways but he'll get over her eventually.
Thought the Guantanemo reference was a bit lazy, for many reasons. The world in 1800 was not the same as today and many of the convicts chose transportation instead of imprisonment. But I'm sure you know the real history. We all have skeletons in our ancestral closets!

[little white liar]

Toby: Hi, I've missed you. You're absolutely right, of course, that the US:Guatanamo::England:Australia analogy doesn't quite work, but I couldn't think of a better one. We don't exactly have an island paradise where felons choose to be shipped rather than stay stateside. Unless they're not telling us something about SingSing. Can you think of a better comparison?