Outside of the Segar household, there were the delights of Melbourne to assimilate and then turn into a few short paragraphs of guff. So here’s your guff.
The Botanic Gardens are just as beautiful as those in Sydney – we have a wander through on Shal’s birthday, and then collapse on a grass bank and make bitchy comments about the passing pedestrians. All the water features (formerly called ponds and lakes before gardening shows took over the world) are badly in need of H2O, many just boggy remnants filled with very upset ducks, though with the talent Cat and I have for bringing rain to this parched country, it came as no surprise when it started showering towards the end of our stay.
The CBD of Melbourne is pretty similar to Sydney – tall office blocks, the occasional (and beautiful)Victorian buildings that survived modernisation (the old Exhibition Building is still in great shape, though we couldn’t get to it due to the flower show in the grounds), and constant crowds, though given the eerie quiet you tend to find in 95% of Australia, sometimes it’s just nice to see where all the people are. It has a few great bookshops, and at least one (which shall remain nameless, since I’ve forgotten the name) which may well be the worst in the world (unless the witterings of psychics and fiction works which appear to smell of some kind of meat are your thing).
The main station (Flinders Street) is an impressive Victorian structure standing alongside the Yarra River. We did a short cruise along the river, past the CBD and out towards the MCG, the Rod Laver Stadium, some other Olympic Stadium, the proposed site for a new soccer stadium, and various other sports structures (the 80,000-seater croquet arena, the 120,000-seater tractor mower circuit, with retractable roof to keep the grass dry). Good God, do the Aussies love sport. Well, except for the one that the rest of the world plays, but give them a chance.
Opposite the main station is Federation Square, the newly revamped cultural centre of Melbourne Central (which Shal happens to hate). It includes the National Gallery of Victoria, which we wandered around which has an exhaustive collection of works from Aussies, both native and European immigrants. This is where we, as cultural camels, finally filled our humps to the brim with Aboriginal art. After you’ve seen 100 collections of dots and squiggly lines, you’ve seen them all, and sad to say, each story that accompanies the art tends to blur into one rather pudgy legend, most of which involve a giant snake or two eating a bunch of men, then turning into either (a) a mountain range or great big rock, or (b) a constellation of stars. Maybe my increasing cynicism is starting to take the edge off any interest I had in myths and legends, but now I tend to find myself marching past these sections in the museums we go to.
Next door to the Gallery is the Museum of the Moving Image, which as well as screening films and having filmy-type lectures, also has the occasional roaming exhibition. As if in reaction to the hideous sportyness surrounding it, the museum housed ‘Game On’, a history of computer gaming filled with playable computers, arcade machines and consoles, held in a deep, dark basement where natural light could not go, but myself and my nerding brethren could skulk and wheeze and bash buttons.
The nice thing about gaming is that I’ve been around for the bulk of it (though a couple of games predated even my arthritic self), and this was a glorious nostalgia-fest. The kids ran for the latest games, which left the likes of Pacman, Space Invaders, Missile Command, Asteroids and Track and Field for the greying likes of me (and my surprisingly eager wife, a keen Atari player in her day, and a demon at Pacman).As I wandered from Atari to Spectrum to Commodore 64, and onwards, my tears of happiness were in danger of turning the entire room into a massive electrical fire.
I guess for my generation (of mostly guys, I assume), this is where our childhood memories lie. It is a soulless man who doesn’t stare at the likes of Elite, Tetris and Goldeneye and feel the twitch of childish glee they first got from playing. A lot of older folk remember where they were when JFK was shot, or when man first set foot on the moon. All sorts of interesting events happened during my youth, but you know what, who gives a shit? I was playing Gauntlet when it happened.
