Imagine a Fellini movie. Now imagine that movie had to go to rehab for using too many psychedelic drugs, and then came back as a Magritte painting. That is what St. Kilda feels like. Each street is a parallel universe, and you can clearly feel the shift every time you leave one and enter the next. As part of what is considered to be Australia's 'most european city', St. Kilda appears as a schizophrenic ensemble of liquified dreams. It is a non-place where you can't just happen to be in, because it can only happen to be in itself. Ceci n'est pas une ville. You may start in a street with hints of Amsterdam to then turn the corner and arrive in Barcelona's ramblas which give way to a Los Angeles boulevard. Uniting street workers, Elvis impersonators and pink-haired live Botero figures, the streets of St. Kilda are a display of the absurd. And yet, between feelings of uneasiness and of disbelief, this place has a strange charm that leaves you wanting to explore more, to see just how far the multiplicity of parallel planes can take you. Kite conventions, construction site weddings, suggestive street art...St. Kilda's got it all. It's the vibrant part of town with deserted streets which leave you strange feelings of nostalgia for something that you can never fully pinpoint, since as soon as you turn a corner you are in a different sphere of being and time.
“Oh, you're gonna love Melbourne, it's the most European city of Australia”. Is this the image Europe has given of itself to the outside world? After half a day on the streets of St. Kilda all I can say is that Europe must be more enigmatic than we think...
What's next? Tomorrow there's more of Melbourne to explore. This is gonna be interesting!
