Highlights of Melbourne, Australia

Caitlinepstein415/ February 23, 2020/ Oceania, Study Abroad/ 2 comments

Just two weeks into our semester in Australia, we traveled as a group to the trendy, southern city of Melbourne. We spent four days there visiting museums, meeting with local organizations and activists, and wandering around the city’s art-lined lanes and eating delicious food in our free time. Here are some of the highlights of our time in the city:

The Queen Victoria Market

Our hostel, Nomads Melbourne, was pretty crappy. The communal bathrooms were disgusting, the bunk beds squeaked up a storm with the slightest movement, there were less outlets in the room than there were beds, and some of my classmates are sure they found bed bugs. It was a bad hostel, but at least it was located right by the Queen Victoria Market.

I got up early a couple of mornings so I could head over to the market for some breakfast. This ended up being a great decision, because I found one of my favorite dishes from my travels: burek. This is a flaky pastry filled with yummy stuff such as cheese and spinach, pumpkin, apple, pork, etc. I ate so, so much burek while traveling around the Balkans back in May of 2019, and I was overjoyed to find it in Melbourne.

Besides burek, the market has tons of fresh produce, works of art, kitschy souvenirs, street foods, and more for sale. The market is huge, and it’s definitely worth spending some time here wandering the aisles. If you find yourself in Melbourne in the summer, they have a fantastic night market set-up on Wednesday nights. It was great to see so many people of so many backgrounds hanging out at the market eating, shopping, and listening to music on a weekday night.

The Queen Victoria Market is open on weekdays from 6 am to 3 pm and on weekend days from 6 am to 4 pm. It is closed on Mondays and only open on Wednesdays on select summer dates from 4 pm to 10 pm.

Koorie Heritage Walk

On our first day in Melbourne, we went on a Koorie heritage walk with the Koorie Heritage Trust located in Federation Square. This organization provides visitors with information about aboriginal heritage and histories in the state of Victoria.

Our guide, a young guy with aboriginal heritage, showed us around sites significant to the Koorie people around central Melbourne, and then showed us Koorie artifacts such as shields and boomerangs. It is very important to acknowledge the true owners of the land in Australia that never truly ceded that land to white settlers, and this tour gave great context about aboriginal life and history in this part of the country.

Immigration Museum

The Immigration Museum of Melbourne tells the history of immigration to Australia since the first colonialists came over in the 1700s and tells the stories of individual immigrants. Some of the language in the museum is problematic in the way that it speaks about aboriginal people and the history of immigrants, but they are very upfront about how they are working with several groups to fix the language they use. I have never seen a museum say this so outright before, and it was definitely refreshing to see.

Overall, the exhibitions are really interesting, from the more interactive art installations to the historical timeline of Australian immigration. Melbourne is a wonderfully diverse city (especially compared to Bryon Bay), and is a great location for a museum such as this one.

Street Art

Melbourne is well-known for its trendy lanes covered in street art and graffiti, and its street art definitely did not disappoint. We spent a bit of time one afternoon meandering around the well known street art lanes such as Hosier Lane and ACDC Lane admiring the art covering nearly every open surface.

Indian Food

Indian food gets its own section in this blog post because I had it two nights in a row and it was a definite highlight of our trip. Melbourne, one of Australia’s largest cities, was much cheaper to eat out in than Byron Bay, where most of our stipend goes only to groceries. As such, I was super excited to eat some yummy and diverse food for cheap.

I found this yummy and cheap food at Om Vegetarian and Crossways Vegetarian and Vegan Restaurant. Both offer all you can eat Indian food for crazy cheap. Om Vegetarian offered naan bread, three different curries, and basmati rice for $7.50 AUD, and Crossways offers a different menu each day of the week that includes an entree, a drink, and a dessert for $6.95 AUD for students and seniors and $8.95 AUD regular. When we went, we had satay veggies with tofu, basmati rice, vanilla vegan cake, and a lassi drink. It was soooo good. You definitely don’t need to be vegan or vegetarian to enjoy the super filling and affordable meals at these restaurants.

The Young Workers Center

One morning, we had the opportunity to meet and talk with a representative from the Young Workers Center, an organization that advocates for the rights for young workers in Australia. We met in Trades Hall, a historical building that has housed unions for many years. It was cool to meet in such a historic building to hear about how organizations are fighting for the working rights of young people like us.

Chinatown

I was meant to be studying in China this semester, but due to the coronavirus I was diverted here to Australia. However, I am still taking a Chinese Society and Change course, and our professor and staff are doing their best to find China related things for us to do and see while in Australia. It is definitely not the same, but I appreciate the effort.

These efforts to find Chinese related things took us to Chinatown and the Chinese Museum in Melbourne. At the Chinese Museum, we learned about the history of Chinese immigration to Australia and the struggles and discrimination that Chinese immigrants have faced. We also got a glimpse into present-day traditions in Melbourne’s Chinatown, such as their massive Lunar New Year’s celebrations complete with a huge dragon.

The group also had a Chinese meal at a local restaurant in the heart of Chinatown, where we ate group-style at a large table with a lazy Susan as we often did in China. The food was a bit Westernized (Spring rolls and potato cakes are not very Chinese, and we had to ask for chopsticks), but it was nice to have a Chinese inspired meal and afternoon with the group.

Lentil as Anything

On our last night, we had dinner as a group at Lentil as Anything, a ‘pay as you please’ restaurant that serves absolutely incredible vegan food. The restaurant is run by volunteers, and customers can pay what they feel is fair for the food, or what they are able to contribute. Those that cannot afford to pay much can contribute in any number of other ways, from volunteering in the kitchen to playing some music for other customers.

They have a rotating menu of three superbly fresh dishes a night, and I absolutely loved the polenta carbonara dish I had along with a sago fruit pudding dessert. On top of our great meal, we got to meet up with our coordinator from our trip to Bosnia last May, who is working on his PhD in Melbourne. He was such an amazing coordinator whom we all really liked, so it was great to catch up with him over a great meal.

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I really loved Melbourne for its diversity, its cheap food, and its splashes of color. It was difficult these past few weeks to transition from living in a city of nine million in Hangzhou to the tiny beach town of Byron Bay, so I was stoked to be back in a city. I thrive on the chaotic energy of a city, and definitely left Melbourne liking Australia just a bit more.