Victoria's secrets

Flying from Adelaide to Melbourne is a short hop – it takes longer to get from the airport to my Uncle Mick's and he's come all that way to collect me. What a trouper. Mick and his wife Margaret live in Berwick in the south western suburbs. They're 50km from the centre of town, which makes Melbourne sound like it takes up the entire state of Victoria. It is quite vast but there's no sense of being in a big city as the majority of houses appear to be freestanding with gardens. We swish through the automatic gates and I'm shown to my 'suite', an expansive bedroom with a kingsize bed and my own bathroom. The weather is performing like an English summer's day so we sit outside with coffees, then Margaret serves up deliciously juicy steaks (it's called taking a break from vegetarianism in style). I have far too much Chardonnay and roll into my giant bed.

The next morning Mick knocks on my door at 7.08am and asks if I'm ready for our bush walk. Grrr. We drive up to Cardinia reservoir and I do some (very fast) walking behind the old feller.

Mick is forced to slow down, however, when we encounter a whole field of breakfasting kangaroos, including a mother with a joey, both nibbling on the grass at the same time. Kangaroo kerching!


I spend the afternoon at Gloria Jean's local coffee shop for the free wifi – Mick's dongle is not compatible with Macbook Air... damn you Apple – while Mick and Margaret spend the afternoon cooking up a spicy storm for Bernard (a cousin of Mick and my mum's who also lives in Melbourne) and his wife Meri, plus Linda and John (my Auntie Elsie's brother who lives here too). The food is superb, Indian and Malaysian, and there's cheeky humour and pranks courtesy of Bernard. What a convivial introduction to this family outpost. I'm touched by the welcome.

The following day I'm introduced to Melbourne when we drive right in and park behind the city's 'cultural precinct', Federation Square. The design of the complex is distinctive but the jury's still out for me.
The Grand Prix is in full swing and we can actually hear the F1 cars as they scream around the tracks over in Albert Park. Margaret plays tour guide, leading us down lanes buzzing with outdoor cafes, along avenues lined with designer stores, through historic shopping arcades and points out some choice graffiti, apparently one of Melbourne's most street-cred calling cards. And no, she's not sniffing glue down an alley here – she had a terrible cold and was putting on the bravest of faces, poor love.

I
Other street art we happen upon is a little more inexplicably bizarre.

As is some of the city's architecture. I love the bluestone of the National Gallery of Victoria and there's a lot of exposed beamery and rusted metal, industrial chic it's often called, in the city's bars, restaurants and galleries. But then you get something like this, the Recital Centre. I mean, what is it saying and who listened?

Thank goodness for places like the Melbourne Museum, for it's a joy to walk into its airy glass atrium and branch off to explore the treasures so beautifully organised within. There's  a mind-boggling look at deforestation and its consequences and I particularly enjoy this description of the impact of settlers by scholar Andrew W Crosby: ' European immigrants arrived as "part of a grunting, lowing, neighing, crowing, chirping, snarling, buzzing, self-replicating and world-altering avalanche".' Fantastic. I'm cheered, too, by the work of Aboriginal painter Turbo Brown.


Visiting the Koorie centre isn't quite so joyful. It's the cultural hub founded by Aborigines that deals with their own experience. Needless to say, it has been grim. I wander into an educational area and encounter a Massacre Map of Victoria that details dates, places, methods and numbers of Aborigines killed by settlers. I'm saddened to learn how advanced and in tune with their surroundings their land management was, how they knew exactly what the land would provide and how they took only enough to sustain their people. Bernard shows me a book when we're round at his and Meri's for dinner, called The Biggest Estate On Earth, a study of how the Aborigines achieved the perfect work-life balance thanks to their knowledge of the earth and climate.
I'm reading The Secret River by Kate Grenville, an Orange prize-winner that follows a Londoner transported to Sydney in the early 1800s. A few people have recommended it as a novel that gets under the skin and into the psyche of the early settlers, but also provides a sobering glimpse of the impact they had on the locals. It is what they call a riveting read. Pass it on.
What else do I do in Melbourne? I squash onto a busy tram... I see more traditional Aboriginal art at the Ian Potter Gallery. The Northern Territory's Ray Munyal has painted part of the Wagilag Sisters story with the pair depicted here at a well surrounded by itchy caterpillars...

I get to the top of the gold-tipped block-of-bling, the Eureka Tower, and can see across the Yarra river, over the famous sports arenas and beyond the outer suburbs as far as the Dandenong Ranges...

And I find a statue of Robert Burns, not far from the State Parliament buildings. Now that is street sculpture I wholeheartedly approve of.