What is the name of the city, town or village where you live?
Melbourne
Why do you live there?
I moved here to be closer to my then-fiancee, now-wife, and also to have a second chance at my high school studies after making a mess of the first try. Third reason was simply to get out of my small country town home and into a big city, for a change of lifestyle.
What cultural opportunities do you have?
Melbourne is perhaps the multicultural capital of Australia, and is one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world. We have the biggest concentrated Greek population outside Athens (yes, that includes other Greek cities and towns). We have one of the largest Vietnamese populations outside Vietnam. The list goes on. If you want variety in dining, Melbourne is ideal. The same city block may have restaurants specialising in food from over a dozen nations. The same applies to cultural events, such as Chinese New Year, Oktoberfest, European football events, and countless others. Apart from ethnic diversity, Melbourne also has a thriving arts community, both display and performance. It is home to the Australian National Gallery, along with several other galleries, several world-class museums, several colleges devoted to the arts, giving rise to many commercial and independent theatres, innumerable live music venues, from opera and ballet through to live pub rock, an annual comedy festival that attracts performers from all over the world, several international film festivals, several markets (fresh produce, handcrafts, and others) and other cultural festivals dotted throughout the year. Melbourne is packed with art and culture.
Melbourne Guide
What recreational opportunities do you have?
More than anybody could possibly exhaust in a single visit. Melbourne’s central business district is brimming over with a great variety of places to shop, and also houses the museum, national gallery, four cinemas, an IMAX cinema, the state library, Chinatown, and myriad restaurants, all within walking distance, or a short tram ride. More wide-ranging tourist destinations are even more numberable. In summer, Melbourne has many great beaches. The very calm and sheltered Port Phillip Bay cradles several beautiful, calm bathing beaches. Both east and west of the city, however, are many popular surf beaches, some of which regularly attract international visitors. By car especially, but also to a lesser extent by public transport, Melbourne is a fantastic from which to visit sites of great natural beauty. The CBD is within a hour’s drive of rainforest, ocean cliffs, forested mountains, old-growth eucalypt forests, and others. Clustered around Melbourne are several excellent winemaking districts, as well as beautiful historical gold-rush towns. Close to the centre of Melbourne is our excellent zoo, one of the best in the world. Several other more specialised zoos are dotted around Melbourne and Victoria, including an open-range safari zoo, a bird sanctuary (which specialises in all manner of native animals), and a reptile zoo. In the CBD are many popular nightclubs, and the whole city has countless pubs, bars, and cafes. Melbourne hosts the annual Australian Grand Prix, and nearby Phillip Island is home to the annual international motorcycle grand prix. Melbourne is also a venue for all the major international musical and cultural acts that visit Australia, such as rock stars, circuses, and stage musicals. On a smaller scale, there are dozens, perhaps a hundred or more, small-scale live music venues in the CBD and suburbs, generally in pubs and bars, not to mention live stand-up comedy. Basically, you will never run out of things to do in and around Melbourne.
What do you like about it?
Basically, it has everything. I like lots of ethnic foods, and Melbourne has restaurants from pretty much every nation on earth with its own distinctive cooking, even such unusual ones as Morocco, Ethiopia, and Nepal. I like going out for entertainment, and Melbourne is full of cinemas, and pubs with live bands and comedy. I like being able to easily buy everything I need, and I get that here, too. There’s a huge daily market in the CBD with fresh produce and meat at very low prices, the convenience of at least one big mall within a short drive no matter where in Melbourne you happen to be, but still a great variety of small independent specialty shops all over the place.
What do you hate about it?
The weather can be a problem. It is wet and cold for most of the winter, and unbearably hot and humid for most of the summer, while autumn and spring are bizarre and unpredictable, literally giving "four seasons in one day", sometimes multiple times each. Traffic can be a pain, and the best roads are tolled, and tolled _heavily_. A trip from one extreme of the city to the other and then back again, sticking primarily to tolled roads, will probably cost you over five dollars, just in tolls. Just recently property prices, and of course the cost of rent, have started climbing sharply. It has become quite difficult for anyone without a solid income to live within an accessible distance of the city. Apart from that, there isn’t too much wrong with Melbourne.
What qualities really stand out? (good or bad)
The public transport system is particularly good. It has good coverage of the city and suburbs, and a single ticket will allow you to ride as many trains, buses, and trams you like until it expires. Some kind of ring-rail would be nice - currently all the railway lines run directly in and out of the city, so travelling across the suburbs can be a chore. Apart from that, and some punctuality issues, it is excellent. Also, and you probably think I am obsessed with food by this stage, Melbourne’s restaurants and cafes are truly excellent. You can find pretty much anything you want, and the quality is generally excellent. Finally, the shopping is excellent. Whether you want big upmarket international brands, or want to go bargaihunting at the markets and factory outlets, Melbourne is probably the best town for shopping in the whole of the southern hemisphere.
Melbourne Tour
Would you recommend it, and why?
Melbourne is not an exciting or vibrant town, but it is pleasant, easy to travel around by car or public transport, has relatively low levels of air pollution, and is a hub of cultural, leisure, commercial, and financial activity. It’s a good place to live, but not the world’s most thrilling holiday destination.
If I were to move there, what would I really need to know?
You would need to know where to find a place to live that is close to the places you need access to, but within your price range. Melbourne’s expensive, cheap, and moderate suburbs are all mixed up, and you cannot simply say it has a cheap side and an expensive side, though as a general rule, places close to the CBD, immediately to the east and south-east of the CBD, and close to the bay are the most expensive, and places further from the city and west tend to be cheaper, though this is always changing as new areas are developed and redeveloped.
How is it different from other places you have been?
I haven’t travelled as much as I would like to. Melbourne is not quite as big as Sydney, but is a nicer (and cheaper, and less polluted) place to live. Sydney is a great party town, a really fun place to visit, but Melbourne is a place to live.
If you live in this location, why not add an entry of your own? What does this location mean to you?
