Melbourne

Victoria, Australia. Where you can drink the tap water; where there is T.P. in abundance, and you can even flush it. After months in Asia, I felt like I’d arrived in a wonderland.

We’ve enjoyed watching episodes of Border Security: Australia’s Front Line. So we know what happens when people declare they have no food with them, and then get caught with a suitcase full of meat, for instance. I was, therefore, hardly prepared for how laid-back an entry we had at Melbourne airport. The only question the immigration official asked was why we hadn't used the automatic kiosks! “Never mind, you’re always welcome to visit us up here.” 

“Welcome”? To a First World country? We’d declared our intention to stay for three months, and were prepared to give our itinerary and our onward flight, but we might as well not have booked one. All she said was, “Enjoy your stay”!

I wish I could speak as highly of Scoot, the discount Singapore airline we’d flown to Australia. Do not be tempted by the lower fares. Not that there was anything cheap about the plane itself, except that if you touched the armrest with your elbow, the overhead light went on. We paid to check our bags and for a meal, but we were lucky to get the former. Nothing, not even water, was included on this flight, and heaven help you if you didn’t bring your own entertainment. Anyway, by the time we got to T’s sister’s place, nothing could have been more welcome than family, and little luxuries like fresh salad.

Continent #4 is a change of pace for us. While we’re exploring some places that we’ve never been before, it’s mainly about visiting family and friends. Australia means not only developed-world prices, but fish and chips (you can get this in Asian countries, but we never did). The British influence here also means familiar bread, Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes, and Coronation Street. We lapped up everything.

Of course, you don’t have to be in Australia long to remember that Britain is very far away. One morning, we got up early to take a walk down by the Yarra River. We shared the first part with a number of Eastern Grey kangaroos.

There’s also the fact that it is summer here. Which means swimming, and desperately needing shorter hair. I’m not sure the Australian hairdresser did any better on mine than the barber in Hanoi, but at least it cost many times more!

Did I mention T’s sister and brother-in-law spoiled us? A pool, watching American football and even basketball on TV, a guest room that made me feel I was floating away on a feathery cloud. We may have been far away from family at the holidays, but they certainly made up for it in the New Year.

We were close enough to Melbourne to get in via public transit, but far enough out to feel like we were in a small town. The first day we stopped by a local information center, and the woman there offered us information on more walks than we could possibly do during our stay. She also advised us on how to buy the elusive transit card (like some other public transit systems nowadays, Melbourne’s no longer takes cash). As we walked down the road to where we thought we could buy one, here came this woman’s car, and she jumped out to tell us actually we could buy it on the bus, and then gave us a ride to the bus stop! As it happened, the buses we tried did not have any cards for sale. But that was okay because the bus drivers were happy to give us a ride anyway!

By the time a workman by the side of the road actually doffed his hat to us and said, “G’day to you fine ladies,” I thought I was on a TV show myself.

Since we were visiting during the Australian Open, it made sense to go into Melbourne itself and spend a day at the tennis.

Not the one you're thinking of

The day before, the weather was so hot I don’t know how players could be expected to stay on court. We, however, spent it in a neighborhood of west Melbourne where T. had found a better value-for-money hotel than could be found in the Central Business District. The Plough Hotel has been there for many years, and its surrounding neighborhood, Footscray, turned out to be a fascinating place to stay.

Wish I'd gone to Tina's.

Walking by the Footscray Market, we felt like we were back in Vietnam. Waves of immigrants from Italy, Southeast Asia, and Ethiopia have made this neighborhood home, and it’s reflected in the variety of restaurants. You can just tell that these are family places that have been there for decades—it’s not a place that dresses up for tourists.

 From Footscray it’s easy to get into the C.B.D., where we met up with a friend I knew in London. Being a Melbourne resident herself now, she showed us a succession of cool places, including one of those elusive rooftop bars. In Melbourne, you only have to go a couple stories up to have a view.

Because of the sad phenomenon of terrorists driving vehicles into people, many cities have implemented new security measures. Melbourne is no different--there are now big blocks along Federation Square to prevent this from happening. Artists have put their own interpretation on the blocks, only to find that the city has rented them--might not get its deposit back!

A common sentiment

The next day, when we went to the Australian Open, was fortunately much more moderate in temperature. We didn’t see any famous stars, except a “Legends” match between John and Patrick McEnroe and two Swedes, Tomas Johansson and Mats Wilander. 

John McEnroe serves

But we saw some women’s and mixed doubles matches, including an upset by some young Australians and a winning team that included a Canadian, Gabriela Dabrowski. It was fun to see the Aussies, Sanders and Polmans, win. Not only because the crowd was into it but because afterwards, they just came out carrying their rackets, and were happy to pose for pictures with some local kids. They were little older than kids themselves, clearly just happy to be playing tennis.

On Sunday morning we checked out of our hotel, diagonally opposite the Footscray Community Uniting Church. The service had just started as we came in. It wasn't a big congregation, but it was very diverse.

The minister is a woman with the wonderful name of the Reverend Lavingi Fine Tupou. She said in her sermon that she was originally from Tonga and that back home, she used to think the Methodists were the only church, so she wouldn’t open her door when Mormon missionaries or others came calling. But, she said, she had learned to open the door, because if she listened to what they had to say, she could then share what she believed. It seemed like a lesson we could apply in many situations.

Rev. Lavingi concluded her sermon with a tribute to a member of the congregation called John, who had just died. Her voice broke as she spoke of how John was always taking care of the church building, how the church would never be the same without him. By the time she finished, both of us were choked up too. “I didn’t even know John!” T. protested.

The Footscray church, with its telltale flame of the Methodists, has services in four different languages during the week. At the coffee hour (to which we were warmly invited by a woman who said “No one visits Footscray!”) we spoke to several people who had immigrated to Australia at different times. One was a woman who moved here from Sicily 56 years ago. Another was originally from Singapore and, though in her seventies now, had recently discovered through Facebook that she had family in Canada. So she’d just gotten back from a three-week trip to see them in Toronto, as well as Ottawa, Montréal, and a frozen Niagara Falls!

The woman who had invited us to stay also mentioned that down the street, the neighborhood was celebrating the lunar new year. So we had to stop by and check out the foods of various Asian countries, just for old time’s sake. There was also a sober reminder that some immigrants had been on the losing side of the war in Vietnam.

Given the summer weather, we were happy to have a day at the beach with family. Anglesea is some way along the Great Ocean Road, and as lovely as it sounds. We even got to borrow body boards. Though we didn’t get spectacular rides on them, at least we weren’t hammered into the sand, like the last time we tried body boarding.

Our last day in Melbourne was 26 January—Australia Day. Having listened to talk radio during the week, we couldn’t fail to notice that this holiday isn’t popular with everyone. The main sticking point seems to be the date, which was originally the day in 1788 that the first fleet of British ships arrived in New South Wales. Since the indigenous people of Australia were, at best, totally ignored from that time, many Australians today (Aboriginal and not) regard 26 January as “Invasion Day.”

Others, including some Aboriginal leaders, feel that although the date has that history, today Australia Day is about all Australians celebrating what is great about the country. This is not a controversy that can be neatly settled. So when our family invited us to their Australian citizenship ceremony on that day, I appreciated the fact that the local council didn’t try to gloss over the different points of view. There was more than one Aboriginal speaker, and they didn’t see eye to eye. There was a didgeridoo performance by Uncle Gnarrayarrahe while the official flags of Australia were raised—both of them.

The Australian and Aboriginal flags

 There was a veteran of Afghanistan who wheeled up and talked about “the spirit of Anzac,” originally named for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.

War memorial. Australians fought in both World Wars as well as Malaya, Korea, and Vietnam.

And, most moving from our point of view, there was the part where immigrants to Australia became full citizens of their new country.

I’ve been to these ceremonies in a few countries now, and they make a deep impression. In these days when “immigration” seems to be spoken of only as a problem, it’s moving to remember how big a deal it is for someone, even a privileged First Worlder like me, to jump through all the hoops of moving to another country legally. To get that far, and to identify with the new land strongly enough to become a citizen, is a huge commitment. I could see that it meant a lot to our newly Australian relatives.

The only weird moment was when a couple of girls got up and sang John Lennon’s “Imagine.” Not that they didn’t do a good job, but “Imagine there’s no country…” struck us as a strange choice for a citizenship ceremony! At least we moved on to the national anthem, followed by a song called “I Am Australian.” We all had little Australian flags to wave while singing. The Wurundjeri Elder was waving one, too. 

Back at the house, we enjoyed a barbecue (naturally), along with a very fine Australian wine out of Waterford crystal glasses. Given the value of the glasses and my penchant for spilling red wine, I drank with much trepidation. We talked about identifying with the country we were born in, or were naturalized in, or where our parents or grandparents were born. Maybe all three.