Rediscovering Melbourne

When people ask me to tell them something they don’t already know about me, I often say this, “I’m an Australian citizen.”

Strange to say when all I’ve ever known of Australia were the yearly trips we would make to visit my Grandma during the December school break in Singapore, and given that I left Singapore at the age of 14, that meant my memories were a hazy blur of playgrounds and Grandma’s backyard.

So while the primary purpose of this trip back to Melbourne was to have Noah meet his great grandma, it made me rediscover the city where my parents met back in 1989.

I now present to you a photoessay of the things I found, vignettes of Melbourne and my family captured with my 35mm Nikon DSLR.

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Melbourne CBD

The Melbourne CBD is a dense, small rectangle, the meeting point of all of its train lines bringing in commuters from its sprawling suburbs. At the heart of it is Flinders St Station, a bustling hub of local commuters getting to work intermingled with unaware tourists looking to explore. Belonging to the latter group, we started our journey at this iconic spot in the city.

The best way to see Melbourne is to walk its many graffiti lined streets and hidden alleyways. It is a city of nooks and crannies, one that has learned to turn abandoned industrial buildings into fancy brunch places, empty brick walls into canvases of paint.

Melbourne is also famous for its coffee and brunch. The 2 of our favorite coffee/brunch places were Manchester Press, tucked away in a picturesque brick alley off Little Bourke St, and Industry Beans, a trendy roastery in the young, hipster Fitzroy neighborhood.

Given how famous Melbourne is for its flat white, it quickly became my go-to order while Peter opted for the long black, the simple man that he is.

When we got tired of cafes and street art, Melbourne’s gardens and rivers were our retreat in the city, the most notable being Fitzroy Gardens and Yarra River.

Admission is free at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) and the half-day visit definitely worth it when you’re in the CBD area. After Noah got tired of perusing the art exhibits, we hurriedly escorted him to the exit as he started to cry and fuss. Then, as we approached the exit, we found this water installation that caught Noah’s attention. This is a picture of him staring calmly at the water cascading down the glass, his cheeks still wet and flushed.

Christmas this year on the other side of the Equator was a balmy BBQ with a side of mussels and oysters.

New Years’ Eve was spent on my uncle’s porch with Peter figuring out how to use his wood-fired oven to serve up a homemade pizza dinner. Grandma couldn’t stop going for more slices as they slid out of the oven, piping hot.

The Beach

“That’s the ocean,” I had to keep reminding myself as we drove by seemingly endless coastline, in disbelief that we were on a continent literally floating in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

One day that Melbourne seemed quiet, we ended up finding the beach packed. I guess we found where Melbourne went, I commented to Peter.

One of our favorite beach days was on Safety Beach, a random beach I selected amongst the milieu of options on our trip to Mornington Peninsula.

The white sand was pristine, the waves small and lapping due to the cove-like quality of the area we were in, and there even was a pop-up cafe truck that served up coffees and pastries to the families out for the day.

The Great Ocean Road

The words I would use to describe the Great Ocean Road are these: wild and majestic.

While Safety Beach was a family-friendly weekend hangout Aussie experience, the beaches on the Great Ocean Road reminded you of how powerful the ocean is.

We drove the coast towards Lorne (no need to go further than Lorne; the locals told us the Twelve Apostles are not worth the drive) and stopped for hikes to vantage points along the way.

Trying to get comfy at the beach was no easy task, one of us clasping desperately on to the umbrella to protect Noah from the blazing Australian sun while the other trying to enjoy our bag of salt-and-vinegar chips amidst the seaspray and blowing bits of sand.

Noah discovered he liked the texture of sand until he did a face-plant in it and we decided that it was enough.

Instead of staying on a coastal resort on the Road itself, we opted for a secluded cottage a bit inland at King Parrot Cottages, a 20 hectare property with farm animals and forest hikes.

Using the cottage as our base, we embarked on slow drives through the countryside, meandering through deserted gravel road beside sheep and cows grazing in the field.

Local farms selling artisanal products are what to see in the Otway Ranges so we marked our day with stops at a sheep farm selling wool, vineyards for wine tastings and my favorite – a raspberry farm selling scones with homemade raspberry jam!

The most meaningful part of the whole trip, however, was the time we got to spend with my Melbourne grandmother. Her story is one of resilience (read more on it here), having escaped from communist China to Fiji, then finally making a life in Melbourne.

I loved seeing her enjoy Noah, using all her arm strength to pull her wriggling great grandson onto her lap and singing his praises no matter what he did (including squealing in high-pitches at the top of his voice).

I admire my grandma for what she is able to accomplish at 89 – how she raises chickens and bees in her backyard fed on leftover rice and vegetable peelings, cooks up feasts for church guests and somehow manages to recall memories of her past in such detail.

And out of all the memories I have made in Melbourne, the one I will treasure most is the comforting sound of Grandma rustling around in the kitchen:

scrubbing her stack of banana leaves to prepare for a new round of zongzi (sticky dumpling),

soaking a batch of sea cucumbers she secured at a bargain price at the local Chinese grocery,

chopping pieces of black chicken to put in the night’s herbal soup,

her slippered feet shuffling around on the tiled floor.