Melbourne’s on the Eastern Peninsula of Australia, in Victoria. I flew JetStar and I opted for the super saver which meant one carry on item, no checked baggage. We had a layover in Darwin, which is nowhere near Melbourne. Darwin is in the North West of Australia, so flying from Darwin-Melbourne is like flying from LA-NY.
In Melbourne I stayed at the Albany Hotel, a boutique hotel in South Yarra, the yuppie district of Melbourne. The hotel was really retro and had giant posters of McJagger and the Beatles and Audrey Hepburn esque women. The hotel had a free private car service in their Rolls Royce, so I took that to a jazz club that I had read about. The place was called, Bennet’s Lane, located in a seedy alley, where all jazz clubs should be! A man who asked me for a light as I was heading inside, warned me, “get ready, it’s hot in there!” to which I responded, “I just arrived from Singapore, so if you want to talk about heat…” Turns out he had lived in Singapore for a year. By the end of the night he was asking me to write his biography. The benefit was, though, that he invited me to sit with him and his visiting friends, a couple from the Midwest US.
The jazz was delightful. And those who know me well know that I am at my happiest when I’m in a jazz club. Any city that hosts a high caliber jazz club is a city worth visiting, and Melbourne was definitely one of those. I spoke with some of the musicians afterwards, and turns out, the drummer played regular gigs at Sweet Rhythms, the former Sweet Basils in Manhattan, which happens to be where my beloved sister Andi and my brother (in-law) Paul got engaged! Small world.
The next day I slept late and gradually made my way to the city center. Melbourne reminded me a little bit like Munich, because the juxtaposition of old world and modern architecture was very much apart of the city layout. I loved Munich (for the day I was there), and Melbourne gave me a similar feel. Also, like Munich, there are stretches and stretches of green spaces, in various parks and gardens.
I had bad luck with weather in Melbourne, where it rained most of the weekend. A popular observation about the climate in Australia, and I guess Melbourne especially, is that you can experience four seasons in one day, but it’s a nice change from Singapore where you experience one season all year long!
I went to the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, (the ACMI museum), which for a film student is an awesome stop to make. I saw an exhibit called “Setting the Scene” and it was all about Production Design in major motion pictures. They had video clips from various films and interviews with the directors/designers that talked about what went into the production design, and set pieces from various films such as Australia and Metropolis, and lots of photo stills. I felt like I was in a Film Aesthetics class and it was fun cause it made me feel like I was at Tisch Asia, but with props.
Because the weather was so bad, and I was tired from traveling, I spent most of the third day within the vicinity of my hotel, but I got a lot of writing done on my Robert Capa play. There was a restaurant/pub down the street called The Fawkner, which I found to be a very inspiring place to work. The Fawkner is great atmosphere. In fact, I decided to set a short story in the bar, so I went back several times for inspiration. The Fawkner is a yuppy-ish pseudo-upscale looking place, with a fireplace and stools for chairs; a marble-top bar stool; and a bartender you can flirt with. There’s a poster on the wall that says Bourin Bourin and Jack Johnson plays in the background. The menu is written on a chalkboard and the kitchen is open-window, with a cook who's the owner and tries too hard to flirt. This place was wrought with contradictions.
I met up with the Aussie drummer. We went to a night club called Revolver. This place was almost too unbelievable to be real: straight out of A Clockwork Orange. It was entirely red. The lighting was this very dim red—red lamps hung down from the ceiling—red sofas lined the walls—graffiti art—Pinball machines and arcade games in the corner—a DJ spinning techno—and the clientele all wore black leotard-like outfits. To top it off, this place is open 24 hours from 6pm on Thursday night to 6am on Monday morning.
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