Melbourne A to Z City Guide

Can you hear it? The morning magpies gossiping outside your window, their stories carried through ghost gums, past those malignant plane trees that wreak havoc on allergy sufferers, all of it caught on a Port Phillip breeze. Beneath them, the familiar bell and clatter of the number 12 tram tracing Victoria Street. And under it all, something else stirs—a distant rumble, a bassline tuning itself awake, a guitar riff unfolding itself to life on a fretboard.

Behind two noise-cancelling doors, inside Bakehouse Studios—the creation of Fitzroyalty, Helen Marcou and Quincy McLean—music is always in rehearsal. Since the late 1980s, its corridors have echoed with the making of things: bands beginning, legends returning, the raw grammar of noise turning into song. Nick Cave, The Drones, Courtney Barnett, and countless others have frequented and left their frequencies here.

It is the sound of a city clearing its throat—sometimes sirening, at other times shrieking—a plural hum, an anthem that belongs, unmistakably, to Melbourne. Take some of it home with a trip to Naturestrip or Greville Records.

There is so much to digest in Melbourne—foremost, the warmth of its residents, and their calorically questionable obsession with café breakfasts. You might begin with Devonshire tea at Ripponlea Gardens, dim sum at Crystal Jade, or spaghetti from one of the Italian Trinity: Mario’s, Tiamo, and Pellegrini’s (there’s still debate over who’s the Father and who’s the Son, but all of their spirits are holy).

But before all that, it’s worth ruminating on the thought that the best way to know a city, is through its markets. In fact, all airports should deposit you straight from the cabin onto a conveyor belt leading into one—so you may see, smell, touch, and taste your way to belonging. Food is empathy made possible—crossing borders by way of hands, and stomachs, and connecting our collective appetites. To truly know a place is to be held, like a hand, a hug, or a sandwich.

From the boreks and bratwursts of Queen Victoria Market, to bolani from Kabul Kitchen in Dandenong, and bánh mì from Nhu Ngọc Bakery in Footscray, every market in Melbourne, and nearly every country they represent, bears a hand-held carbohydrate with a filling carried like a national baton in the great global snack race. But the crown belongs to a quiet contender—understated, unequivocally Australian: the fish sandwich from Evening Star, at South Melbourne Market on a Sunday. A piece of fish barbecued with sumac and onions, a little lettuce, a kiss of chilli, all pressed into a toasted roll.

It is a digestion-defying grab-and-go, lingering in the memory of your ‘second brain’ long after you have left the market behind.

There is no better way to understand Melbourne than through the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. Their connection to Country is not metaphor, but memory: an unbroken relationship with the land and its inhabitants.

On a Wurundjeri Cultural Walking Tour, guests are guided through the rhythms of the land and its stories. It is a sensorial and historical map unto itself, where scent becomes a guide as much as sight or sound. Eucalyptus along the Merri Creek Trail, the damp moss and smoke of Dights Falls, even the faint salt carried inland beside the MCG: these are traces of an older Melbourne. There is a lesson here: to smell is to listen, to the land, and to those who have always known it best.

There is a phrase this place often brings to mind: to touch the earth lightly—a sentiment that draws, with humility, from the deep ecological wisdom of First Nations philosophies, where care for Country means respect and reciprocity.

Melbourne, too, asks for that kind of touch. Its parks—Carlton Gardens, Albert Park, and Royal Park—offer soft grass and shade enough for lingering, with public barbecues awaiting a patchwork of supermarket snags. The city asks to be felt as much as seen: hot pavement under bare toes at Caulfield Swimming Pool; wet clay thrown at Slow Clay Centre; the pale, textured, flower-shaped ceramics of Claudia Lau (graduate of the former); autumn leaves crunching underfoot.

Indeed, the real discovery of Melbourne—or any land—is that it does not require to be touched by us, but rather, held.

Melbourne has many places to point your pupils—and art is always a fine appetiser to nature, especially when it rains, which in this city it invariably will. Spend an afternoon at ACCA, the Koorie HeritageTrust in Federation Square, Oddaný Gallery, or aasleagh123, each a fine spot to lose track of time.

But a few sights deserve particular mention, and who better to reveal them than local cinematographers Coco and Maximilian? We imagine a film of theirs tracing the city’s mid-century heart: Robin Boyd’s Walsh Street House, an intervention in intimacy and restraint; Orica House (formerly ICI House), the first building in Melbourne allowed to exceed the national height limits; MacFarland Library at Ormond College; and the Cardinal Knox Centre, whose brutalist calm feels almost monastic. And, of course, Heide Museum of Modern Art—its house, gardens, and the legacy of Sunday and John Reed.

Vegemite: A dark, salty relic of national identity. To be spread thin, like a rumour—89% butter, 11% Vegemite, or it’s culinary treason.

Barbecues: Australia’s unofficial parliament—held on back decks, with tongs as gavels. If uninvited, head to Bunnings, the sacred temple of hardware, and procure a democracy sausage with onion and tomato sauce.

SPF: Stands for Sun Protection Factor, or, more accurately, Survival Per Forecast—because in Australia, the sun doesn’t shine, it interrogates.

Accommodation: Napier Quarter. United Places

Bakery: A1. Baker Bleu. Loafer

Dry cleaners: Brown Gouge

Grocery: Queen Victoria Market. Footscray Market. Preston Market. Dandenong Market

Late Night Pharmacy: HealthSmart Pharmacy

Massage: Stable Massage

Psychologist: Three Rooms

Personal Trainer: Iron Monk Fitness

Wine: Cardwell Cellars. LePub

Best direction for sun: North

Take any or all of these short trips out of Melbourne.

Cape Schanck House: A lodging disguised as a spaceship, designed by Paul Morgan Architects—landed gently on Victoria’s windswept coast, but mentally parked somewhere near 2566.

Ferry from Point Lonsdale to Portsea: Drive your car onto the boat, spot a dolphin if you’re lucky, and arrive feeling oddly cinematic.

Then ignore the beach and head inland to TarraWarra Museum—because art waits for no tide, though you should return for sunset.

Sherbrooke Forest: Sounds like something from Tolkien, and walks like it too—towering ferns, mist, and the perfect place to reset your nervous system without the app.

Nature Play at Royal Park

St Kilda Adventure Playground

Melbourne Museum, Forest Gallery

Science Works

Collingwood Children’s Farm