destination – Melbourne's

Melbourne
Melbourne's winning formula

Melburnians shrug with resignation at their reputation as sports freaks. To a fair extent, it’s deserved. Right now, locals are giving their credit cards a workout, planning hats and high heels for the spring racing carnival and the festivities in between. We know it is summer when the hot sun blazes over an MCG packed with cricket-lovers and, a little later in the New Year, the whole city goes tennis mad when the Australian Open comes to town.

But when the warmer weather arrives, Melbourne is a city of varied pleasures, and not all of them are about sport. Perhaps it because we have a genuine, cold winter that we somehow have a sense of waking from hibernation when the sun emerges. People come out to stroll down the wide streets and tiny laneways, to visit farmers markets, to prowl around Docklands and to eat fish and chips on the sand at bayside beaches.

>> Destination Melbourne, Weekends For Two

The restaurateurs are turning off the gas heaters and diners are enjoying eating outside again. Melbourne is renowned for its fabulous food, from the renowned top-end restaurants run by celebrity chefs to the cheap and cheerful cafes and eateries you can find everywhere. Likewise the city’s great pubs and bars, so cosy in winter, are throwing open their bi-fold doors and sprucing up their beer gardens as we return to the season of outdoor revelry.

Melbourne’s a great place for a spot of Christmas shopping, itself an elite sport for many of us. Visitors will find Melbourne’s shady lanes and grand old buildings filled with interesting bits and pieces, many painstakingly designed and lovingly handcrafted. It’s a great time of year, too, to snare a bargain – factory outlet shopping has boomed here in recent years, and our love of colourful spring fashion guarantees there is plenty of browsing and buying to do.

And when the sun comes out, the weekend markets bloom like the famous roses at Flemington Racecourse. Apart from the better-known tourist markets at the Arts Centre, in bayside St Kilda and the much-loved Queen Victoria market, there are many small markets offering an array of quirky, hand-made one-off items, as well as the farmers’ markets that are cropping up throughout the inner suburbs, overflowing with fresh, healthy produce and delicious home-made goodies.

Melburnians love the arts with a passion to rival their love of sports, and when the warm weather begins to bite, the city’s cool, interior cultural oases become a blissful haven. Both the Ian Potter Centre at Federation Square and the NGV International in St Kilda Road are peaceful and welcoming, with a wide array of ever-changing, always challenging painting, sculpture, photography, fashion and decorative arts to enjoy, as well as interesting special events such as concerts on weekends.

It’s refreshing, too, to lose yourself in a matinee performance, and come blinking back out into the light when the heat of the day has passed. Melbourne is alive with musicals, plays, dance and concerts, which you can enjoy in one of the city’s grand old theatres, at the Victorian Arts Centre or at the spectacular new state-of-the-art Recital Centre.

But despite its big city culture and commerce, Melbourne has many simple pleasures that make it a perfect place for visitors to simply play tourist and unwind. Sit by our famous “upside down” river and watch the rowing boats and ferries pass. Get lost in one of the beautiful old-fashioned parks and gardens that dot the city. Lick gelati with the wind in your face at Port Melbourne beach. Rattle around town on the City Circle tram. Choose an outdoor table on an interesting street and indulge in some people-watching while sipping a lovingly-made latte. There considerably more to this town than serves, volleys, cover drives and grand finals.

Michelle Fincke