It's been months since our last ep as we have been in Australia's longest and strictest lockdown. We thought it would be fitting to resume with some reminiscing about this city we found by various routes.
Melbourne has been my (this is Peter) home since 1985 and, while I've travelled a little, I've pretty much sprouted roots and settled. From Queensland the allure of a cooler climate and an even cooler culture was irresistible when a friend of mine invited me down to set up a share house. She knew I was at a loose end after uni and that I was looking to move out of my house, anyway. Then, after a twenty-four hour bus ride from Brisbane I stepped into a freezing afternoon. It was raining and the drops felt hard. It was spring and everything was coming true. Thirty-five years later, I'm still here and if the shady strolls of a new spring still beckon I need to savour the scent of jasmine in gardens through three layers of face mask, it still feels right to be here.
I had an idea of this town's musical power from the days of Skyhooks and their biting satirical fun. When the late '70s hit and the Hooks had lost their two most charismatic members and a lot of their currency a new crop stood to fill venues great and small with music that could clang like factories or trill like budgies, mostly with a strong pulse and turn of melody. Whether it was the machine shopped funk meets perhistoric chants of Hunters and Collectors, the dizzying synthesised riffs of Models or the lightless chaos of The Birthday Party it felt committed, it felt like the players lived like that.
Myths die hard but they do die and by the time I arrived in the southern metropolis all three of those entities were barely recognisable. There were currents beneath them but these were disappointingly rockist (that ol' Brisbane cringe keeps on keepin' on) but they were fun and there wasn't a government that felt like a truncheon to the temples beyond them. I had to look a little harder to find that spirit of exploration and I did. It was in the smaller pubs, nurtured by the expanded opening hours, a growing street press and a community radio that offered continual celebration.
About a week into being here I remember I jaywalked across a street in the CBD. The traffic cop saw me and I froze as I got to the opposite curb, then turned to face it. He was young, tut-tutted me with a gesture and a smile which seemed to say, "next time." If home was Brisbane this didn't feel like it. But it did feel like home.
From Perth to Melbourne is 58 hours on a bus. The journey covers over 3500 kilometres, and there’s very little to see on the way, save the relentless red desert of the treeless plain, and the bitumen road’s white lines flashing past. Despite the distance between them, there are many things that unite these Australian cities located at opposite ends of the continent. There’s AFL football and beer for starters. And in the 1980s there was the Indy music scene. Any Perth band with ambition had their sights set on the Melbourne, the capital of cool.
My first glimpse of Melbourne came in Black and White, accompanied by the ominous-sounding theme from Homicide, a pioneering television drama, which was still a ratings powerhouse in 1974 (this is Glenn, btw). Seated in front of a 26inch Rank Arena television set, the streets of Melbourne seemed fuzzy, distorted by the rabbit-ear antenna’s tenuous grasp on the VHF signal. I still recall the way the actors always appeared with ghostly doppelgangers, another consequence of fragile VHF broadcast technology. Homicide gave me the impression that Melbourne was a dangerous, depraved place, overrun with ruthless criminals and teeming with all manner of unimaginable vices. Even then, I knew that it was a place I wanted to see, a place where I might also find a life one day.
So, I was happy to leave the suburbs of Perth for the city of Melbourne, which in my youth became all the more alluring because of the almost mythical status of its underground music scene, perhaps most vividly portrayed in Dogs in Space (Richard Lowenstein, 1986). Here was an even more mysterious world than the one I encountered through Homicide. Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll were obviously not unknown practices in Perth, but the Melbourne scene, as depicted in Lowenstein’s film, made Melbourne the epicentre of the Australian post-punk culture. Melbourne didn’t disappoint. I have fond memories of my early days in the metropolis. The streets pulsated with the energy of people in a hurry and there was never any shortage of pleasurable distractions: jugglers and clowns on the streets at festival time; 24/7 diners serving burgers, fries, dim-sims, and souvlakis; beer, pool and bands in smoke-filled bars; bodacious girls on the avenues of Fitzroy, St Kilda, Brunswick, Richmond and Collingwood; inner-city share-house parties heaving with hopped-up students, strung-out junkies, and deadbeat dealers all dancing to the sounds of pounding drums, devil guitars, throbbing basslines and high octane voices ranting and railing, rocking and rolling. Or so it seems from this eerie, silent and solemn point in time. As my adopted city quietly negotiates the apocalypse, I cast my mind back to happier times when Melbourne roared like an MCG crowd on Grand Final day. Things may never be the same again, but we can hope.
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