JUST WALKING

The Places We Found and the Things We Never Went Looking For

Chapter 2 – Why We Wander

We have spent a good deal of time wandering around Melbourne without any particular intention of going anywhere. We may have an appointment later in the day, or perhaps a family event, a train to catch or some other reason for being in the city, but there is often time in between that needs to be filled. For Robyn and me, that is usually enough reason to start walking.

There are other ways to get around, of course. Melbourne has its trains and trams, its buses and taxis, and each has its place when there is somewhere we need to be. But when we are, as people like to say, “killing time”, we have found that walking offers more possibilities than sitting somewhere waiting for the appointed hour to arrive.

I have wondered about that expression, killing time, because it suggests the hours in between the things we have planned are somehow less valuable than the things themselves. We have certainly sat in enough waiting rooms to understand that not every spare hour comes with an appealing alternative. But give us a few hours in the middle of Melbourne and we will generally find a way to use them.

We wander because we like to see what is there. That may sound like an uncomplicated answer to the question, and perhaps it is, but the longer we walk, the more we discover there is to take in. A city reveals itself differently when we have the freedom to look up, look across the street, peer into a shop or follow a lane simply because we are curious about where it might lead.

Melbourne’s CBD makes that wandering reasonably easy, at least in theory. Its streets follow a geometric pattern, and there is a certain reassurance in knowing that a city block has corners and that streets generally continue in a manner that makes sense. If we pay attention to where we have turned, we should be able to maintain a reasonable idea of where we are.

The difficulty lies in paying attention to the turns when there are so many other things to look at. A building catches our eye, a shop window invites a closer inspection or a street looks more interesting than the one we are on, and before long the question of which direction we have been walking becomes a matter for discussion. The streets may be laid out logically, but that does not guarantee that we have followed them with the same degree of logic.

Robyn has an advantage in that she is a Melbourne local and spent time in the city as a student at RMIT. That ought to make her an ideal guide, although enough years have passed since her studies for Melbourne to have made a number of changes without first seeking her permission. Even someone who once knew a place well can become momentarily disoriented when the landmarks around them have shifted or disappeared.

Yet there is still a familiarity in the outlook. The Melbourne Robyn knew has not vanished altogether; it is there in the shape of the streets, in buildings that have survived and in the places that continue to hold their own among the newer arrivals. Walking together gives us the chance to see both versions of the city, the one she remembers and the one we find in front of us now.

That is one of the reasons we wander through places we have visited before. A return visit is not simply a chance to repeat what we did last time. It allows us to see what has changed, what has remained and what we may have walked past on an earlier occasion without giving it the attention it deserved.

Melbourne is particularly accommodating in that respect. There are grand older buildings that speak of the city as it once was, standing among the monstrous high-rises of the present day. You can find yourself looking from one to the other, wondering what occupied the ground before the newer building arrived and whether, in another few decades, somebody else will be standing there asking the same question.

The hoardings around works still underway suggest that the process is far from complete. They interrupt the view and occasionally alter the course of a footpath, but they also tell us that another piece of Melbourne is in the making. We may not know what will emerge behind them until we return, by which time the finished building may have settled so comfortably into its surroundings that we struggle to remember what stood there before.

Some landmarks need no such effort of recollection. Flinders Street Station remains one of the familiar faces of Melbourne, a building that belongs not only to the people using its platforms but also to the picture many of us carry of the city. Even when we are not catching a train, seeing it gives us a sense of where we are.

The Queen Victoria Market is another place that seems to retain its identity while the city around it continues to change. There is movement and enterprise in a market that make it interesting even when we have not arrived with a shopping list. People come looking for all manner of things, and the traders have their own task of making their goods appealing enough for somebody to stop and take a closer look.

Robyn and I can wander the length and breadth of the market, up one aisle and down the next, without any particular plan beyond seeing what is there. It is a place where the act of looking can occupy a good deal of time, especially when there are so many stalls to consider and no pressing reason to move quickly past any of them.

As we walk, we see some of the same things appearing in different stalls, displayed in slightly different ways and offered at prices that invite a comparison. Just when we think we have a fair idea of what is available, another stall presents something we have not seen anywhere else, and our attention is drawn to that instead. Whether we actually need it is another question altogether, although that does not stop us from looking.

The prices can be part of the entertainment too. Markets might once have carried an expectation that a bargain was waiting to be found, but we invariably come across things that strike us as overpriced, leaving us to wonder who might be persuaded to part with the asking amount. Perhaps the right customer is only a few steps behind us, with a better appreciation of the item than we have and a rather different view of its value.

Then there are the coffee and doughnut stalls, where the lines can be beyond belief. People wait patiently for their turn while the rest of the market moves around them, and we find ourselves looking at the queue as well as what is being sold. Whatever the attraction, the people standing there have clearly decided it is worth the wait.

Between the shoppers, browsers and those patiently queuing, the stallholders while away their day trying to make a living. Some have plenty of people stopping to look, while others wait for the next customer to show an interest in what they have laid out. There is a great deal of work and hope behind those rows of merchandise, even when, from our side of the stall, it is easy to see only the goods and the price attached to them.

We may leave with something we had not expected to buy, or we may leave with nothing at all. Either way, the wandering has given us another view of Melbourne: its visitors, its traders, its appetites and its capacity to offer the same thing several times over before surprising us with something entirely different.

Elsewhere, the casino and the newer towers present another Melbourne, one that has grown and developed in ways that would have been difficult to imagine when some of the older buildings were first constructed. The city does not ask us to choose which period we prefer. It places them alongside one another and leaves us to make what we will of the result.

As we walk through Melbourne, I am conscious that the city has a history reaching much further back than its buildings, its streets or its years as the seat of Australia’s federal government. Long before the arrival of Europeans, this was Country known and cared for by Aboriginal peoples. The Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong, or Boon Wurrung, peoples of the Kulin are acknowledged as the Traditional Owners of the land on which much of the city now stands.

We are often told that the winners write the history. I wonder whether there is any clearer evidence of that than the names on the street signs we pass as we wander. They record people and places associated with the Melbourne that grew after European arrival, giving direction to those of us trying to find our way while also telling a story about whose names were chosen to be remembered.

The signs are useful, of course. Without them, Robyn and I might find our occasional uncertainty about where we have wandered becoming a more prolonged exercise. But they also lead me to think about the names, languages and knowledge that belonged to this Country before the streets were laid out, and how easily one version of a place can be written over another.

Melbourne is also known today as Naarm, a name we increasingly hear alongside the one familiar to those of us who grew up calling the city Melbourne. The river many of us know as the Yarra is also the Birrarung, a name described in Woi-wurrung as the river of mist and shadows. I have passed that river many times, but knowing another of its names gives me cause to look at it with a little more curiosity.

Near its banks is Birrarung Marr, a name drawn from Wurundjeri language and connected to the river and its side. People walk and gather there today, much as they do in other places throughout the city, but the name invites us to consider a history that did not begin with the construction of the park. It is one small opportunity for someone like me to learn that there is more to this place than the account I was first given.

The same thought comes to me when I learn that the area now known as Parliament Hill was an important political and ceremonial meeting place for the Eastern Kulin long before Parliament House was built. People gathered there to conduct ceremony, practise law and resolve differences. We might look at the building and think of the decisions made within its walls, but decisions of consequence were being made on that ground long before those walls existed.

The arrival of the white man brought an invasion and a profound change to this Country and its people. Land was taken, communities were dispossessed, and violence, disease and restrictions on Aboriginal people’s movements followed. The growth of the city is a story that includes all of those things, however often its buildings and street names have encouraged us to look elsewhere.

I think of the ghosts of the thousands upon thousands of years that came before the city, not as a claim to know the stories of those who lived them, but as my own way of imagining how much has been covered over. Time will not weary those traces simply because another history has been written across the landscape. The streets, buildings and names may have overwritten much of what was there, but they cannot make those earlier generations disappear.

Nor should I speak as though Aboriginal Melbourne belongs only to the past. Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong peoples are here today, and their connections to Country, culture and language continue. The history that has too often been overlooked is also a living one, carried by people whose voices and knowledge deserve to be heard.

For Robyn and me, wandering is partly about noticing what stands before us, but it can also lead us to consider what we cannot immediately see. A street sign tells us where we are in the Melbourne of today; it does not tell us everything about the ground beneath our feet. As we continue along the footpath, I find myself wondering how many other stories are waiting for us to learn their names.

We wander because being on foot gives us time for those thoughts to arrive. Had we been travelling directly from one place to another, we might have noticed a landmark through the window and moved on before considering what was around it. Walking does not guarantee a great revelation, but it gives us room to look, to wonder and, occasionally, to see a familiar place from a different angle.

There is also the matter of the people, and Melbourne provides an ever-changing collection of them. We pass workers moving with the purpose of people who know where they need to be, students making their way through the city, visitors consulting their bearings and others whose reasons for being there are entirely their own. They come from different backgrounds, speak different languages and bring with them a range of experiences we can only begin to imagine.

For a short time we share the same piece of footpath. Then someone turns into a building, another crosses the road and we continue on, taking our own place in the movement of the city. There is something absorbing about being among so many people, each following a course that may briefly touch ours before it heads somewhere else.

The traders add another layer to the picture. We wander past large stores and smaller shops, businesses that have established themselves as part of the city and others doing their best to find a place within it. Their offerings vary enormously, but the people behind them have something in common: they are there to do business.

Having spent much of my working life involved with businesses, I cannot help thinking about what lies behind the shopfront. There is the decision to open the doors, the work of attracting customers and the ongoing challenge of giving people a reason to come back. Even a business we pass in a few seconds represents somebody’s effort, investment and expectation that enough people will be interested in what they have to offer.

We may not always be those people. Robyn and I can look into a great many shops without adding substantially to their turnover, and I accept that browsing is not what pays the rent. Still, the variety makes the walk more interesting, and every now and then something catches our attention sufficiently to draw us inside.

Our wandering takes us in and out of malls and along long stretches of enterprise, where the display changes from one window to the next. Some businesses are easy to understand at a glance; others leave me considering who their customers might be and how they discovered there was a market for what they sell. That, in itself, can occupy a surprising amount of walking time.

Melbourne has also given us cause over the years to form an observation about its business calendar. It sometimes seems to us, with a degree of licence, that very little of consequence happens between Melbourne Cup Day and Australia Day. I am sure there are many Melburnians who would be happy to tell me how much they accomplish during those months, but from our own experience there have been occasions when getting something moving has required a measure of patience.

I will leave the full examination of that theory for another day and another book. Whatever the season, there is usually enough activity in the streets to suggest that the city has not stopped altogether. Shops continue to open, people continue to move and Robyn and I continue to find things to look at.

Then there is the Melbourne that seems to keep something in reserve. It is not necessarily hidden, but it can be missed if we stick to the same route or concentrate too hard on reaching a particular destination. Turn a corner, enter a mall or look down a street we had not intended to explore, and there may be something different waiting for our attention.

The food alone could provide the basis for an extended investigation. There are streets where one outlet follows another, each presenting a different possibility, until choosing lunch becomes a more complicated undertaking than it first appeared. We could try to sample everything along a single street, but even with the best intentions I doubt we could consume that much in one day.

It would be an interesting exercise for the first few stops, although I suspect our enthusiasm might diminish before the street did. Fortunately, wandering does not require us to accept every invitation placed before us. We can look, consider, perhaps make a choice, and leave the other possibilities for another visit.

The range of food and the variety of the people offering it are part of what makes walking through Melbourne so engaging. Each business has found its place in the city, and each doorway offers a glimpse of the different backgrounds and ideas that contribute to it. We might begin with a simple thought about lunch and end up spending quite some time considering the choices.

That is another answer to why we wander. One thing leads to another, and a day that might have been measured by the time remaining before an appointment becomes a collection of observations, decisions and small discoveries. We do not need to make a list of them or judge which was the most important. They are simply part of the day we have spent together.

There are occasions when a tram is the sensible option, and we are happy enough to take one. It can get us where we need to go, and Melbourne would feel rather less like Melbourne without the trams moving through its streets. The same is true of the train, the bus or the taxi when distance, time or tired feet make walking less attractive.

But we see a little differently when we walk. We can stop without holding anyone up, change direction without consulting a timetable and give our attention to something that might have passed too quickly through a window. We can also take as long as we please to establish whether Robyn recognises the street we are on, which is a matter best approached with tact given that I am relying on her local knowledge.

Sometimes we find that a street has brought us back somewhere familiar. At other times, the grid has delivered us to a place we had not expected, and we need to look around before deciding which way to go. Neither outcome troubles us greatly when there is no urgent destination waiting at the other end.

What matters is that we have been there, among the buildings and people and businesses that make Melbourne what it is. We have seen parts of the city that have endured and others that are still emerging, and Robyn has had the opportunity to revisit a place she once knew in another stage of her life. We have also had the pleasure of doing it together, with enough time to notice the things that caught our attention along the way.

Eventually, the appointment approaches or the time comes to make our way elsewhere. We find our bearings, decide whether we will walk or make use of the transport Melbourne has provided, and continue with whatever the day requires. The hours in between have not needed to be killed after all; we have been too busy enjoying them.

The next time we are in Melbourne, we may walk some of the same streets and recognise some of the same buildings. There will almost certainly be things we missed, changes we have not yet seen and more places to eat than we could reasonably investigate. That is enough for us to set off again, turn a corner and see what the city has to offer.