Melbourne things to do and see: How to holiday like a local

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This was published 7 years ago

Melbourne things to do and see: How to holiday like a local

By Amy Cooper
Updated
Shopping on Bridge Road.

Shopping on Bridge Road.Credit: Wayne Taylor

Next time you're travelling, how about staying the entire time in just one neighbourhood? Quality rather than quantity can work best for a short city break.

Three days in a big city isn't long. Often, even for a seasoned traveller, it's easier to fall back on the tried and true tourist trail, staying central and ticking off the topline attractions as efficiently as possible. It works, and you can pack in plenty. But inevitably, you're skimming the surface of that city's soul.

Gaining a real sense of a place and its people requires a riskier but ultimately more rewarding approach: pick a promising neighbourhood and take a punt. Commit to your corner, hole yourself up there like a local and ignore the call of the big bang tourist attractions. It takes pluck not to hedge your bets in a new city but it's worth it, especially in those destinations where a strong neighbourhood culture means abundant riches lie outside the tourist golden mile.

Te wagyu burger and the beer battered fish and chips at the Richmond Club Hotel.

Te wagyu burger and the beer battered fish and chips at the Richmond Club Hotel.Credit: Teagan Glenane

Case in point: Melbourne.

We (me, happy, small child) experienced Australia's putative cultural capital through the lens of Richmond, one of its largest suburbs, three kilometres east of the city centre. To facilitate our local immersion, we booked an Airbnb townhouse tucked in close to Richmond's two main strips of shopping, dining and drinking action, Bridge Road and Swan Street.

Our home laneway, with its hip contemporary buildings cosying up to old terrace cottages, is quintessential Richmond. A meander through this suburb is a comprehensive architectural history lesson. With buildings of just about every period, Richmond contains some of Melbourne's oldest and newest homes, from pocket-sized 1850s workers' cottages to gothic and art deco statements and creatively adapted warehouses and industrial buildings such as the striking 'five storey ship' Malthouse conversion of old grain silos on Abinger Street, by Nonda Katsalidis.

Short-stay letting via internet agencies has become a hot topic in Melbourne.

Short-stay letting via internet agencies has become a hot topic in Melbourne.Credit: Meagan Harding

Staying in a residential neighbourhood wraps you in its rhythms, and we wake when the neighbours do, at coffee time. We find our local café just a minute away and, this being Melbourne, there's no need to venture further for culinary excellence. We adopt Lennox Coffee and Kitchen for all three mornings of our stay. Familiarity comes quickly in a friendly café and the staffers chat to us often, recommending nearby spots to visit.

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Frank and Vince, our genial Airbnb hosts, are also a wealth of local knowledge. They point us to local gems such as Hellas Cakes, a Greek bakery where the same family has been creating baklava, galaktoboureko, kourambiethes, tsourekia and other treats for 50 years. Melbourne has one of the world's largest Greek diasporas and they've contributed much to the city's identity. Here, you can taste it.

Richmond's lovely old pubs personify Melbourne's eclectic, inclusive bar culture and its proud music scene. We particularly enjoy the 1800s Richmond Club Hotel, with its commanding view out over the city from the rooftop; the beautiful red brick London Tavern Hotel, and the Great Britain Hotel, with its Winston Churchill mural over the door. Corner Hotel has a live music pedigree stretching from 1940s rooftop jazz concerts to all the current big names. One of our new local neighbourhood friends saw Mick Jagger there, back in the day.

Richmond's famous Skipping Girl Vinegar sign.

Richmond's famous Skipping Girl Vinegar sign.Credit: Penny Stephens

Each day, we roam our adopted neighbourhood, following our locals host's tips in a constantly rewarding treasure hunt. At Hut 13 we ogle fabulous, rainbow-hued ceiling lamps constructed from colourful hoops and circles, which on closer inspection reveal themselves as scraps of plastic bottles and containers. They're garbage collected and repurposed by African women artisans. Social justice-driven art projects are a very Melbourne preoccupation, and this is one of the prettiest we've seen.

Eating and shopping in Richmond, say locals, could occupy you fulltime. "I've lived here for a year and haven't even begun to discover everything," says Georgia, who works at the Boo Radley boutique on Bridge Road. We gamely munch through Mexican, Japanese, pub group, vegetarian and a meatball-only menu and feel we've only just begun. Victoria Street's Little Saigon strip of Vietnamese eateries is another delicious snapshot of Melbourne's culinary cultural make-up and Slowbeer is a temple of craft beer.

In Melbourne there's the food, and then there's the sport, and Richmond is all about that, too: at the Sports Precinct, the city's various sporting religions reside; tennis at the Rod Laver Arena, cricket and AFL at the MCG, and there's the National Sports Museum, too which may help us better understand this city's undying devotion to sport. It turns out we don't even need to venture that far.

Instead, our wanderings lead us to Citizen's Park, just four blocks from our house. It's home to Richmond Junior Football Club, and the under-10 girls are playing, bumble bee bright in their black and yellow guernseys.

We watch them fiercely marking the opposition, their coaches inspiring them with fighting talk. Everyone's taking it very, very seriously but having immense fun too, and dog walkers stop to cheer the girls on. Our own daughter watches, absorbed. We reckon that this one scene, on a sunny Sunday morning in a quiet corner of Melbourne, tells us more about what makes this city tick than any tour of the national landmarks.

TRIP NOTES

Getting there

Richmond is a 10 minute tram ride from Melbourne's CBD. Services include the 75 and 48, which both stop on nearby Bridge Road.

Staying there

Our Airbnb accommodation is listed here https://www.airbnb.com.au/rooms/4326699 and is $490 per night. It has three bedrooms and sleeps six.

More information

See Visit Victoria's guide to Richmond.

The writer stayed as a guest of Airbnb.

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