Melbourne is a proper big city

In City Square downtown I came upon a large protest against a proposed desalination plant. Several people held up a long yellow banner, others handed out literature, many more milled about in solidarity; the press crowded around a spokesperson giving a statement. The group objects to the large amount of energy required to transform sea water into fresh water. Here in Melbourne, in the newspapers and on tv and in street protests, I've noticed a substantial concern with climate change.

Later in the day in the same square I paused to listen to a Chinese marching band, the musicians dressed in blue fleece jackets and blue ball caps. They were part of a protest against the behavior of the Chinese commumnist party. In nearby Federation Square another large group had gathered to listen to a speaker advocating for Tamil independence. Other groups had tables in the squares and streets, protesting uranium mining, the treatment of farm animals, and other injustices.

But politics was only part of the downtown action. Across the square from the Tamil speaker, a stage had been set up for "Wii Championships," and a boy and a woman flailed wildly, while overhead a huge screen displayed their Wii tennis match. Nearby two young people held signs offering "Free Hugs," and they didn't lack for business. Across the street on the steps of Flinders Station a mob of slackers sat, desultorily panhandling. A couple blocks away two young Asian guys with a boombox were breakdancing in front of the large Greek revival Public Library. A thick line of young woman stretched the length of one block, then around the corner and down another street, waiting to audition for a television show, Australia's Next Supermodel.

The wide streets were busy with trams and automobiles, the wide sidewalks filled with pedestrians, mostly locals with a few tourists like myself scattered in, gripping maps and looking mildly confused. The locals came in and out of shoe and clothing stores carrying bags. People sat outside small cafes at tables protected from street and sky by big sheets of clear plastic. But on this day the sun was out--mostly this time of year it's either cloudy or rainy or both. Still, the temperature was only in the fifties, and the low slant of winter sun produced a feeble light, strange to me after so recently arriving from the north and high summer.

I walked a mile or two north into the Bohemian districts of Carlton and Fitzroy in search of Alice's Books, then the Book Affair, where I bought The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope and Hotel Honolulu by Paul Theroux. Earlier I had bought a V.S. Pritchett novel at a street book stand.

It gets dark confusingly early here, starting at five. At dusk I walked down Lygon Street, part of the Italian district, and probably the most restaurant-ed half mile on earth. On both sides of the road, almost uninterrupted for blocks and blocks, are small restaurants, one right after another, most of them quite nice, with tables spilling out onto the sidewalk, and waiters and maitre'ds out front to coax you to sit down and have a meal. On Lygon most of the restaurants are some version of Italian, but occasionally another cuisine interrupts, usually Thai or Indonesian. The number and variety of restaurants all throughout the city is astonishing. Japanese and Chinese, Malaysian, Indian, Greek, French are most common; fish and chips shops are numerous as are sushi stands and noodle shops and patisseries and gelato stands. I was stymied by the seemingly endless number of choices.... Late in the day I stopped at a sushi stand and chose a tuna roll, which a young woman placed in a small bag and handed over the counter to me; I poured some soy sauce onto one end, and then continued down the street eating as I walked.

Swanston is one of the most happening streets. I moved with the young Saturday night crowd, occasionally pulling out of the stream to the curb where I could pause to take it all in--the lighted shops and the take-away counters, the passsing trams, the street musicians playing guitar or dulcimer or accordion, the dark-skinned women roasting chestnuts on big flat skillets, the Aussie men standing by their horses waiting for carriage customers, the pack of young hipsters outside the Hi-Fi Club, and the the noise of hundreds of people talking, people from seemingly everyhwere in the world. Half the people are Asian of some sort, of all sorts, with Japanese pegged jeans and shag haircuts wielding substantial influence; a few Africans and Latin-Americans were in the crowds, Mediterranean and Eastern Europeans too. In passing I heard a mix of languages, from east and west both.

I was thrilled with the movement and lights and people and food and smells and noise--a city!