A little bit of Melbourne’s architecture

When I came to Melbourne I was very happy about it’s architecture. And I still am.

It’s a pretty young city, so there is no old town, the one we are used to see in European cities. Though, there are some great examples of Victorian and Art Deco architectural styles.

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This is what I call Australian old town. There are lots of streets like this – two-three storeys houses leaning each to other. Also, there are suburbs with individual houses, with old trees or without them. Actually Melbourne is very green city.

  

City centre is full of skyscrapers, glass towers, it looks nice from all sides. Sometimes, if it is good weather, you can see the city skyline from far far away, like 50 km or more. I’ll post a picture in post about Mornington peninsula.

Part of a street mural.

The actuall street.

One of contemporary art exhibition spaces.

Amazing, isn’t it? I should come back to this house to take better pictures.

Social houses. They are very different from all architecture. Seems like soviet architecture. Every second suburb near the city has a one tall the same looking building like this. All other houses are much smaller around. It is a pretty strange look.

For the trains crossing the city.

In the CBD. Street art street full of street art 🙂 Some old theatre entrance lights.

Glass skyscrapers and great Art Deco building.

The city doesn’t look very tall from here, does it? More like a little cosy town at the river.

A tooth fairy lives in this little house.

What a special effect!

This is St Kilda again. Note that house on the right picture.

St Kilda in the rain. When the autumn came it got very green. Even on a very cold day, when I look at those palm trees swinging in the wind, stormy wavy sea (which on normal day stays calm and still like glass), even then I don’t feel like winter, it always seems like a tropical storm.

This building on the end of a sea jetty used to be an ice creamery. It was in those days when St.Kilda was a resort place for Melbournians.

Every time I pass these house I wish I lived here, it gives me that cosy feeling.

Our street on a rainy day.

The same street. Well, this part is not about architecture. One night we woke up because of big noise. We live here only a couple of months but there were two false fire alarms in a hotel just in front of us. and firemen came with 2-4 cars. This time in that lovely house with round corners was a fire. Luckily, it was empty apartment and no one was hurt. So, firemen came with 6 big cars, ambulance and police was there too – big noise in the middle of the night.

Going up

When I got in Melbourne CBD for the first time it looked busy and interesting but all places seemed limited to fast food, sushi and noodles bars or very expensive restaurants, shopping malls, shopping centres, boring designer handbags shops and night clubs in office buildings. Yes, in daytime it is a grey office building, in night time they open some hidden door which takes you down or upstairs to a club where all those screaming drunk girls with high heels go. But it was just first impression. After walking around we discovered some galleries, independent not boring designer shops, amazing hidden cafes with hairdresser, coffee and art shop in one and other things. And the thing with Melbourne – there is like another city on the second, third, seventh floor level.

The fancy – kitschy – magic bar upstairs.

 

Reda, are you reading this? It was full of stuffed animals, birds, dried giant bugs and other scientific objects decorated with some jewellery.

 

 

A giraffe with golden mascara on her eyelashes and a bird (this supposed to be called earbird?). An ostrich with pearls. If women had such long necks, can you imagine how many pearls would they need?!

You hardly can see the street through jungle in the balcony in the second floor (or how they call it first floor in Australia). If you go upstairs on the roof of some 6-7 floors building you get into another beach themed bar.

Another building. Staircase.

It is a home for renown bookshop Metropolis,  a couple of restaurants, martial arts studio, few designer boutiques, a gallery space or few.

Rooftop cinema shows old and new movies on a warm and cool summer nights. On a daytime it’s a good place to have some beer or lunch.

The construction process in Melbourne – they left only façade of the giant building.

Gallery boxes on the roof.

After a week they opened a modern jewellery exhibition in this space.

One of the boutiques I told about. Oh, again staircase, same picture!

This is a staircase with a lift. It is in the same building we were at night with Reda. It’s on her blog. See the elevator door on the right.

 

Doors are opened manually, oldschool stuff.

 

We found two galleries in that building, amazing view from one of them.

We got a nice present from our neighbours – a tour to the highest viewing platform in southern hemisphere.

The view to St Kilda side. There is the F1 track going around the lake. Just above the island in the photo you can see some tall white buildings on the shore – it is St Kilda where we live.

 

The city.

 

Melbourne’s landmark Federation square trough kaleidoscope monoculars.

 

Searching for the Lyrebird

When autumn came to Melbourbe…

…everyone got onto their cars…

…and from the city (on the left) went to the hills (on the right). It was difficult to find where to stop in the little towns in the hills, as it were tourist everywhere.

We found some strange sculpture park.

Very strange. Next to the crucified ones there were koalas, kangaroos and other creatures. It was pretty horrible.

When it started to get dark, we accidentally stopped at one of the popular parks. Here they bring tourists to feed cockatoos, galahs and other birds.

Bird lovers really hate this kind places where they “spoil” birds.

But next t o this place, where lazy tourist don’t often go, there is a little track through the forest, called “Lyrebird walk”. Really promising name. Road signs around just confirm, that this name might not lie.

And here is the Lyrebird itself! 🙂

This bird is special because of it’s ability to mimic other sounds it hears. Anyway, we walked all the track and realized, that there is no other way back, just to go the same path again. So on our way back we stopped for second so that one girl could pass us and a few moments later we couldn’t even believe our eyes. Just a few meters further the Lyrebird itself is crossing the path!

Laurius went after the bird. The bird was totally ignorant and was doing his stuff – looking for food or something.

Other local stopped next by and told that he saw this bird for the first time just the day before. And it had chicks with him. Lucky bastard 🙂 We need to come back here, we decided, and went to the car. Just a few minutes later after we got into the car the storm started.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjE0Kdfos4Y

Watch this. Really amazing bird!