Melbourne: Goldilocks, Killers, and Tennis

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I was staring dead into the eyes of Chopper Reid, Australia’s most notorious convicted murderer. Admittedly, he was on the other side of the glass, and the eye contact only lasted a fraction of a second, and nobody could actually confirm it was in fact Chopper Reid and not some thug who looked like him, but the Gonzo was hard to find in Melbourne, which is why I could happily live here and let the Gonzo stupidity take place somewhere else. So Chopper Reid will have to do, even if this monster gangster has become one of Australia’s best-selling authors, saying buckets about Australia, but I’ll get to that shortly…shhhhhhh

Shortly after arriving in Melbourne, I understood exactly why Australians often refer to their second largest city as the continent’s cultural heartbeat. Here were the freaks, tattooed, punked up and pumped out, dressed in all the colours of the rainbow. Funky graffiti decorated walls, gothic alleyways housed arty stores, old-school wooden trams rattled past my feet. A man wearing nothing but pink underwear wandered into the middle of Flinders Street muttering something about something. After Sydney’s beachiness and Perth’s sleepiness, here was the oddness I’d been seeking! Three hours later, I was so plastered you could have painted my skin in bright hues and used my brain as a baby’s playpen.

When my mate Rat told me that his mate Duck had out-drunk, out-partied and out-lasted our outrageous mutual mate Rico, I knew I was in trouble. Now Rat can put a pint away, but Rico’s reputation goes back to his birth, when he slapped the doctor back, demanded an apology for his recent butt whip, a tumbler of Johnnie Walker Black, and promptly relieved himself all over the nurses. With no respect whatsoever for my liver, Duck would be my guide in Melbourne. We met on fashionable Chapel Street, slamming back ales while an eclectic mix of foot traffic rambled past. Slackers and Crackers, Goths and Yuppie-Moms. It was a gorgeous sunny day, and the city was in bloom. “There are no discernable trademarks in Melbourne,” explains Duck, “but it’s the most livable city in Australia by far.” Indeed, locals refer to Sydney as high gloss with little substance, all beach and no soul. Melbourne and Sydney have been waged in a struggle to be Australia’s premier city for over a century, one of the leading reasons why the Sydney Opera House was built - to do one over Melbourne. “The convicts went to Sydney, the administrators went to Melbourne,” I am told, as if this explains the illustrious pedigree of Melbourne, which holds the distinction of being Australia’s oldest city. It’s essentially the same argument you might hear about Los Angeles and San Francisco, which shares Melbourne’s quaint trams, lifestyle and schizophrenic weather. “If you’re looking for good weather in Melbourne, wait”, goes the saying. What wasn’t waiting were the beers, flowing like a chocolate waterfall at a candy bar, We were celebrating the 30th birthday of one of Duck’s mates, who was so loaded up on alcohol, pills and English humour he partied for 52 hours straight. Personally, I was in no rush to get home, in this case, the Flinders Station Hotel, a backpacker zoo with over 500 beds crammed into closet-like cages. My rule of never turning down a free drink was beginning to hurt, as an assortment of motley characters continued to bomb me with the booze until it all went fuzzy. My notebook descends into utter chaos - something about serial killers, and secret Afrikaner societies, and a diagram that resembles a menstruating amoeba. I remember pulling Tarot Cards and having my fortune read, which, if I could remember it, probably said, “Tomorrow, you will have a truly shitty hangover.” By the time I stumbled into my closet, I was ready to pass out cold. Then I discovered a Chinese guy sleeping in my bunk. The cursed Goldilocks Syndrome! Now when you pay $25 a night for a lower mattress in a room so narrow it creates awkward sexual situations just trying to get past your roommate, you don’t want to find a Chinese guy snoring on your pillow. A Swedish girl perhaps, but not a Chinese guy. So I bobsleigh off downstairs to reception, and we go-kart back upstairs, and wake the guy up. But by then, my clean sheets are soiled with his loose, flaking acne, so he apologized, and helped me make my new bed on the top bunk closest to the rattling window, and finally I could enter blessed unconsciousness. Melbourne showed enormous promise.

Gonzo Gallery for Melbourne: Goldilocks, Killers, and Tennis

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