Anyone watching the Commonwealth Games road cycling from an armchair here in Sydney must have considered this terrible possibility: that the tide of Melbourne hubris springs from something very real. In the helicopter view a torrent of green seemed to rush uphill, threatening to engulf the elegant, spaced towers of the city. It is now a truism that Melbourne has preserved a continuity with its past while bringing flair and imagination to new structures. Sydney’s gauchery is a painful embarrassment: two prominent new buildings in the pleasantly rundown Haymarket have been called World Square by the developer.
Of course that green sweep south of the Yarra is a deception. We are looking down on the botanic gardens, where much of the foliage is alien. Still, Melbourne is so green in places that it seems not to belong to mainland Australia. It depends of course on your concept of greenness. Brisbane’s grass can be a bright lime, but its foliage is subtropical: some of it the lucid green of paradise, some livid and rank in its fecundity. I love it all, but many us draw our concept of a green and pleasant land from England. Melbourne can be a bit like that. The city and its lanes are faintly European, and in its grid layout there are improbable echoes of New York – a subtle effect also noted by ex-Melburnian journalist and musician Dick Hughes. This has something to do with the flatness, and with the grey granite and bluestone of the old buildings, as opposed to Sydney’s sandstone.
As a teenager I lived in Melbourne through most of the 1950s. Ava Gardner came to town in 1959 for the filming of On The Beach, and she is still widely believed to have declared Melbourne a great place to make a film about the end of the world. Journalist Neil Jillett invented the quote, pretending to read her mind after failing to interview her. My trumpet teacher Paddy Fitzallen won a part in that movie, but the scene where he played a last blues backstage before the nuclear fallout reached Melbourne was destined for the cutting room floor. Sinatra also came to town and Gardner and her new Spanish bullfighter boyfriend were in the audience when he sang “Don’t dig that perfume from Spain” instead of ‘I get no kick from cocaine.’
If you lived in Melbourne at that time it was not hard to believe Jillett’s little fantasy. Six o’clock closing for pubs remained, with the attendant Six O’clock Swill. Sydney had already extended to 10pm, and proudly staid Melburnians – of whom there were many – related stories of drunkenness on Sydney’s streets. Journalist Keith Dunstan wrote that the only movement to be seen on a Melbourne weekend was the smoke from the crematoria.
If Dunstan had walked down from where I lived, to gaze over the sports fields of the Maribyrnong River, he would have seen players floating up to meet the fall of a footy from the heavens. You had the feeling there that a thousand balls were rising from fields all over Melbourne; that everywhere angels were reaching across the sky. Thus did Melbourne transcend its flatness. Saturation in the one game could also be suffocating.
As a layout artist in the Myer advertising department, I imagined that all of Melbourne culture radiated from the great emporium. Helmut Newton did fashion shots for us, and Freddie Asmussen won international medals for his Bourke Street window displays. In nearby lanes Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, Joy Hester and others had once set up their studios, and for no rational reason I associated this with the store. Because cast members from The Pyjama Game – then playing at the nearby Princess Theatre – were used in a Myer advertising campaign, I felt that Myer had some proprietorial connection with stage musicals as well. The connection with the new Myer Music Bowl was of course real.
Basically, I felt that Melbourne culture was very concentrated and intense. Beyond lay the deep suburbia of Edna Everage, from Moonee Ponds to far Reservoir. Even as I discovered jazz, folk and rock venues secreted about the city – some of them in the speakeasies that were a consequence of early closing – Melbourne culture seemed either exclusive or underground. In either case, hidden. Culture and style have now flowered over a wide open field, until Melbourne is as enthralled with itself as England in the 19th century, or America today. Since the financial centre of gravity moved north, Melbourne has crowned itself the sporting capital, the arts capital, the events capital, and more recently the JAZZ CAPITAL – a claim unlikely to set the masses alight.
In the 1950s you could still see vistas around Port Phillip that now only exist in Clarissa Beckett paintings. I loved it, and even found places deep enough for spear fishing; but I longed for the open Pacific, which lay at the end of my street in Sydney. This pull remains deeper than culture. When I returned at the end of the 1950s, however, the dun tones of Sydney shocked me. The light seemed tarnished by salt spray, as if everything was reflected in an old brass plate. There was no autumn. Soon enough this tonal shock dissolved in the blue swell rising against those bitten cliffs. And somehow it seemed more like the “real Australia”.
After painting Fitzroy and the St Kilda baths, where did Nolan go to find his “Australian’” tonality? He went first to the Wimmera wheatlands, and to Kelly country in the North East of Victoria. The latter can be very green after rain, but he painted its dry and gaunt aspects. Later he went deep into the dry heart. Arthur Streeton went to Sydney, whence he sang, in letters to fellow Heidelberg impressionsts, of the light on Sydney’s harbour and coast. The paradox is that while Nolan and company reached back to earlier modernism for a distinctive Australian style, some artists in Sydney embraced recent modern movements. While some were distinctive, their “Australian” qualities are much less obvious.
Associated with Nolan and company were musicians of the trad jazz revival, in which Melbourne was central. The story of how Melbourne’s Graeme Bell took an Australian approach to traditional jazz to Eastern Europe and London, and gained notice in American jazz magazine polls, has been often told. I am speaking very broadly here of artistic tendencies in the two cities: there were of course modernists in Melbourne and there was trad jazz in Sydney. In another parallel, the genuinely modern jazz of the time – of both Melbourne and Sydney – is a matter largely of specialist interest now. And yet, Sydney’s Don Burrows, who absorbed a modern vocabulary quite early remains a household name.
But it was from Melbourne’s deep topsoil that the most the celebrated movements sprang. And of course Melbourne is as Australian as Barry Humphries and Kath & Kim – yet so different that I look forward to my visits with the excitement I would feel travelling to another country.
All, or most of the claims made for Marvelous Melbourne have long been conceded by me and by most people I know in Sydney. Sane licensing and entertainment laws, lower rents, rational noise regulations, and the retention of its lanes and arcades, have made it easier for Melbourne to support interesting venues, eateries and shops. Beyond that, the attitude is more welcoming (if you can ignore the universal expressions of superiority to Sydney). The sense of style is undoubtedly superior. It is many years since I have heard any Sydneysider launch the kind of rabid attack on Melbourne that I hear frequently from the other direction. I will not give examples because they will seem exaggerated and even insane.
There was a time when I would praise Melbourne’s beauty, the feeling that the place was spellbound. Too often this was met by a moment’s lofty silence, before the anti-Sydney rail: rabid, sneering, obsessed. This would not matter much if so many of the things we love of about Sydney were not being destroyed.
Conservative commentator Michael Duffy and architecture writer Elizabeth Farrelly have written heartfelt laments for the way apartment blocks are cutting off much loved views and destroying village-like suburbs in Sydney. One Melbourne painter recently came up here to look around the harbour, and found almost nothing of interest any more, due to the proliferation of apartments (his idea of interesting was admittedly very specialised). Some of these are elegant, in a Bauhaus way, but too much of anything is too much. Duffy finds a spiritual link between urban consolidation and socialism, which rings strangely to me, since I once went to jail with a bunch, mainly of socialists, protesting the development that threatened to disfigure Sydney’s lovely Victoria Street. I still have the original plans to run tower blocks from the CBD right through the historic Rocks area. This was largely thwarted with the aid of green bans imposed by the Builders Labourers Federation, whose secretary Jack Mundey was a communist.
Such action is now terribly old fashioned, and wildly incorrect in the current ethos. Sydney’s trams were as interesting as Melbourne’s – perhaps more so, since a greater variety of stock rolled simultaneously, including the ancient and fantastical toast racks. Trams in Sydney’s CBD are now surely untenable, but as the result of government studies and – according to some historical readings – the influence of the powerful petroleum and tyre company lobby, they phased out the lot of them, from Maroubra and La Perouse in the south to the northern beaches of Collaroy and Narrabeen. Whether you believe that pragmatism or lobbying or both were responsible, it is an example of Sydney destroying its curious character – while Melbourne somehow retains hers. The effect of the hotel lobby on jazz and other music is not disputed (see also the last par of my Freedman Fellowship review on this site).
The deep fascination of the “working harbour” will never return, but mossy little residential coves remain, and there are times on the way to Manly when the afternoon swell through the heads is cerulean blue. And now the crazed rationalists who have scoured so much atmosphere from Sydney want to phase out the ferries. Weep for Sydney.
Of course it is all our fault. We let it happen, obsessed as we all are up here with property and bling. Leave aside the absurd notion that people do not talk about property in Melbourne, none of the people I know are like that. We are ordinary suburban folk. Just like most Melburnians. Sorry. Asked about the house she owned in Sydney, actor Rachel Griffiths quickly pointed out that it was simply convenient. Melbourne was a family place, Sydney a transient port city. Did it not occur to her that she felt this way because her family was in Melbourne?
Many of us live in Sydney because we have no choice. Some live here to be near families. Some for career reasons. And some, believe it or not, because they still love it. People Iiving Back of Bourke seem to love it there, and sneer at the big smoke, wherever it may be. I live in Sydney because the water in Melbourne’s winter is too cold and the great surf beaches too far away. I want to surf and dive throughout the year for the rest of my life. Shallow? For me it is deeper than culture.
Of course there are strong reasons for hating Sydney. As the lightning rods of the Chrysler Building, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty divert the world’s gaze from a resentful Chicago, so do Sydney’s over-exposed totems drain attention that Melburnians feel should be trained on them. Arts funding bodies have been located here, and the public broadcaster’s news and current affairs programs were once inexcusably Sydney-centric; but the resentment began a long time ago, and is shared by people who couldn’t care less about arts bodies and rarely watch the ABC.
When I told my friends that our family was moving to Melbourne there were no sneers of disbelief; just a strange half-curiosity. Of course they knew where it was, but had never given it much thought. Which could be part of the problem. When I arrived in Melbourne everyone knew a great deal about Sydney. They hated it, though few had been there. Even the school prefects found time to lean down and disparage the place, often telling me to “Go back to the coathanger!” The sneers may now be justified.
Of course it is silly to say there is no culture in Sydney, no Film Festival, no Sydney Festival, no creative music. There is even a handful of distinctive newer buildings, clustered mainly on the hill near the Conservatorium and the edges of the Domain and Botanic Gardens (this area is one of several that give the lie to my exaggeration about Sydney’s vanishing atmosphere). Tucked in among them are little streets with houses that seem to take you back to settlement. There is a big black steel Calder sculpture in George Street for heavens sake, an adjunct to Harry Seidler’s Australia Square. The trouble is that the narrow, higgledy piggledy old city has no centre. Long queues in Melbourne’s heart for film and comedy festivals give a sense of vibrancy. All the street banners in the world cannot match this.
And in truth the Manly Jazz Festival and the Darling Harbour Jazz Festival do not compare in quality with Victoria’s Wangaratta Festival of Jazz or the Melbourne International Jazz Festival, whatever its faults.
But is this the full picture of Melbourne and Sydney culture? Following resentment of Opera Australia’s seeming indifference to Melbourne, a Victorian Opera was formed; and died for lack of support. I see even as I write that it has been reformed, and of course hope for its success. Promoters and arts observers tell me that it is harder to draw profitable or break-even audiences for overseas artists in Melbourne than it is in Sydney. This very much applies to jazz. Certainly Melbourne has more venues, but as a known champion of Melbourne jazz I am sent many discs from the south and the truth is that the quality of jazz in the two cities, based on this evidence at any rate, seems very comparable. The heights of Sydney jazz are admittedly something of a miracle in the circumstances, but one that should be celebrated. There are a few venues here, and there are two organisations – SIMA and the Jazzgroove Association – dedicated to presenting excellence in contemporary jazz every week. Melbourne musicians figure in their programs, just as Sydney musicians figure in the Melbourne Jazz Cooperative’s.
At the same time smaller events such as the Freedman Fellowship finals and the Jazz Now festival, both in Sydney’s wonderful Opera House Studio, compare well with anything for concentrated quality.
The few Melbourne people I know who do not reflexively disparage Sydney are musicians. They actually like coming up here to play. Some of them practically hit the ground swimming. The great Wangaratta Festival of Jazz always presents a balanced forum for the best Sydney and Melbourne bands, traditional and contemporary (again I find remarkable quality from all regions, including Brisbane and Perth). Sydney and Melbourne musicians listen to each other. The camaraderie is something I look forward to each year. Let me remind you that Wangaratta’s artistic director Adrian Jackson (a Melburnian) was attacked savagely by some down south for allowing bands from “tinsel town” to encroach on what they thought should be a Victorian festival. Soon after the festival was mooted, wiser heads in both states believed that in view of its raison d’etre – which was to draw attention to Wangaratta and to bring people there – it should be national in its ethos, with a high-quality but often unusual international component. It is hard to imagine anyone sustaining that ethos so well as Jackson.
Let us now put such neurosis behind us. I see signs of a rapprochement. Look, we’ve got the Kiwis to goad! In fact I lived in New Zealand for a year and have a deep nostalgia for the place. I’m not advocating a bland reciprocity with no room for jokes, but let’s drop the profoundly irritating seriousness of so many of the insults. We have two cities that are surprisingly different within a country where the accent varies but little from state to state – until you get to North Queensland where they say eh at the end of every sentence (like Kiwis: settle down, settle down!). Both have a large immigrant component. My ancestors on my father’s side came from Germany, but there might be convicts on my mother’s side. I don’t care. I like the feeling, still strong in parts of Sydney, that convicts were here, that one of our most talented architects, Francis Greenway, was a convict. I also love the Melbourne Club old money feeling that is still down there in certain cathedral closes of the south.
In jazz we now have the phenomenon of dual city bands. With all their attendant difficulties for rehearsal and performance, the results have been very special. I cite the trio led by Scott Tinkler, which uses bassist Brett Hirst and drummer Simon Barker in Sydney (sometimes recently drummer Ken Edie from Brisbane), the Bernie McGann/Paul Grabowsky collaboration and Sam Keevers’s Cuban jazz unit, with McGann and Barker joining Tinkler, Jamie Oehlers and others from Melbourne. Also James Morrison and Joe Chindamo. In the old days jazz musicians used to hitch-hike between the hostile cities to play in each other’s clubs, sometimes staying for extended periods. They were underground collaborators, a reverse resistance.
But before we get too cosy, let me send a few rubber bullets the other way. Melbourne is unashamed of its artistic activity, and this is refreshing after the indifference or cynicism Sydney can display, but it can also bleed off into the precious. Stomachs turned when that prat began skipping through the vineyards in the fey “Run Rabbit, Run” Yarra Valley ad. I can’t believe that our John Singleton would have let that pass!
Further, Melburnians should entertain the possibility that Barry Humphries might have been taking the mickey when he said that Melbourne was “the envy of the world” during the Commonwealth Games closing ceremony. He has been known to do it before.