Steve Price: Letting Melbourne’s CBD die a slow Covid death is a terrible mistake

Melbourne is too big, too good and too important not to survive Victoria’s Covid mistakes, but it won’t come back without our help.

In October last year, walking through Melbourne’s CBD I took a photograph of Little Bourke Street in Chinatown from the Exhibition Street corner looking west.

It was Lockdown Two – of what has turned into six lockdowns – and aside from one parked truck the normally buzzing street was empty.

Lockdown two lasted a gruelling 111 days and ended a week after I took that photograph. The city was on its knees and Chinatown, usually bustling with office workers after a quick yum-cha or takeaway, was deserted.

It served for me as a grim reminder of how awful 2020 had been.

Looking back at that image on my Instagram roll when it popped up this week I decided to go back to that same spot and see what it looked like almost 11 months later.

Near enough to a year on I took my phone out and snapped the same street scene from just about the same spot. I couldn’t stand in the middle of the road this time because like much of Melbourne it was cordoned off as a work site.

Something to do with natural gas – I’m not sure if they are mining for it because the city resembles a deserted mine site – plus there was a big truck was in the way.

However, if you look at the image with the Chine on Paramount sign to the left in both shots, you’ll see nothing has changed.

Little Bourke St, October 2020.

Little Bourke St, September 2021.

A year on and 36 days into yet another lockdown we are in the exact same place we were back then.

The great City of Melbourne, once the world’s most liveable city and the sporting capital of the world, is still on its knees and the damage being done will take years to repair.

Melbourne’s CBD sadly may never recover. In two weeks time on September 23, on the day before we should be getting ready for the AFL grand final long weekend, we will instead still be locked up within 5kms of home.

Little Bourke Street would normally be buzzing with office workers taking an early long weekend lunch of duck pancakes, Crown Lagers and sauvignon blanc.

Pre-Grand Final lunches serving as fundraisers for cash strapped clubs would be in every big space from the Crown Palladium to the Grand Hyatt and the Holden Centre.

Melbourne’s comedians like Pete Helliar, Dave Hughes, Mick Molloy and Tommy Little would dash from one lunch to the other making thousands in a day.

Instead, Melbourne City now looks like the set from a horror movie or an end of the world science fiction tale. If anything, a year after I first went on that walk last October it has sunk even deeper.

Hundreds more cafes, restaurants and little bars are boarded up with for lease signs plastered across their front windows. As the Herald Sun reported this week, insolvencies in Victoria are now averaging 112 a month – the same as during that brutal lockdown a year ago.

Our city council is obviously either incapable or unable to work out what to do. Every now and then Sally Capp the Lord Mayor poses for some cheesy photo opportunity grasping a bottle of bubbles and a big grin, but Covid has won.

You can’t really blame her alone, but her councillors and town planners with their never- ending obsession with bike lanes and outdoor dining on already too narrow streets have little idea.

It is going to be – as it always is – up to the people of Melbourne who love their city to grab hold and give it the life back that it once had. Too many of us will be tempted, having broken those city habits that sustained us pre-Covid, to just stay away.

That would be a dreadful mistake that we can’t afford to make. Having lived in Sydney, I can tell you their CBD is as dead as Melbourne is now on weekends and we can’t let that happen here.

If we don’t protect our CBD it will lose its soul. Picture: NCA NewsWire

Melbourne’s network of little lanes – some hidden – are to be treasured and if we want the bars and cafes and little food joints to survive, we need to support them.

Chinatown is world class and some of the best times I’ve had at lunch or dinner have happened at a big round table everywhere from Bamboo House to the Shark Fin Inn and, when someone else was paying, the Flower Drum.

Beers at the Cricketers bar at the Windsor before or after the footy or cricket or a table at the European on the footpath on Spring Street and then next door to Siglo, that hidden bar without a sign where you could smoke a cigar on the roof.

A big night out starts and ends at Di Stasio Citta further up Spring St. On the CBD fringe we have to protect Lygon Street and our memories of pizza and pasta or a short black at University Café.

Melbourne is too big, too good and too important not to survive but it won’t do it without our help. Covid and mistakes made in Spring Street and Canberra have combined to try and destroy our way of life.

We have lost two grand finals, at least one Grand Prix, and a Melbourne Cup with no people. Our nationally famous and loved theatres are just dark buildings with signs out front but we must fight back.

Make a bucket list of the places you have missed out on and pray they survive. When we open, organise a pub crawl with mates or a yum-cha Sunday with the kids and a shopping trip through the lanes.

Once lockdown is over we need to get back to the city and show our support. Picture : NCA NewsWire

Walk the city when you can and remind yourself about Flinders or Hardware or Hosier Lanes. Stay in a city hotel for the weekend and take the kids to the Aquarium and walk down St Kilda Road to the National Gallery and the War Memorial and through the magnificent Botanic Gardens and back along past the rowing sheds.

We can come back and make it Marvellous Melbourne again. It’s the Melbourne we love but it won’t happen without all of us making an effort.

LIKES

* Finally serious discussion about being able to use Vaccination passports to access hotels, restaurants and even travel.

* NSW politicians at least giving their population hope of an October opening.

* Preliminary finals weekend – the best two games of footy every season.

* Quality documentaries remembering the 20th anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks.

DISLIKES

* The Taliban reverting to type as they sweep through Afghanistan and threatening women.

* Ridiculous rules and regulations around returning Victorians waiting on the Albury border.

* Vaccine brawling between the states over supply issues – the public don’t care.

* A ten-person limit in regional hotels reopening mean it’s financially impossible to make a profit.

Australia Today with Steve Price can be heard live from 7am weekdays via the LiSTNR app

Originally published as Steve Price: Letting Melbourne’s CBD die a slow Covid death is a terrible mistake