Steve Price laments what has happened to the world’s most liveable city
Lockdown two is attempting to destroy a silent, invisible virus but just like invading armies it’s smashing the very thing it’s there to save. Take a walk with Steve Price through the deserted streets of what was once the world’s most liveable city.
Opinion
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Parking in Spring Street just outside the CBD outpost of Ronnie Di Stasio’s Citta restaurant on Monday as the temperature nudged 25 degrees it was impossible not to feel sad.
Parking was free but everything else I was about to see on a 70-minute walk through Melbourne — the world’s most liveable city — revealed the brutal cost of this pandemic lockdown.
Just across Spring St behind the old Treasury Building Premier Daniel Andrews was presumably in his office surrounded by advisers inhabiting the only office building in Melbourne still operating as normal.
Further down the road you couldn’t escape the irony of a State Parliament building covered by scaffolding and hessian sacking, a symbol of a locked-up, shutdown Melbourne.
At Di Stasio’s there were a few lights on. I stuck my head in the door and the first question I was asked was predictably around the lockdown.
When do you reckon he’ll let us out, they asked, and I mumbled something about rolling averages, said good luck and left.
The kitchen, like many across Melbourne, was ticking over turning out takeaway, but for anyone who has eaten in Di Sasio’s amazing dining room the overwhelming mood was gloom and doom.
Empty tables and stacked chairs, it felt like a scene from one of those World War II movies when the US troops turn up in Paris after the German occupation.
As my city walk progressed it started to feel more like the old days of the Berlin Wall when you crossed from west to east through Checkpoint Charlie going from vibrant to depressing — from colourful to grey from free to under occupation.
Lockdown two is attempting to destroy a silent, invisible virus but just like invading armies it’s smashing the very thing it’s there to save.
Still in Spring Street past the shuttered Windsor Hotel and the Cricketers Bar — the best place for a cold pot before or after the footy — one of the saddest sights in Covid Melbourne is the Marriner families Princess Theatre.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, a magical take on the Potter book series, was always going to be a financial risk — now it’s a financial disaster.
It was dependent on not just Melbourne audiences but pulling ticket sales from around the rest of Australia and even Asia. Now no-one can come.
Posters for the show are still up, going brown in the Spring sunshine while the theatre remains dark, another symbol of just how tough life is today in Melbourne.
This of course is the theatre that was at the centre of rebooting Victoria’s reputation after the Joan Kirner rust bucket administration laid waste to the State.
Jeff Kennett and Ron Walker grabbed the stage show Cats and filled the Princess in a theatre-led revival that started Melbourne’s love affair with major events.
Turning left down Little Bourke Street at the top end of Chinatown you could have fired a cannon and hit nothing and this was peak hour at lunchtime.
More memories of Jeff Kennett not far down on the left-hand side — Bamboo House one of Jeff’s favourites when he was Premier.
He was such a frequent diner Jeff had his own spot in the back corner, a round table where before question time he was into the pan-fried dumplings and Szechuan beef.
Back then as the 2pm deadline for question time approached, Jeff would use a rear exit through the kitchen and out through a door that opened onto Bourke St — a handy shortcut for a Premier in a hurry.
Across the street every family’s favourite yum-cha joint the Shark Fin Inn is turning out takeaway delivered by the Uber Eats crowd on bikes — not quite as tasty as Sunday there with the family and a couple of Crown Lagers.
Back-tracking down Crossley Street I wanted to make sure Pellegrini’s Espresso Bar was still there on the corner with Bourke Street.
It is, but with the tragic death of co-owner Sisto Malaspina in 2018 and the retirement last year of his business partner of 45 years Nino Pangrazio, it will probably never be the same.
Like the rest of our city it’s locked up, not even bothering with takeaway coffee and it wouldn’t work because at Pellegrini’s you needed to sit at the bar wondering whether you should have the rum baba.
I couldn’t see the back kitchen where in the eighties we would grab a seat at the table next to the stoves and order the toasted cheese sandwich with Bolognese sauce on top.
Further down Bourke Street over Exhibition and I wondered if the legendary Flower Drum was selling takeaway to be delivered by the menu log motor bikes and how awful that would be.
Imagine, if you can, Gilbert Lau’s bow tied waiters carving Peking duck into a cardboard box.
The Drum was shut along with all its famous stories including the time Derryn Hinch used it as a backdrop for his arrest by police for his first stint in jail.
Back down Bourke and left into Russell Street past Taco Bell the Mexican joint where I had my first taco opposite what was the cinema complex now the QT Hotel with no guests.
Turning right into Little Collins Street the old red and white sign of the Victoria Hotel is still there — the first city hotel I ever stayed in.
One week’s accommodation on expenses before starting work at the old Herald and Weekly Times building in Flinders St. The Victoria was the hotel of choice for country Victorians on a trip to the city in walking distance to George’s department store.
Country people of course these days avoid Melbourne like the plague.
Melbourne Town Hall is shut — you can’t even pay your parking fines on the ground floor but they have left the underground toilets in Collins Street open and clean.
Disgracefully councillors and candidates from all political backgrounds have plastered our deserted city with tacky posters asking for ratepayers to vote for them.
Someone should tell them the joint is deserted and that they are wasting their money polluting every vacant wall with their begging messages.
Back up Collins Street and past the deserted Regent Theatre where I bravely appeared in the stage show Priscilla Queen of the Desert dressed as a bottle brush wearing lipstick and high heels.
Ah, those were the days.
Melbourne will recover, the MCG will again groan with footy fans, the pubs will be pumping and the laneway bars will be packed.
Until then all we have is a walk down memory lane.
This week as I wandered our deserted CBD, it was nudging 25C as Melbourne tasted its first real spurt of Spring weather.
In normal times the Grand Final would have been played and won, someone would have a Brownlow Medal hanging around their neck and Mad Monday would have spilled into pubs around town with at least someone dressed as the Covid19 virus.
These are not normal times though — haven’t been since that March Saturday morning of the cancelled Formula 1 Grand Prix.
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