Out and about in Melbourne town and surrounds!

In honor of time well spent in the lovely city of Melbourne, I thought I'd share some of my favourite places and happenings in and around Melbourne! Here are places and activities that tingled my ooom-shaka-laaka vibe when I lived there...

Let's start with some of the places that enriched my mind!:

• Check out Borders bookshop in Carlton. Yes. I know I'm plugging a chain bookstore and that this might be unappealing to some (particularly Black Books fans!), but I found this bookshop in Carlton to be a peaceful place to hang out just before a film, a great place to meet up with friends and just super-good for book-browsing fun!
• CAE (College of Adult Education) on Degraves St in the city, where you can pick a course, any course, expand your thinking and have some fun meeting new people while you do it!
• Hares and Hyenas: A luscious queer bookshop in funky Fitzroy where you can pick up great dvds, books and free queer street-press too! They now serve beverages too!
• Check out wonderful documentaries in 3D at the Melbourne Museum Imax Theatre, where I found not only my eyes, but also my mind, widening to the stunning footage I watched! Whilst you're wandering in and out of the theatre be sure to soak in the architectural splendor of the World Heritage listed Royal Exhibition Building, just across from the entrance to the Imax!
• Cruise into OUT Video in St Kilda where you can hire and/or buy groovy queer flicks and pick up free queer street-press while you're at it!
  
• Relax your mind and see to the heart of what truly matters with regular meditation, teachings and other activities at the Tibetan Buddhist Society's Peaceful Land of Joy Meditation Centre: Enjoy the bliss of the beautiful temple and rose gardens!
• Pop into The National Gallery of Victoria for inspiration and sensory stimulation! A highlight for me was most certainly the Andreas Gursky photography exhibition: stunning!
  

Places that were good, oh so good, for my palette:

• The queer friendly Bistro Vite and the Bluetrain Cafe at Southbank are both well worth visiting for the nice ambiance and hearty feeds!
• Brunetti's Cafe: Feast your eyes on the heavenly and abundant array of sweets, then settle in for a decadent indulgence :-)
• Cafe Trevi (294 - 296 Lygon Street, Carlton): Another relaxed eating place in Carlton which I found was perfect to visit with small children as the service was professional and the tables big enough for little munchkins to sprawl all over!
• Cake shops on Acland Street in St Kilda: Don't miss these delights! Press your nose up to the glass and indulge your sight, if not your tummy, in the visual feast before you!
• Mambos (Shop 8, Sunshine Marketplace): A great place to meet up with friends and have heart-to-hearts! The pizzas and milkshakes were gooood too! :-)
• Michel's Patisserie (Shop 12, Sunshine Marketplace and Barkley Square, Brunswick) for spinach & cheese rolls with chai for lunch in Sunshine, or banana bread and chai for brunch with newspapers in Brunswick! Yes. I am a sucker for the chain outlets: there's something about the comfort of familiarity and the professional service that I found at these two outlets that worked for me!
• Muffin Break (Sunshine Marketplace): Just because the staff are so smiley and friendly!
• Mule cafe (146 Sydney Rd, Brunswick)-wonderful for brunch in Brunswick!
• Starbucks in the City (Swanston Street Walk): Yep, I know it's another chain outlet, but I really enjoyed sipping on chai, munching on banana bread and reading papers whilst watching the passers by on Swanston Street from this location!
• For super-professional, friendly and fine service, nowhere I went to in Melbourne beat The Granary for me! A little oasis in Sunshine: this was my venue of choice for regular chai, avocado, cheese & lettuce sandwiches, smiles and yo-yo biscuits! Do it!
• The Vegie Bar: Another funky Fitzroy location where you can find a menu full of fabulous droolerific vegetarian options...YUMMMY!
• Tomodachi Japanese restaurant at Melbourne Central where the food is yumm yumm yummmmy and the teas are tasty!
• Don't go past Trotters on Lygon Street, in Carlton, for a relaxed and casual meal with buddies!

Places that were a great source of assistance with the practical needs of life!:

• Barkley Square Shopping Centre in Brunswick is tops for essentials shopping (the Kmart there is good too!) then relaxing with chai, newspaper and banana bread! Yum! The vegetarian cannelloni in the food court is yumiliscious too! Top it all off with a great massage and you'll be smiling all the way home too!
  
• Cocca (105 Station Street, Fairfield, Ph: 03 9481 4265): Get a haircut from Vince-the guy has an amazing gift when it comes to "Wow!-I-like-your-hair!" factor haircuts and can make anyone laugh with his stories!
• Kathmandu: Oh my gawsh, who can pass up the wonderfully practical and spunky clothing and knick knacks available from Kathmandu (both a retail store and factory outlet are within walking distance of each other on Smith Street, Fitzroy, or duck into the Bourke Street store for a browse!)
  
• Check out Vegan Wares in Collingwood for very swish looking shoes, belts and wallets made from non-animal products!
  
• W.E Automotive: A lovelier, more sincere and caring mechanic than John has got to be hard to find!

And for all over relaxation, fun, recreation and healing:

• Cat's Body Crafts: Lovely massages from a lovely "switched on" lady!
• Check out the relaxing environmental park, Ceres, a great, nature-infused place to wander and enjoy a hearty brunch in the healthy on-site cafe!
• Tram or train it into the City and soak up the vibes (preferably in the day-time) in Bourke Street Mall, Federation Square and Southbank...lovely!
• Pick a counsellor, any counsellor, at Counselling rooms on-Line, where you can step into the flow of healing the blocks and barriers to a better you, whilst feeling supported in letting go of what doesn't work for you: Tony Talevski was my pick as regular counselor extra-ordinaire...find one that works for you and get onto it!
• The Japanese Bath House: Luxury! Scrub, soak and steam in a traditional Japanese bath house, then wander upstairs in your kimono for a divine shiatsu massage-deliriously blissful!
• Massage your ears with affirming sounds from Joy FM ("Australia's only gay and lesbian radio station") and minimal-ad-interrupted groovy music (Eg: plenty of Kylie and Madonna!) on Mix 101.1.
  
• The Melbourne Aquarium, was the best Aquarium I ever visited: I swear the fish even looked happy to be there!
• Get in early to buy your mega passes to the annual Melbourne Queer film Festival (MQFF) as sessions filled up fast this year and most of the movies I saw were super!
• Riding over the Westgate Bridge as part of the Melbourne Summer Cycle to raise funds in the battle against Multiple Sclerosis was a massive buzz for me! If you're in Melbourne, grab some friends together and have a go next year: it's for a great cause!
• Check out the most delicious viewing pleasures of Nova cinema on Lygon Street, Carlton, where you're bound to find your senses stimulated!
• Relax with the views and walks along Point Addis Beach. If you're feeling like making the most of being there, book in on-line for a surf lesson before you get there, then simply arrive and enjoy catching gentle waves whilst surrounded by beautiful cliff faces and the clear blue sky!
  
• De-stress and process hard-core work days with gentle walks around Princes Park!
• St Kilda Pier is a marvelous place to wander and wonder...check out a sunset from the esplanade and feel the contentment within you surface!
• The Sun Theatre in Yarraville-including the nearby bookshop and cafes are a groovy weekend escape-perfect for catching up with friends and enjoying hearty laughs!
  
• Check out some fun fitness opportunities with the Ace Girls: Social tennis for Melbourne's gay gals!

So that's my Melbourne infomercial done for now! But wait! There's more! Last, but certainly not least, the very very best things about Melbourne for me were the wonderful friends, old and new, in and around Melbourne, who loyally embraced my heart when it was both hurting and happy, by loving me, holding me, understanding me, laughing with me, adventuring with me, chai latte-ing with me, celebrating with me and treasuring all of me, the whole time I was there. True friends who helped me to heal and grow with their loving acceptance of me, and who let me love them right back.

These friends truly made Melbourne a wonderful place for me to be :-)

I hope you too find the places, people and happenings that stimulate your ooom-shaka-laaka vibe, next time you're out and about in lovely Melbourne :-)
xxGalijan

A Precious Gift

A friend of mine rang me the other night to tell me that there was a program on TV about the notorious boys' home that he had been sent to as a child: Kinchela Boys' Home. This friend and his siblings had been stolen from their parents in the 1950s as part of the Australian Government's assimilation policies, whereby Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their parents and fostered out to white families or institutionalized in homes to learn "white ways" (See also the Australian Human Right's Commission's: "Bringing them Home", and a Sydney Morning Herald Article from May 2002: "Tears Flow for Sorry Time at Boys Home").

I've known this friend for almost ten years, having been very fortunate to have met him whilst on a long bus trip from Canberra, on my way to Ayers Rock to celebrate the New Year of 2000. I'd wanted a "spiritual" journey into the new millennium, and that's exactly what I got, in a very unexpected way. On that bus trip we had talked and talked, held hands, cried and hugged. It had been a very powerful meeting between a young, proudly lesbian, white woman and an older, heterosexual, Indigenous man. After hearing his stories, amidst thunder and lightening flashing outside of the bus, I had felt compelled to say sorry to him for the trauma he had experienced as a result of policies of the Australian Government of the time, and at the hands of white, Australian-identifying, people like me. The lightening stopped when I said sorry.

Since then we've kept in contact by handwritten letters, phone calls and more recently by regular text messaging. Every now and then we visit each other or meet up when we're in the same place. He is a proud Aboriginal man with a beautifully tender heart, who drives a flash car with the Aboriginal flag on display and plastic figurines of Aboriginal warriors on his dashboard (figurines that look a lot like him, I have to say!). My sexuality has never ever been an issue to him: he's told me more than once that he admires the "Dykes on Bikes" in the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade and he has not hesitated to gently tease me about my love life when he has sensed that I've needed some lightening up about it. We have both been able to laugh at "the agony and the ecstacy" (as he puts it) of romantic love! Over the years I have also witnessed some of this friend's rage, fear and pain in both negotiating life amidst predominantly "white-fella" populated cities of Australia, and in dealing with the legacy of having been forcibly separated from his family as a child. I've witnessed some of his heart-ache at still not knowing the whereabouts of one of his sisters, despite efforts to locate her. More than anything though, I have continued to witness his beautiful humor, his forgiveness, his joy for adventure, his wisdom, his honesty, his resilience and his calm strength. His generosity, grace, tenderness and acceptance towards me when my imperfections have been in full-view and when my own heart has been more than a little bruised, have been humbling to say the least.

And so the other night when he rang, I didn't get to see the TV program that he wanted me to, but I did get onto Google and looked up Kinchela Boys' Home. From what I read, it was as horrible a place as he had described to me. My Googling also lead me to find archived pages from a magazine ("Dawn") that had been published between 1952 and 1975 by the New South Wales Aborigines Welfare Board. A bit more Googling later and I was able to find references to my friend and to one of his sisters (who is now deceased and who had been sent to the girls' equivalent of Kinchela: Cootamundra Girls' Home). I found these references in a children-oriented page of Dawn called "Pete's Page" and in other parts of the magazine, which I've been able to read out to him over the phone. I've since found more archived references and photos, which I will print out and mail to him. This is not easy for him as it brings up pain and difficult memories for him, yet he wants the information; perhaps there is some comfort in knowing that aspects of his life, and that of his family, are documented...and perhaps hope for further clues to the whereabouts of his missing sister. I truly hope that these historical documents bring him more peace than pain.

I love my friend and am so grateful for his love in my life. Soul-mate friendships like this one teach me so much about humility, acceptance, grace and "keeping it real".

xxGalijan

Snippets (1)

Housemates

The sand was warm on her feet. Babooshka was testing a new ginseng and sand remedy on her house-mate, Kate. Babooshka had emigrated to Australia from Poland in the '80s with her husband. Their relationship had ended after twenty years and for the last five years Babooshka had been on a mission to re-discover herself with the aid of the New Age movement. She had moved in with Kate, an affable university student, and Kate had often found herself the guinea pig to Babooshka's healing experiments. Tonight was one such experiment.

“Zis vill enliven your feet and enable you to find your place in zee vorld Kate!” enthused Babooshka whilst gently pouring the warm sand into Kate's Ugg boots.
“Just relax Kate, just reee-lax. Zee ginseng will open your crown chakra and zis special Villiamstown sand vil ground you on your vun true pass in zis vorld!”
“Okay Babooshka,” whispered Kate, somewhat nervously from beneath the layers of silk scarving that Babooshka had tightly wrapped around her fully naked, ugg-booted body. The scarves were to enable the universe to smoothen her flow through present-day reality, Babooshka had told her.

Sometimes Kate thought about moving out.
---

One of the activities that gave me a definite ooom-shaka-laaka buzz in the Melbourne-based creative writing classes that I recently attended involved using "starter sentences" to write short pieces of fiction. The class would be given a number of short opening, or starter, sentences to choose one from, and then a brief time to write something following the chosen starter sentence. It was a great opportunity to tap into creativity quickly, to discover and share my own personal creative writing style and to enjoy the spontaneous writing of others. "Housemates" is a spontaneous snippet I wrote, during one of these exercises (the starter sentence was: "The sand was warm on her feet"). I hope it gave you a giggle :-)

Cartoonize your love

Not too long ago, my much loved 4 year old nephew very unexpectedly called out to me across a room:

"Aunty, I have hearts coming out of my head for you!"

Realizing what a beautiful gift I had just been given, my eyes moistened as everyone in the room smiled. Later that afternoon this same nephew asked me why my teeth were always out "like that":

"Because I love you so much that I can't help smiling a lot whenever I see you!"

Love is most excellent. Go on...share some of yours today!

:-)
Galijan

Moving forward in positive ways...

As someone who became particularly frustrated by the "it's all bad/racist" perspectives and associated fear-mongering related to the Australian Federal Government's Intervention in Northern Territory Indigenous communities, I was pleased to read Professor Francesca Merlan's article, "More than Rights" (published on Inside Story).

Professor Merlan's paper articulates some of the complexities associated with the Intervention and critiques some of the more popular arguments against the Intervention. In particular she offers a challenging critique of the applicability of a universal human rights model to diverse cultural contexts, such as Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory. Her article is a call to move beyond limiting and unhelpful oppositional rhetoric, towards more constructive thinking about how Intervention measures might actually be collaboratively enhanced to build greater social capacity within Indigenous communities.

Have a read and see what you think!

Homework

As my remaining time in Melbourne gently ticks down, I've been squeezing in as many wonderful people, beautiful places and fun activities as I can. There's this creative writing class in the heart of Melbourne that I've been attending and really enjoying. We get homework. Our first assignment was to write an autobiographical poem, so I wrote one.


An Autobiographical Poem

I started writing about chai.
Then I took a deeper look inside,
and saw there was a lie.

The I is a lie.
That's what I saw inside,
when I asked "Where am I?"

Beyond thoughts of chai,
When I looked inside,
I could not find the I.

Terror. Then relief rippled through all parts of the I,
as from the inside, peace merged with the all,
totally melting away the lie of a separate I.

The I continued to sip on its chai,
with a warm, knowing smile.
Enjoying
the completely sweet truth of the I.


:-)
Galijan

Putting out the flames.

Many many people in Victoria, Australia, have recently suffered extraordinary losses due to the bushfires. My social work colleagues and I have been privileged to join with many others in providing assistance to those who have been affected.

And so I wanted to write something about loss and grief, about devastation, about heartache, pain, anger and upset...about trying to understand when it just doesn't make sense...about accepting reality and crying things out, talking things out and working things out, about true love and the many forms through which it reveals itself...about forgiveness and the incredible resilience of the human spirit.

Loss naturally entails a new process, a journey, and everyone has or will experience such a journey in life, whether loss occurs by choice or by circumstance.

Authentic connections and compassion are the ground from which humans gain the strength, courage and patience to face loss and grow through it. The world's compassion in response to the Victorian bushfire losses has been a healing balm for many.

Healing through loss (at a personal, community, cultural or global level) also happens through opening ourselves to our shared human vulnerability. Ideally this process of revealing our human pain (and its protector: anger) occurs in a safe environment with people who have done the work of meeting and accepting themselves, and who consequently have the capacity to respond to raw human emotion with a measure of understanding, love, tenderness, empathy, acceptance, stability, authenticity, commitment and courage. Such exchanges can yield more real, more connected relationships between individuals, who are in fact strengthened through having opened to the pain of their own and others' losses. This is because sharing the pain of loss ultimately reveals and releases love.

There is much, much love in Victoria at the moment.

May you treasure the love and the authentic human connections in your life. Stay awake and present to these and remember: true love is always present and available to you.

Don't give up, no matter what.

Galijan