Melbourne City Tour

In Melbourne we went on a different kind of city tour. We went on a tour that brought us through various alley ways rather than popular streets that we could find on our own time. It was interesting to do, very different than what I was used to in my other tours. I learned a lot about the art culture of Melbourne when on the tour. Our tour guide was extremely invested in showing us various alley ways with graffiti. The work that we saw varied from explicit images to religious images, all telling their own unique story. Some of the alley ways were used for freelance artists and others artists are paid to come in and design the work. One of my favorite murals was one that was as large as entire face of a building that read Melbourne with red roses all over it. It was cool to see the “ACDC street.” We hopped on a tram to see the street and various pieces of paint were on the street respecting the band and their logos and images. The art culture is a huge part of Melbourne. Art is everywhere. I even noticed when at the Australian Open their venues were graffitied art as they paid respect to the culture of Melbourne and it’s unique aspect of art. The all ties into the cultural aspect of what we have been learned about different cities. All of the cities that we visited were unique in their own way and Melbourne was a dominant art culture. Another thing that I learned about on my tour was the design of roads were done from the influence of horse and carriage. The road ways are still very wide from this because when the city was being made they wanted space on all the street for horse and carriage to be able to turn around on. I was told this fact when walking down a very smelly alley way. My tour guide looked at me and said “imagine what it smelled like when horses were running the streets, people used to call this area Smellbourne!” It was interesting to learn about the way roads were made as it too goes into the culture and way people lived then and now in Australian cities.

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