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In the heart of Melbourne’s CBD lies the hub of quirky retail stores that range from Russian dolls to watchmakers; toy stores to tie stores and everything in between.

The Royal Arcade is an understated treasure of Melbourne, connecting Little Collins Street to Bourke Street Mall, with an added vertical passage that runs through to Elizabeth Street.

In 1868 Mr Charles Webb, an architect from Suffolk in England, won a competition to design the arcade. In 1870 it was officially opened by Lord Mayor Charles Amess. The Royal is proudly known as the first arcade in Melbourne and the longest-standing arcade in Australia.

In 1892, two of the Royal Arcade’s most attractive features were erected. Gaunt’s Clock can be seen at the end of the arcade above the Collins Street exit, displaying two seven-foot giants statues of mythical characters, ‘Gog and Magog,’ standing either side. These statues were carved from clear pine and modelled on the figures that can be seen in Guildhall, London. They are said to symbolise some kind of conflict between the Britons and the Trojan invaders.

There are a few different myths about Gog and Magog. One refers to them as two giants who guard the underworld and gods of dark spirits. Part of the prophecies of the apocalypse is that when Gog and Magog return to war, the war will end. There’s also a theory that they actually represent war between two eastern-European countries.

At the opposite end of the arcade stands another symbolic statue, Chronos, a Greek mythological character also known as ‘Father Time’. If Chronos has his blindfold removed, the world will end.

From the years 2000-2004, the Royal Arcade was renovated and restored to its once-magnificent state. On the opposite side to Chronos, years ago, there was a statue of a baby called Dawn, who represented the beginning of life. But when the arcade was given a makeover, all of the statues were removed for a fresh coat of paint and Dawn was never returned.

One of the more intriguing stores in the arcade’s repertoire is Spellbox, a Melbourne original witchcraft company, purveyors of anything witchy, wizardry or magic in nature. Spellbox has been in the arcade twelve years, though it looks like the arcade was built around the store, as it blends right in with the Victorian gothic feel of the  Royal Arcade.

Lori Valentine is a manager and owner of Jasper Junior, a toy store that has been in the Royal Arcade since October 2006.  Like all others in the arcade, Jasper Junior gets a fairly broad range in their customers. “We have a lot of customers who come through internationally because it’s the oldest arcade in Melbourne” Valentine says. “People come in just to see Gog and Magog, so they come into our shop while they’re waiting for them.”

The popular chocolate tours and laneway tours have been great for business “I think it has a lot to do with placement,” Lori says. “We looked at the Block Arcade but I think this already has a more ‘toy’ feel to it. I think the nostalgia of the arcade also filters through to us, so by the time [customers] come into the store they’re already warmed to that.”

The Golden Lamp Bookshop is another quirky store which once resided in the arcade. The Golden Lamp moved out last year after an eleven year-stint. Now located in West Melbourne, the shop is all about self-development in a variety of areas, such as dream analysing, relationship counselling or palmistry.

“[The Royal Arcade] was beautiful; it had a really protective feel because it’s so old and being in the alleyway section [of the Elizabeth Street annex] where it’s not renovated, we kind of felt like the outcasts, which suited us just fine.” says co-manager of Golden Lamp, Carol.  And with so much charisma, it’s no surprise the arcade has a few secrets. “Many years ago, the top bit used to be a brothel!” Carol explains, “All the ladies were upstairs. It would have been a very long time ago, but it’s still interesting to know!”

As if housing one of Melbourne’s earliest brothels was not enough, there’s rumour of a ghost in the arcade; a woman on a spinning wheel has been sighted on many occasions after hours. Staff members believe she has been there for an exceptionally long time considering, how long it has been since spinning wheels were used.

According to Drew Sinton, paranormal expert and owner of The Haunted Bookshop in McKillop Street, “In 1997 we were looking at opening a shop in the Royal Arcade. We were looking at taking out a lease which was number 22 (now Love It). I was looking at going into partnership with a medium who was minister of a spiritualist church. We took the keys to go have a look and she went upstairs, and she says to an empty room- ‘there’s a lady here with a spinning wheel.’”

With an erotic past and some haunting stories the Royal Arcade is an integral part of any tour of Melbourne’s hidden gems.

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Idling menacingly between Lonsdale and Little Bourke Streets is Caledonian Lane – a viperous voodoo Valhalla containing the constant feeling of night. The same eerie backstreet ether that oozes out of Taxi Driver, Bringing out the Dead, and William Friedkin’s Cruising. A blackened, anything-can-happen, twitchy kind of feeling, where sounds become ominous and important.

Defiantly counted among Melbourne’s many hidden wonders, Caledonian is the darkened shooting star on the tourist’s lap of the laneways. But where Hosier Lane is the twinkle in the city’s eye, Caledonian is its kool-aid alter-ego – a candied darkness delight loaded with fangs, lip gloss and love in the gutter.

From heaven to earth there is evil heat and adventure: shoes are strung up and hung by their entrails, elderly hookers swish by in vinyl, speed freaks judder and stutter, lobsters decompose in the gutter. If a DJ cut a sample stealing the spirit of the lane, the leering laughter of Screaming Jay Hawkins would justifiably be jammed on a loop with a snuff film beating on reverb.

A simple pick and roll out of Little Bourke Street reveals the fun-bunker of St Jerome’s. Now closed, the bar is famous for not only being a skin-tight haunt of many Melburnians, but also for spawning its travelling laneway festival which plays through cities across Australia every year. St Jerome’s threw a two week wake/street party to signify the end of its five-year era in March this year.

The closure of St Jerome’s is not the only reverse swing in Caledonian. With boarded up barbershops and every store front laying departed, you see for yourself that the bump and bam and right-hook rumble of Myer’s $500m redevelopment of Lonsdale and Ltl Bourke Streets has the laneway on the run.

It is estimated that by final throws of 2012 Caledonian will have been redeveloped and the laneway will no longer exist as we see it today. Instead, it will populated by truck parks and loading bays. No stories, no life, no artwork, no dice.

If Melburnians went nuts and began hanging prosthetics instead of Nike Airs and pairs of stolen T-Lands, Caledonian Lane is probably where it would be. Unfortunately, it may be the life and death of this laneway that the streets could be celebrating.

Reviewed: November 2009

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“There’s more to Melbourne than this alley…”
- One man mumbling to another, Hosier Lane, August, 2009

Cool, cluttered and collected, Hosier Lane is one of Melbourne’s most obvious attractions. But unlike many of the city’s hidden or long-reaching laneways, Hosier provides an easily accessible example of how the council allows Melbourne’s minds to wander.

Framed at the Flinders Street end by the minaret of the Forum and lined with piss-addled doorways, the majority of the laneway’s allure arrives from its seductive sangria of street art: cartoons, shrooms, vampire faces, Brixton briefcase, girls, monsters and ninjas, laughing skulls and skeletal hugs. The lassoed layers of filth, tags and rags providing an uplifting array of stories, rhymes and lullabies to paralyse.

The art inside Hosier is part of the skunk works that is Citylights projects; an initiative run by Andrew Mac designed to corkscrew the concrete jungle into a series of street level canvasses fit for free public viewing.

The majority of the artwork is commissioned and/or approved by Citylights, with one of the key elements being the light boxes which are updated approximately every ten weeks. Due to the gonzo nature of graffiti, unauthorized work often appears, but that’s partly the point – without it the lane would be rat trapped and shackled. Citylight’s hard work in Hosier has earned the lane a reputation as one of Australia’s most important cultural attractions.

Halfway along Hosier is Rutledge Lane; a surrealistic Super Mario shoot off that sucks in the soul through a cluster bomb of creativity before cutting them adrift at the opposite end of the laneway. It is here that you find Until Never.

As an additional component of the Citylight’s process, the Until Never gallery regularly displays work from emerging underground artists located all over Australia. The theme is loose, experimental, conceptual, and never cut from main cloth. Until Never is open Wednesday-Saturday afternoons.

Hosier’s only bar, Misty, is one of those all-look and no-touch kind of rooms. Enticing, playful and teasing from the outside, slightly underwhelming on the inside. Tapas joint, MoVida, fills the laneway with saccharine scents of Spanish verandas, and with its señorita artwork, the restaurant and its speed freak kitchen adds a little light to the dark end of the street.

Weekends commonly see the laneway saturated with sound and fury: hot rods running and gunning their engines, drag queens fumbling with cell phones, street carp giggling in leather, bass notes rumbling from rooftops. The lane never tires, never ceases, always advances, always unleashes.

There may be more to Melbourne than the life that lies living and breathing in this alley, but for a newcomer it’s the starting gun for a sprint through the artistic side of the city. A way to engage and acquire, a direction to point and shoot – a tourist’s hand rail to hades, if you will.

One ugly day some greedhead might cunningly decide to glass off the daylight, brick up the entrance, charge a fee for exhibit and gain riches from canned free expression. Until that day, Hosier Lane will continue to marvel.

Reviewed: August, 2009

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Perennial and enduring, Tattersalls Lane has long been an icon of Melbourne cool: conflicted, cultured – east meets west. A shabby-looking scion that shoots off the busy Little Bourke St, it’s set right in the heart of Chinatown’s cluttered, messy furore. A sharp, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it left turn leads the unwary into typical, high-bricked walls lined with smatterings of old event posters.

Gaylord’s restaurant is the first thing you’ll notice – if not for the eye-catching name, then the bizarre photo terrace foyer – and works as an apt indication that, as an Indian restaurant in the heart of China Town, Tattersalls Lane is one that doesn’t care much for convention. Further north is underdog restaurant Shanghai Noodle House, tired and vacant from playing second fiddle to the maddening, loud genius of its main competition, Shanghai Dumpling.

Most Melburnians are all too aware of Shanghai Dumpling’s charm and allure – it’s evidenced clearly by the snaking queues on Friday and Saturday nights. The place is lit like a Kmart, the service is terrible (don’t take it personally), but the food is fantastic. It’s cheap, too: the frugal diner often walks out well-fed for a fiver (sans beer, of course).

But it’s the little things that make Shanghai Dumpling worth it: the over-zealous doorman Jimmy – whose vocabulary extends only to numbers and his volume set only to ‘bracingly loud’; the awful covers of forgotten 90s popular music, or worse, butchered classics; and, of course, the offensively loud, conversation-disturbing ‘happy birthday’ song – so annoyingly hilarious that it always prompts diners to dob their friends in. Shanghai Dumpling is an institution, really, and one that, to its credit, refuses to change albeit its popularity. Here’s hoping it never does.

Tattersalls Lane’s next surprise is Section 8. A renovated car park, it’s a corrugated, rusty and effortlessly cool iron jungle, right down to the mesh fence, the mess of steel girders and the bar – a hacked, painted shipping container. All this is softened with clever oriental touches, as statues, parasols and lanterns sit, spring and hang around the wooden pallet seats. These are sprinkled with cushions and make for a surprisingly comfortable, unique Melbourne bar experience. Like neighbour Shanghai Dumpling, it too may be a victim of its own popularity; if you intend to make it your bar on a Friday or Saturday night, get there early.

Pass over Stevenson Lane – there a few interesting pieces of street art, but ultimately, its focus is waste disposal – walk up through the evergreen walls and suddenly you’re at Lonsdale St, a world away from where you just were: a little avenue of contradiction, juxtaposition and a reminder of what it is, after all, what makes Melbourne great.

Reviewed: May 2009

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From its dignified bluestone pavement to its antiquated nineteenth century buildings, Bank Pl is perhaps Melbourne’s most handsome laneway. In fact, it’s so impressive, so beautiful, that’d you be forgiven for thinking you’ve just rounded the corner into Europe.

There’s the lamp posts – standing in a neat row, forged from elegant iron and entwined with peeling gold laurels – the beautiful Charter House – its title engraved carefully above the majestic building’s entrance – and plenty of places to sit underneath whispering plane trees as you watch the business crowd pour in for after-work drinks.

Undoubtedly, Bank Pl’s most spectacular feature is its pub – the Mitre Tavern. Situated on Mitre La – one of Bank Pl’s many cul-de-sacs – it’s a tidy, double-story, English-style drinking hole that sits underneath the looming resplendence of Collins Street’s prominent buildings.

The date of its construction is unclear, though it was at least prior to 1850, apparently. Officially, the pub was coined ‘The Mitre Tavern’ in 1867, and has been serving beer and food ever since. According to its menu, it’s the oldest building in Melbourne – which makes drinking in the large beer garden a reflective affair, as one imagines what the pub has seen as Melbourne rose from the ground around it.

Up the lane, there’re some apartments (the residents of which have decorated the steel stairs appended with splashes of green plants), an underground bar called Marakech, and a decent café on the corner that’s worth it just for the chance to have a coffee in the lane outside.

For true Melbourne grandeur, nothing beats Bank Pl.

Reviewed: December 2008.

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Gone are the disjointed, eccentric facades that typify so many of Melbourne’s alleys – this is Equitable Pl: sleek, modern, and alluring.

Situated near the corner of Collins and Elizabeth, the laneway is sandwiched between two corporate monoliths. Its entrance has been refashioned to smother its incongruity, and, as such, you’d be forgiven for presuming this alley was now the foyer into the large headquarters that surround it.

Once you pass through the corridor – windows into Henry Bucks and other upscale stores – you’ll notice how much you feel you’re in the city. The Commonwealth Bank building looms ahead of you, you’re surrounded by coats and scarves – it’s as though you’re walking through the pipeline of Melbourne’s corporate machine. Equitable Pl is a laneway that means business.

The proliferation of functional alleys can’t really bad a bad thing, however, as business has paved the way (literally) for a laneway that does host some surprises.

There are a dozen shops – boutiques, eateries, and more – that cater to mixed clientele. Equitable Pl thrives on its lunch business, proving a tempting distraction to businessmen and women that descend from above Melbourne’s skyline. Cheap eats are surprisingly easy to come across, however, and the cuisine varied.

There’s Monster Burger – as advertised by the hapless costumed pamphlet-bearing employee on Elizabeth’s corner; and Spudbar – the healthy baked potato dispenser growing a good reputation.

As surrounded as you are by formalist aesthetics – Equitable Pl’s dignified lines are smooth but not extravagant – there’s comfort in that mismatched flight of fire escape stairs that climb the buildings above, and reassurance in the littered blind alley that your eye isn’t supposed to see. You can sanitize a Melbourne laneway all you like, but you can’t completely extinguish its charm.

Equitable Pl is, at its core, an enjoyable exercise in measured interference.

Reviewed: September 2008

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It’s unassuming, bedraggled, and the purest form of cul-de-sac. Carson Pl is one of Melbourne’s more barren alleys, and, to an extent, rightfully overlooked. But like most of Melbourne’s labyrinthine laneways, you can’t define them by their contents alone, and Carson Pl is more than the sum of its parts.

Situated just off Little Collins St, and surrounded by more luminary gallerias like Howey Pl, Carson Pl is relatively innocuous. There’re a few rubbish skips, a collection of colourful milk crates that double as chairs, and the usual assortment of pigeons and rats. The handful of shops that choose to make their home in Carson Pl are so discreetly hidden that almost don’t want to be found; only one, Donuts Deluxe, really bothers attract customers.

Ben, the co-proprietor, has recently opened the shop – a garage-sized roller door compartment that brings to mind those on Degraves – to satisfy the need of Melbourne’s burgeoning independent street-skate industry. His store, previously tenanted by a failed cufflink trader, doubles as a place of business and design studio, cobbled together with a relaxed philosophy of anti-exclusivity.

Next to him is an old barber, with whom Ben and the Donut boys have a good rapport; a loading bay; and the smallest of thoroughfares into the anomalous, commercial resplendence of Australia on Collins. A run of windows from an upscale clothes store play light against the wall as the city winds down, allowing Carson Pl the briefest of moment of romance before the shop closes for the night.

While the littered, graffiti-riddled degeneracy of Carson Pl is a daily reality, it’s as though Donuts Deluxe is leading its artistic revival; supposedly in its heyday the alley played host to several publications that lived above the lockers we see today.

Perhaps we can look forward to further artistic upswings as Melbourne’s laneway explosion rockets forth, but for now, at least, drop into Donuts Deluxe for a chat, or grab a haircut – but it remains a lane to watch.

Reviewed: July 2008

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From its offshoot byway Howey Place, Presgrave Place is little more than a hook shaped alley, littered with rubbish skips. It’s conspicuous in its very nature – if you don’t take the time to look, you won’t be rewarded.

Off the steely, handsome revere of Howey, Presgrave is like walking through the very border of Melbourne’s increasingly widespread social-cataclysm. Pigeons peck at your feet as you look to admire the unusual street art – photo frames that hang fragmentarily alongside the laneway’s left wall. According to local workers, they were affixed one night without any explanation.

Presgrave is all pallid greys splashed with colour; a speck of bright orange here, a slither of green there. An unusual staircase feels oddly fastened to the right wall, perhaps a consequence of an afterthought. It’s uncovered, dangerous and slippery, but has an innate slap-dash charm.

Presgrave’s major highlight is Pushka, a cafe/bar so small it can only be spotted by a few 50s-style deco steel chairs that, on winter days, reel against a cold breeze. Inside, Pushka is cramped yet comfortable. The friendly staff are always in the mood for a chat, and the music is neither too loud nor straight-laced. It’s the kind of place that thrives on its regulars – if you frequent the cafe enough you’ll begin to have your orders pre-empted with a wry, knowing smile. These guys enjoy their job.

Most importantly: their coffee is delicious. Pushka has pride in its cup-o-joe; you’re not getting a rushed on-the-clock franchisee with an eye on the handbook here.

The only setback is in procuring a table – with its floor space it’s not hard to see why – though half the fun is donning your coat and scarf and drinking a coffee outside.

The place turns into a cheery bar at night, where, if you’re lucky, you’ll witness a stream of underagers crying with protest as they’re helplessly ejected from the Hi-Fi Bar’s backdoor. Currently, their license extends to 11pm, though things are set to change with new (but understanding) management. It’s in safe hands – Jerome (of St. Jerome’s, Sister Bella fame) has charged himself with the task of improving Pushka without damaging its cutesy-cluttered spirit.

Presgrave is a welcome retreat from the city’s intoxicating hubbub. Within a stones throw of Swanston St – its energy driving and palpable – you’re in quiet sanctuary: the only reminder of the city’s pace is the occasional clutter of dishes in adjacent kitchens.

Reviewed: July 2008

Photo © Al Wilson, 2008

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