Aussie rules

Jonathan Ray

Melbourne looks a lot more spruce than when I was last there. Handsome Flinders Street Station has had a bit of a clean and Federation Square a complete facelift. It is all rather wacky and jolly, with outside cafés, restaurants and contemporary art displays, where I remembered it as rather worthy and dull. It still feels very European, with trams and fine Victorian architecture, but less like Dublin on a wet weekend now and more like Vienna or Paris in spring.

I arrived during the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival and made my way over Princes Bridge to Southgate Plaza on the banks of the Yarra River. Some 40 or so wineries from all over Victoria had set up their stalls along Southbank and were doing a roaring trade. The Aussie blokes and their Sheilas looked bronzed, healthy, happy and, well, a little pissed. I grabbed a glass and joined in and soon realised that it was more a vast drinks party than a wine tasting, with precious few spittoons around.

‘Mummy, why’s that man spitting?’ I heard a little girl whisper as I gobbed some rather fine Fairbank Pinot Noir over the railings into the river below. ‘He’s pacing himself, darling,’ she replied, giving her slightly swaying husband a stare.

I made it to about a dozen stalls before the sun and the wine got too much, so I headed back to the Lindrum, a swanky boutique hotel in Flinders Street, whose minimalist chic wouldn’t look out of place in New York. I had arranged to meet my old chum Mark Tower there for the start of our brief no-expense-spared boys-on-tour jaunt around Victoria.

We launched our trip with a romantic dinner à deux at Walter’s Wine Bar, back on the Southbank. We got a couple of funny looks as we sat side by side giggling in the moonlight, so we talked loudly about our wives and nippers back home. I had a trencherman’s chargrilled kangaroo steak, the sight of which gave Mark the shudders, and we made a serious raid on Walter’s remarkable wine list.

Next day we headed out of Melbourne towards the Yarra Valley. We had scarcely gone a dozen blocks before a policeman stepped out and beckoned me to pull over. It was 9.30 on Sunday morning and I was being breathalysed. ‘Christ, how unsporting can you get?’ muttered Mark. Despite our late night, miraculously I passed.

I had noticed in Melbourne that nobody crossed the road unless the pedestrian light was green and emitting an urgent ‘tock-tocktock’ sound. Motorists too, we discovered, were equally supine. Nobody, apart from us, broke the measly speed limit, and there were endless nagging road signs along the immaculate empty roads that snaked into the bush. ‘Drowsy? Take a powernap,’ said one, ‘Snooze, booze, lose,’ said another. Is this really the nation of Mad Max, Crocodile Dundee, and Lillie and Thomson?

After some lengthy detours via the cellar doors of wineries such as Coldstream Hills, De Bortoli and Yering Station, we reached our plush country hotel, Chateau Yering. I don’t think it unfair to say that Mark had more than made up for the fact that I was driving. ‘It’s so rude to the winemaker to spit,’ he chided me on the way to our rooms.

That night we went to the local culinary hotspot, Bella Vedera, and had a hugely enjoyable dinner that included kangaroo tail soup (like oxtail soup, since you ask) and gallons of sublime Yarra Valley wine. We cadged a lift home.

We had booked a hot-air balloon ride for the following morning and I was up at 5 a.m. while Mark overslept and missed it. More fool him. The early morning sun was driving the mist away as the balloon rose into the air. The view was spectacular. I had been told to take a jacket, but it became warmer as we climbed and my balding pate got a regular singeing from the gas burner. We could see Melbourne, lying pale pink over 40km away, as the sun began to dance on its skyscrapers.

After the traditional balloonist’s champagne breakfast I returned and woke Mark, then drove for hours along the Hume Freeway to Benalla. This is Ned Kelly country and we made straight for the town’s modest museum to gawp at its prize exhibit — Ned’s bloodstained green cummerbund, taken from him at his capture.

Benalla is also known as one of the world’s finest spots for gliding, and we had booked flights at the Gliding Club of Victoria. There we met Bob Fox, from Yorkshire. ‘The conditions here are just per fect for gliding,’ he told me. ‘You can do 1,000km flights from here.’ Mark and I both loathe flying and neither of us had ever been in a glider before. I wasn’t entirely sure that I wanted my first flight to be in a 30-year-old Romanian glider driven by an OAP from Pocklington and towed by an ancient crop duster whose pilot was even older.

We lurched crazily into the air, weaving upwards in a vast circle, before the rope between crop duster and glider dropped. I was sitting in front and clung to the sides in panic. Bob wanted to head for the stubble fires burning outside town for some ‘crazy thermals’ but I very much didn’t want to, so we climbed — rather too quickly for my stomach’s liking — to 2,700ft and headed instead for the Strathclyde Hills. ‘Basically, gliding is a controlled dive,’ explained Bob reassuringly. ‘Did you feel the turbulence then?’ he asked as we shot up another 500ft. Oooph, blimey, yes I did thanks. After a while, though, something remarkable happened: I began to enjoy it. The view was stunning and I began to relax thanks to Bob’s soothing, matter-of-fact Yorkshire tones as he explained each manoeuvre. I declined his offer to take the controls, but our hour in the air passed in moments. Back on deck, Mark and I patted ourselves on the back as if we’d just downed a couple of Jerries in a vicious dogfight over Romney Marsh.

Next stop was Glenrowan, scene of Ned Kelly’s last stand. A true one-horse town, it seems to exist only because of the Kelly legend. Kelly’s Cookhouse Café, home of the Ned Kelly Breakfast, gave some idea of the town’s flavour. We pottered about and found the very spot where Kelly finally fell, peppered with 28 bullet wounds, despite his body armour. A sinister-looking black snake slithering by sent us scurrying back to the car. We had had enough adrenaline rushes that day.

We bypassed Wangaratta (‘Wang’ to the locals) and finally reached the dusty crossroads of Milawa and booked into the cool and airy Lindenwarrah Hotel, bang opposite the vast Brown Brothers winery. ‘Great spot, chum,’ sighed Mark dreamily. ‘Our very own winery.’ The following morning we presented ourselves at Brown Brothers to meet the head winemaker, Terry Barnett. We were shown round the enormous plant, full of activity in the middle of harvest. Terry gave us an impromptu tasting of various wines from the barrel, before taking us to the Cellar Door for a more formal affair. It all got too much for Mark and I could see he was in trouble when he started swirling and sniffing at an empty glass.