Category: Australia

Melbourne isn’t Sydney, with its really obvious, beautiful sights. It doesn’t really have any obvious, landmark attractions. It’s more atmosphere and aggregate of experience. In the CBD: walk around the alleyways for the funky graffiti and nouveau restaurants. Stare up, and admire the Victorian and Art Deco goodness of a confident, rich city. Walk down […]

Some astonishingly good answers, particularly Ben Kelley and Melodie Neal. To a European, we are clearly New World, and closer to the US than to Europe, as others have explained. Melbourne is more European (and it has gotten even more European since the 90s, with the promotion of foodie culture and laneway restaurants in the […]

The critical decision was not to call the new decimal currency the pound. The pound was an option: Cyprus already had a decimalised pound, for example. But that option wasn’t taken. As indeed it wasn’t taken in the other dominions. Canada, for example, went decimal and dollar in 1858. Decimal because My God, do you […]

Let’s try a more historically informed attempt at an answer. The USA within the Anglosphere had a very early strain of resistance to British authority, which made it a Republic. Ireland had an even earlier strain of of resistance to British authority, which made it a Republic a lot later. Most erstwhile colonies and dominions […]

Originally Answered: What would a Trump presidency mean for Australia? Already posted this in https://www.quora.com/What-will-… Bob Carr was NSW State premier for a very long time, but always wanted to be Foreign Minister. He even managed to be one for a few months. He’s obsessed with American politics, as any Foreign Minister has to be, […]

It’s Melbourne, it’s fricking awash with ethnic fooderies. Can I just nominate two? Greek: Oakleigh, which is now Greektown, is full of Greek fooderies. All of them bad, and primarily about people hanging out pretending they’re in an Athens patisserie. The best place in Oakleigh is the one hidden away. Mezedakia. Opposite the train station, […]

We are fricking foodies in this town, and this is a very hard question. At least, if you’re visiting Melbourne, it’s reasonable to constrain this question to the CBD, and to fine dining. That’s still not really constrained though. Of the options mentioned by other answerers, there’s the nouveau everything of Vue de Monde, the […]

Melbourne in the 80s, when I was in high school: Very Suburban. High density living did not happen: the Great Australian Dream was a large suburban home with a garden, and only the indigent lived in apartment blocks. Seeing apartments spring up everywhere remains a shock to me. Renting happened, but was something to get […]

This is a subject of acute interest to many a Melburnian. Best: Overall, reliable. Yes, when it falls over, it falls over horridly; but considering how much of the infrastructure is 150 years old, it is bearing the load remarkably well. Reasonable coverage, given it’s 150 years old. So long as urban development followed the […]

If you’d asked this question 100 years ago, Pegah, I could give you an interesting answer. Then again, if you’d asked this question 100 years ago, you would have been my sworn enemy, and there’d have been no Quora to ask me this through anyway. Australia: Australia is absurdly urbanised, and those of us in […]