What is it like living in Melbourne’s CBD? I’ve been here for 20 yearsPosted by On


Coffee at Little Mule, or a beer in the strange loading-zone jumble that was St Jerome’s. A pastrami roll and music played off vinyl at Rue Bebelons. Hardware picked up from Bunnings on Bourke Street. Buying a magazine from McGills on Elizabeth Street before heading up Little Bourke past John Donne & Son’s map shop to that Iranian restaurant near Hardware Lane (even I can’t remember its name).

This is what living in the Melbourne CBD for the past 20 years has gifted me: a strange mental muddle of cafes, shops and bars that have come and gone, surviving as ghosts in the memory of a long-term city resident.

Lost Melbourne gem Rue Bebelons, pictured in 2005. It closed in 2013 due to a development on the site.

Lost Melbourne gem Rue Bebelons, pictured in 2005. It closed in 2013 due to a development on the site.Credit:Michael Clayton-Jones

As Cara Waters wrote on Wednesday, since the pandemic the city centre is shifting from a place of business to a place where people live, and live it up. An increasing number of people are likely to base themselves in the city centre. So what’s it like living here?

At noon on February 28, I’ll have lived in the Melbourne CBD for exactly 20 years, in an apartment within a converted office block on the corner of Elizabeth and Little Bourke Streets, opposite the GPO. When my wife Narrelle and I made the move from Richmond in 2003, we thought we were moving into the big city. To our surprise, we moved into a village.

Over time, our patch of the CBD was revealed as sharing the characteristics of a country town. There were plenty of big…

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