Melbourne Winter Quotes

I looked at the huge charlatan with respect. Nicotine, dope, hash, barbiturates, speed, acid, smack, Colombian marching powder, ecstasy, alcohol in every form, all had entered the massive frame by some route and in quantities guaranteed to lay waste to the collected brains of three Melbourne universities or eight in Queensland. In theory, a scan of this man’s skull should reveal a place as grey and still as Kerguelen Island in winter. Yet from time to time there were clear signs of electrical activity.

All of our savings were consumed in the effort to bring my dog over. Steve loved Sui so much that he understood completely why it was worth it to me. The process took forever, and I spent my days tangled in red tape. I despaired. I loved my life and I loved the zoo, but there were times during that desperate first winter when it seemed we were fighting a losing battle. Then our documentaries started to air on Australian television. The first one, on the Cattle Creek croc rescue, caused a minor stir. There was more interest in the zoo, and more excitement about Steve as a personality. We hurried to do more films with John Stainton. As those hit the airwaves, it felt like a slow-motion thunderclap. Croc Hunter fever began to take hold. The shows did well in Sydney, even better in Melbourne, and absolutely fabulous in Brisbane, where they beat out a long-running number one show, the first program to do so. I believe we struck a chord among Australians because Steve wasn’t a manufactured TV personality. He actually did head out into the bush to catch crocodiles. He ran a zoo. He wore khakis. Among all the people of the world, Australians have a fine sense of the genuine. Steve was the real deal. Although the first documentary was popular and we were continuing to film more, it would be years before we would see any financial gain from our film work. But Steve sat down with me one evening to talk about what we would do if all our grand plans ever came to fruition. “When we start to make a quid out of Crocodile Hunter,” he said, “we need to have a plan.” That evening, we made an agreement that would form the foundation of our marriage in regard to our working life together. Any money we made out of Crocodile Hunter--whether it was through documentaries, toys, or T-shirts (we barely dared to imagine that our future would hold spin-offs such as books and movies)--would go right back into conservation. We would earn a wage from working at the zoo like everybody else. But everything we earned outside of it would go toward helping wildlife, 100 percent. That was our deal. As a result of the documentaries, our zoo business turned from a trickle to a steady stream. Only months earlier, a big day to us might have been $650 in total receipts. When we did $3,500 worth of business one Sunday, and then the next Sunday upped that record to bring in $4,500, we knew our little business was taking off. Things were going so well that it was a total shock when I received a stern notice from the Australian immigration authorities. Suddenly it appeared that not only was it going to be a challenge to bring Shasta and Malina to my new home of Australia, I was encountering problems with my own immigration too. Just when Steve and I had made our first tentative steps to build a wonderful life together, it looked as though it could all come tumbling down.

Apart from Lucy and Shanan, the only person I know today is my other former flatmate, Oliver. At dinner, I’m seated next to him, and he helpfully announces to the whole table that I’m not drinking. I’m asked if I’m pregnant. I say no. Oliver tells them that I’m writing a book about my booze-free year. There are a few astonished faces. A guy sitting opposite me pipes up, ‘That would be a really short book. Fucking boring. The end.’ I laugh politely, but secretly I want to stab him in the eye with my entree fork. He says that stopping drinking would be easy in winter, but impossible during Melbourne’s Spring Racing Carnival: ‘You can’t not drink at the races. You just can’t.’ This, it seems, is an indisputable fact. He tells me how he stopped drinking for three months a few years ago, and every day of it was so boring that he’d never do it again. He doesn’t appear to see the irony in the fact that with a beer in his hand, he’s the most boring man alive.

Moscow, Mongolia, Northern Quebec, but he’s never in his life been as cold as in a Sydney winter. In the northern hemisphere, the denizens respect the seasons, embrace their variability. The same in Canberra and Melbourne, where houses have central heating and double glazing, but not here, not in these remnants of the twentieth century. Here, there is a collective agreement that if winter is ignored it will disappear soon enough.

Evening Markets On Wednesday evenings from mid-November to the end of February the Summer Night Market takes over. It’s a lively social event featuring hawker-style food stalls, bars and music and dance performances. There's also a Winter Night Market each Wednesday evening in August.