Clarice Road

As desperately antiquated sources of community information go, the town's mustard yellow Civic Guides are, right now, blisteringly up-to-date. Well insofar as the advertisers of "local services" appear to all still be trading anyway. It's a little hard to be sure of this point as half of them are from South Melbourne, the reach of the map having been extended accordingly. It's a somewhat amusing indication of the update interval of these "guides" that Bank of Melbourne can have died, gone to heaven, and been resurrected since its appearance on the previous incarnation.

Still, it's a whole lot better than this guide to Port Melbourne which, aside from containing the kind of overtly flattering language that the business association likes to peddle, contains a list of what appear to be phantom restaurants. I can't say for definite that the Komeyui Japanese restaurant on Bay Street (which was for a long time prior a French restaurant) never traded as Amber Indian Restaurant. However I am confident that we've never had a Clarice Road Sandwich Bar, largely as we don't have a Clarice Road ... on this matter the Civic Guides and I agree.

Phantom park

There is another Port Melbourne guide out there. It's a colourful folded map widely circulated at tourist spots throughout the city by Grid Maps, who have much more up-to-date advertisers than Civic Guide. It's centred around Albert Park, also covers South Melbourne and Middle Park (although oddly doesn't stretch to include Station Pier), and shows the location of advertisers, commercial strips and parks. However despite being published in 2010, the current version manages errors in all three categories.

It's understandable that it might still show the former location of Emma Jay Designs before they moved on, however it does the remaining business owners of Bay Street a bigger disservice (particularly those toward the beach end), by erroneously showing the commercial strip ending shortly after Coles. And the residents of the mostly Victorian houses that back onto Drysdale Street are in for even more of a shock, as apparently they live on open parkland!

A sense of place

There's a bit of a surprise lurking at the bottom of the council's local area map, in the form of a link to a free MP3 audio walking tour of Port Melbourne. It's a well produced narrative, in the style used at many historical tourist attractions, which runs for 48 minutes. It makes for a mildly interesting way to while away an hour and you learn, if nothing else, how bad the place used to smell and how Liardet is pronounced. However there is one segment on the brownout strangler which seems out of place, since none of those crimes occured here.

The web-site mentioned during the tour is now defunct, and there no longer appears to be a tour map available for download, so above is the route followed. It's a (just under) two mile circuit starting and finishing at Station Pier, and it's not really necessary to pause at the exact points suggested, you can just continue wandering leisurely along the route. Thankfully, despite being a few years old, the sights on the tour are all still standing with the exception of the Faram Brothers hardware store.

Graphical guide

Avid readers of the Port Philip Weekly free paper may have noticed a familiar story recently about the near useless 'Civic Guides' that dot the suburb. In fairness there is actually a much more useful guide map provided by the council at the tram terminus. Unfortunately for a casual visitor, it covers an excessively large area, was produced before the advent of the bike share scheme, and has a walking time to South Melbourne of 35 minutes from there ... which must've been tested by the resident speed walker.

It would be great if maps like these appeared at the Civic Guide sites. Although I suspect that for most lost souls on Bay Street all they really want to know is a) which side streets have shops and cafes on them, and b) which way is it to the nearest tram stop? So here, in an attempt to answer these questions, is Spencer's very own unofficial graphical guide to Port Melbourne...

Blue bike invasion

It's nearly eighteen months since the controversial Melbourne Bike Share scheme launched, and now some bike stations have even arrived on our foreshore, just in time for Ride to Work Day. It makes perfect sense really with the great bike path into the city easily achievable within the 30 minute per trip charging model. Although it's a shame (especially for energetic cruise ship arrivals) that the map displayed beside the bikes inexplicably hasn't yet been updated to include the station itself, or the next one along the beach at Kerferd Road.

For Port Melbourne residents without a bike (or perhaps somewhere to store one) of their own, it's extremely cost effective to use at $50 a year. Of course for the $2.50 a day casual users, there is still the headache of complying with helmet legislation. The nearest 7-Eleven (which allegedly sells subsidised helmets for $5) is all the way up at the top of Pickles Street, which could explain why a station has also appeared one block down at the junction of Dorcas Street.

Civic guide

I know that it's far from a unique Port Melbourne phenomenom, but why do we have not one but two daggy, eighties-era, "Civic Guides" on Bay Street? Aside from being rendered largely redundant as a concept by Google Maps et al, they are also both hideously out of date.

 

This one advertises the services of the Keg Restaurant & Bar, Securaway Storage, Terry Hammond Cycles, Bank of Melbourne and, slightly bizarrely, Albert Park Inline Skates ... all of which appear to now be defunct (or at least renamed).