2022
I thought I'd recap our meetup from last night for White Night. White Night was started in Paris France and is celebrated now by 20+ cities around the world. It's a single night running from dusk (7pm) to dawn (7am) and celebrates many different forms of the arts. You can find out more about Melbourne's White Night on their website https://whitenightmelbourne.com.au/ I've been to all of them over the last five years, the first was simply unexpected and amazing with the others never living up to the hype generated by the first one until this year, I think the organisers got the balance right and the spread of arts and exhibits was good and it was possible to escape the crowds easily to move from place to place.
The official walk was from 12 midnight to 7am finishing with breakfast. I went in early with a good mate and we started with dinner at The Pumphouse Hotel in the Monkeybar.
The food was good and for the most part the service was good and pleasant although it was tempered by the initial greeting.
After that we did a scouting walk to see where the main exhibits were before the main walk started. First up we headed into Melbourne Museum which had selected exhibits open for free as part of White Night including this one about Australia's indigenous Aborginal people called Bunjilaka. The exhibit is excellent and I highly recommend it to anyone seeking to understand more. One of the exhibits is this animated bird that is lit via projection and moves to a voice over explaining the stories and history. You can find out more here https://museumvictoria.com.au/bunjilaka/whats-on/First-Peoples/
We took our time and checked out quite a few of the arts on offer taking part in an interactive piece called Purple Rain in honour of Prince
We wandered some more and were joined by another Melbourne Local Guide then headed back to the meeting point for the midnight walk to start.
White Night is divided into several precincts and I'll convey just a few of the images here
We finally finished up in Melbourne's famous DeGraves Street which is a narrow crowded alley with around 20 different cafes to choose from. At 6.30am only one was up and running so we went to that once. Pleasingly they had a Big Breakfast (eggs, bacon, ham, tomato, mushrooms, spinach). It would have been nice to be more choosey because we knew they only had an average of 2.1 and I have to say their food didn't disappoint - that 2.1 is about right although I was generous and gave them a 3.
In hindsight I was probably too generous, but I'll leave it stand for now.
The last of the people in the meetup made their way to Flinders Street Station (our main railway hub station) to make our separate ways home. After catching up on socials and a few microsleeps I made it home safely and judging by the posts so have the others.
