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The White Hat Guide to
10 Mistakes made by visitors to Melbourne

1. Every Monday and Wednesday you will see little groups of puzzled tourists arriving at the Queen Victoria Market. They eventually discover a sign with opening times on it and after several readings conclude that it is not open on Mondays and Wednesdays. How remarkable, they think. Melbourne’s top tourist attraction not open two days a week. What they have not understood is that it is not a tourist attraction – it is a working market that happens to have also become a tourist attraction. In the meantime some visitors who are only here for one or two days have wasted a chunk of the morning and have to re-plan the rest of their day.
2. Some visitors use the City Circle Tram as their main form of transport in the city. By all means ride it once or twice, but in many cases it is not the most efficient way of getting around, particularly now that it detours into Shoppingtown and remains there for a period. Many visitors are attracted by the fact that it is free. They may have spent hundreds of dollars on air fares and are only in Melbourne for a short time but wont spend about $3 on a Sunday Saver ticket which allows them to travel anywhere on public transport and see possibly 5 times as much.
3. Some visitors miss out on major events close to the city such as the St Kilda Festival or the Sydney Road Street Party because they are not mentioned on what they think is the official Melbourne tourism website. The City of Melbourne do an outstanding job of hosting and free events and promoting them through their website That’s Melbourne. Most tourists assume that the Melbourne referred to is Melbourne as a whole whereas it refers to that small section within the city council boundaries. We notice that the word city has been tacked on recently, but many visitors leave Melbourne unaware of what is happening in the inner suburbs let alone further afield.
4. Visitors staying with friends or relatives not unnaturally seek advice about things to do from their hosts. Unfortunately their hosts may not have been into the city for years so they receive advice like “under the clocks is a romantic place for a rendezvous” or “there’s always ice skating at the music bowl” or “you wouldn’t want to go there – I had an argument with a waiter there 12 years ago.”
5. Some visitors are so busy poking around to find the latest thing that is currently fashionable that the miss the world class destinations that are right in front of them. It has almost got to the stage where you head up the back lanes to see the mainstream and commercial while the hidden gems are sitting as large as life on the main streets
6. Some people travel all the way to Melbourne then go out to see a soccer game or head off to the Melbourne Museum. You can see a soccer game just about anywhere in the world but in only one city can you watch football in the home of its creation. You can see a franchised musical in most major cities of the world and it will be (by nature of the contract) practically identical to that served up in another city. Why not go out and see something by the local theatre company or orchestra. Places like NGV International are world class and a great boon to us locals but have little about them that is distinctively Melbourne. Why not go to the NGV Australian collection or Heidi or the McClelland Gallery?
7. Another major mistake made by visitors to Melbourne is failure to dress for the weather. Not what the weather is now, but what it will be an hour from now, and two hours . . .
8. There are some places where you have to book weeks and maybe months in advance and no amount of blustering or offers of extra money will get you in. Fortunately, the internet makes most such bookings in advance relatively easy. You can see some suggestions of such places at our Seven Semi-private Hidden Gems of Melbourne.
9. Some visitors towards the end of their stay decide to take a guided tour. If they have a good guide they will probably learn about a number of places they wish they had visited. The moral is – if you are thinking of taking a guided tour, do it early in your stay.
10. Some cities are tourist cities. Others are working cities where occasional tourists are tolerated provided they don’t get underfoot. Melbourne is a working city that also welcomes tourists but like any good host excuses itself when it has work to do. Many visitors leave Melbourne never having experienced the flavour of Melbourne at work and in so doing have a small understanding of what Melbourne is. Try sitting somewhere like Platform 28 (a bar and eatery) in Docklands at lunch time on a weekday. There you will see suits, construction workers, television performers from, journalists, tradies all sharing the same space in a uniquely Australian way – and probably not one tourist – they’re all out doing touristy things rather than seeing how Melbourne ticks. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got work to do.