Three Melbourne Lanes to Surprise You

Surprise yourself by stepping into one of Melbourne’s many lanes, where you will find a microcosm of the main streets’ boutiques, bars, and cafes — and perhaps a little bit more. In fact, the lanes are often attractions in themselves. Here are three very different lanes to get you started on your appreciation of these overlooked gems.

Centre Place

Bustling Centre Place
(Image by Brian Giesen)

Centre Place is Melbourne’s most well-established lane. It’s a dense, dark little street, with art deco streetlights and overlapping signs overhead. Here you will find lots of little cafes, bars, and shops.
 

It’s recommended to visit in the middle of a week day to get the full effect, as hundreds of Melbourne’s workers fill this small space to get a drink and a bite to eat. Yet you need never be kept waiting, as many of the food outlets specialise in the short order.

• Do the Melbourne thing and grab a coffee from Vicolino.
• If it’s one of the city’s wetter days then line up at In A Rush, usually referred to as “the soup place”, for some tasty takeaway warmth.
• Or if you fancy the local version of noodles in a box, order udon noodles with chicken and a chilli sauce to your liking, from Yen Noodles.

The Melbourne City Council is now developing many of its lanes, used previously only for utility access, and Centre Place is their premier model.

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Union Lane

Melbourne's largest mural
(Image by Doogsta)

Union Lane runs between the Little Collins Street and the Bourke Street Mall and was completely barren until 2007, when Melbourne City Council decided to fill it with art — graffiti art, that is.
 

The two long walls of the lane now form murals composed of the works of over a dozen artists. Here you can see a wide variety of graffiti styles, including the ubiquitous “wildstyle”, more complex “pieces”, and Melbourne’s famed stencil graffiti.
 

Pose with a piece in Union Lane
(Image by Doogsta)

Time and taggers have taken their toll on the works, but this year a program was started to regenerate the lane with new art.
 

For the optimum viewing experience, it’s recommended visiting the lane in the middle of a sunny day.

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Paynes Place

Surprising back alleys
(Image by Tom Walter)

Paynes Place should be visited after dark from Monday to Saturday. Turning out of Chinatown and into Paynes Place looks like a mistake. You can see that it has nothing in it. Keep walking and turn left. You are now in an unnamed lane filled with garbage bins and graffiti. Surely this isn’t the right way to go? But keep walking and turn right. Depending on the night, this last lane may seem creepily empty too, but there is a light at the end of the lane, which is called Croft Alley — home of the Croft Institute.
 

The Croft Institute is a good little bar, but the real point of this last entry is to encourage you to keep walking down those Melbourne lanes. You never know what you might find.

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