.

Post Mao
It was the place to be, Chinatown, Melbourne for the Chinese New Year and it was quite by accident that we found ourselves making our way through hundreds of spectators, mostly Chinese, watching costumed dragons weaving their way through the crowds accompanied by drummers and lines of followers. Strings of Double-Happy firecrackers sounded like random machine-gun fire going off completed the raucous atmosphere as we made our way to the Post Mao Restaurant for dinner with Seath and Nicole.
We can’t be sure if this was coincidence or fate, but they had brought tickets to see the rock band AC/DC in Melbourne and were booked for a week in Australia’s cultural capital while on break from work. Subsequently, when he started work, Marty learned was to be dispatched to Melbourne at the very same time. But it didn’t end there, quite independently we had been booked into the same hotel, The Rendezvous, opposite the Flinders St railway station and, as would be expected, we couldn’t help but all bump in to each other once there.
For us, it was a return visit to Post Mao, a restaurant themed on the iconic leader of the Cultural Revolution, complete with Mao statues and posters and a maitre‘d who seemed like a Chinese version of Basil Faulty. With tie tucked firmly into shirt, he challenged intending patrons about whether they had a booking and, if not, it seemed, he made random or arbitrary decisions on whether he would let them in. We must have passed the test, so secured a table and subsequently tucked in to a fabulous meal of Peking duck, honeyed chicken, sizzling beef and other delicacies washed down by New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.
Melbourne itself is just as we remember, but for the number of AC/DC fans in town for the band’s three concerts planned for the city. The place was crawling with people adorned in tour T-shirts, although there was clearly some competition to be wearing clothing from scenes of the band’s past glories. Among the current tour shirts were those from previous eras, dating back as far as their concerts of the 1970s.
The National Gallery of Victoria even got in on the act, with an AC/DC exhibition including concert posters, tickets, magazines, videos, photos and even a series of handwritten letters and cards from the former, now dead, singer, Bon Scott, to family and friends. One letter, loaned to the exhibition by his girlfriend, accused her of being unfaithful to him while he was away on tour and telling her how cross he was as a result. How very generous of her to loan such a personal letter and how very possessive for such accusations to come from a wild man of rock’n’roll.
Four Australian cities have made into the world’s top ten most liveable cities in the world according to an annual survey conducted by The Economist magazine. The survey considers five factors; stability, health-care, culture and environment, education and infrastructure. Melbourne comes in as Australia’s highest ranked city, beaten into third place by Vancouver and Vienna. Sydney, Perth and Adelaide are also included in the list ahead of Auckland in tenth place. Not surprisingly, Zimbabwe’s capital Harare was considered least liveable of the 140 places compared.
While these Australian cities are easily liveable, one difference between New Zealand and Australia is the level and visibility of organized crime and how the seemingly responsible rich and famous appear to be have such interesting connections. Incidents linking industrialists, business people and lawyers with underworld characters are commonly reported, the latest the firebombing of a car belonging to the boss of a company currently in charge of Perth’s largest construction project. The West Australian reports that underworld characters had been seen around the construction site and that bikies and other gang members employed by sub-contractors had proved impossible to control before the bombing. Soon after, the developer announced a halt to the $550 million project.
Among the frontrunners to take over the project is a company whose board members include former “Sword Boys” gang member, cage fighter, nightclub bouncer and “enforcer” Edmoind “Monty” Margini, who has denied any connection with the incident. He claims as his alibi the fact that he was dining with ‘larger-than-life construction union boss, Kevin Reynolds”, at the time. It turns out they are good mates, Reynolds having employed Margini at one stage as an industrial relations officer.
This all seems quite normal in the lucky country.