The 7 Best Things To Do In Melbourne This October
While Melbourne’s weather is still desperately grasping on to winter, the people of Melbourne are certainly ready for spring. October brings music, food, art and more to Melbourne, and fingers crossed for a little bit of sun. Here’s our guide on what’s happening around Melbourne town next month.
#1 A whole new venue
Melbourne’s northside is getting a major new live music venue and three legendary Aussie bands are lined up to play the opening weekend. You Am I, fronted by inimitable dilettante Tim Rogers, will kick open The Croxton on Thursday October 1 supported by Bahamas and Courtney Barnett’s label mate, Fraser A Gorman. On Friday October 2 (Grand Final Eve), two cult heavyweights go back to back – The Drones and Augie March – supported by balls out rock‘n’rollers Money for Rope.
#2 Get involved in the Grannie at Fed Square
Here in Melbourne, we take the footy grand final seriously enough to throw a parade and give people a day off to go and watch the parade. That’s right! An AFL Grand Final public holiday! Even if you hate football, that’s reason to celebrate. If you’d like to celebrate with your fellow man, grab a scarf and head to Federation Square on Saturday October 3 to watch the big game on the big screen with a very big crowd. Short of sitting with 100,000 screaming fans in the MCG, it’s the most atmospheric fun times a sporting event has to offer.
#3 Portraits galore
Nigel Milsom won the $100,000 Archibald Prize this year with a ghostly portrait of Charles Waterstreet, the lawyer who inspired the TV show Rake and represented Milsom when he was charged with armed robbery. Waterstreet’s portrait appears alongside other notable Australian faces – from Daniel Johns and Paul Kelly to “Mad” Bob Katter and actor Michael Caton – in the Archibald Prize Exhibition, which opens at the Art Gallery of Ballarat this month.
#4 A namesake festival
Running from October 8-25, Melbourne Festival offers choice cuts of local and international art, across a host of arty genres. The contemporary music program includes a showcase by Australian dance label Future Classic and a reinterpretation of Patti Smith’s Horses by an Oz muso supergroup including Courtney Barnett, Jen Cloher, Adalita and Gareth Liddiard. Elsewhere you can find sexy circus, torrents of light and sound, Orwellian drama and a trip down the rabbit hole, not to mention a stage adaptation of the awesome Monkey Magic.
#5 A cinema inside of a bar
Every Wednesday night in October, in the breezy hipster cave that is Brunswick’s Howler, you can eat burgers and drink beer while watching cult classic cinema. The season kicks off with Eden, a blood-heating film about the rise and fall of the French electro-house scene. Synth-drenched comedy L is for Leisure is up next, followed by hip hop fashion doc Fresh Dressed and the awesome ’90s ridiculousness that is Empire Records.
#6 A gelato appreciation class
Birthed in Sydney, Gelato Messina is the reigning king of ice cream, a place of whimsy and flavour magic that would make Willy Wonka proud. Relaunching this month, the Gelato Messina Appreciation Class is your chance to go deep on the ice cream experience – in this context, ‘Appreciation Class’ means ‘eat gelato until you pass out’. For $160, you get to watch the chefs make gelato and gelato cake while sampling a specially-created degustation menu, then they open up the freezers and let you go hog wild. The good folks at Messina make 40 standard gelato flavours and they heartily encourage you to taste them all.
#7 An Americana festival of food and booze
Get your cowboy boots on and make with the yee-haw because Out On The Weekend is on the way back. Celebrating the dulcet tones of Americana and country-tinged rock, the festival returns to Seaworks in Williamstown for a second year on Saturday 17 October. The line up is stocked with local heroes and undiscovered international gems including LA’s Dawes and a special performance from Tex (Perkins), Don (Walker) and Charlie (Owens). The rest of the bill reads like a cast of cartoon bandits: Sam Outlaw, Jonny Fritz, Ruby Boots, Mustered Courage and more.
(Lead image: Howler)
