What's happening in Melbourne
The best things to do this week
Transport yourself to Lebanon and enjoy its culture at this Kahlil Gibran inspired event
Peruse literary works of Kahlil Gibran that inspired the likes of Elvis, Bowie and John Lennon
Melbourne's biggest fashion festival showcases the best of Australia's fashion industry
The Espy is transforming six of its rooms into an immersive sound and art experience
Dance the night away at the Barre Backyard at Arts Centre Melbourne on two consecutive Fridays at the end of summer
Enjoy a trivia night fueled by food and drinks on the banks of the Yarra
Melbourne's one-day Prosecco festival is back and it’s coming to Northcote this summer
Here’s your next excuse to try a bunch of beers, wines, ciders and whiskies
The latest news
Competitions and announcements
Melbourne's one-day Prosecco festival is back and it’s coming to Northcote this summer
Join us for a night of ace drinks, sweet tunes, great food as we crown Melbourne's best bars
The best of Melbourne
Wondering what to do in Melbourne? Take a look at our ultimate bucket list: 50 fun things to do in Melbourne, plus what makes the city great, from the food to the festivals and everything in between.
If you're looking for a break from the inner-city grid, there's no better cure than a day trip from Melbourne.
Behold, our eat-and-destroy list – a guide to Melbourne's best restaurants, from fine dining to cheap eats
Expert tips for exploring the city's best attractions for zero dollars
Book in for the best Melbourne shows with our guide to new and upcoming theatre in Melbourne. Our theatre critics recommend the best shows to see right now, as well as the most exciting upcoming shows in Melbourne. For more Melbourne theatre information, check out our latest reviews and our guide to scoring cheap theatre tickets.
From world-beating cocktail lounges to down-and-divey saloons, here's everywhere worth drinking in Melbourne
When you think Melbourne, some of the words that come to mind surely must be 'coffee', 'laneways' and 'street art'. Street art covers almost every nook and cranny of our creative, colourful city, but there are more highly concentrated clusters than others. These are the street art hotspots that any self-respecting 'grammer should be snapping: the city's ten best street mural hotspots, in all their spray-painted laneway glory. Continue your art journey through Melbourne at these free galleries, or purchase your very own piece of art at one of these weird and wonderful shops.
Melbourne area guides
The heart of the city, home to Chinatown and some of Melbourne's best restaurants and arts institutions.
Inventive bars, geek girl boutiques and envelope-pushing eateries. Plus live music institutions.
Whether you are after great eats, a night out or a film at a Victorian-era cinema, Elsternwick is a great place to find yourself.
We should err on the side of caution when describing Williamstown as “greater Melbourne”. Not only will the locals love to tell you it’s only 20 minutes to the city (and no tolls!), but there’s a beach that’s accessible via public transport, a gorgeous pier to stroll down and stunning views towards the city and across Port Phillip Bay. As Melbourne's first seaport, Williamstown has swiftly developed into a trendy seaside suburb with a village feel. There are plenty of cafés and restaurants, you can hop on a bike and circle the water’s edge, or just find a quiet spot to sit and think about all the things you still have left to do. Looking for more fun in the west? Check out our guides to Footscray and Yarraville while you're here.
Exceptional Italian food, gelato and coffee, plus an excellent museum and theatre.
Kensington has northwest charm in spades: there are wide, tree-lined streets, plenty of public transport and green spaces aplenty.
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Who doesn’t love a good Saturday sesh at their local? Especially when the food is good and the frothies are cold. The Exchange in Port Melbourne knows this as well as anyone and this summer it’s offering up bottomless mussels for just $25 per person. Fresh from Port Philip, the mussels are prepared in a mixture of white wine, garlic, capers and onion, and served with crispy hot fries. On any other day you can grab a plate for $18 but you won't be able to make the most of the all-you-can-eat offer. The offer is available all day every Saturday and only for the summer. But if mussels aren’t your thing then be sure to check out the rest of the Exchange’s seasonal menus, which this summer feature dishes like zucchini linguine with tomato, chilli, pine nuts, basil and parmesan; braised pork and black pudding pie with green beans and mashed potato; and pan-seared salmon, crab remoulade, rainbow radish with spring greens. With a deal like this, why choose anything else? Take advantage of the offer and book a table on the Exchange website.
The annual Time Out Melbourne Bar Awards are coming soon. Join us at Transport Public Bar on Sunday March 3 as we toast the city’s best cocktail bars, new bars, wine bars, bartenders, rising stars of tomorrow and more at the party for the party-makers.Expect an evening of delicious drinks, great food and sweet tunes in celebration of our stunning bar scene. So save the date – tickets ($70 + BF) include all food and drinks and are on sale now. Got a favourite bar? Why not vote for it in the People's Choice Award?Nominees in most categories will be announced soon, so watch this space. What will be named Melbourne's Bar of the Year for 2019?
Route 58 travels from West Coburg to Toorak, passing through the city and some of Melbourne's most vibrant suburbs, including Brunswick West, Parkville, South Melbourne and South Yarra. Taking the tram means you don't have to deal with traffic or parking, and tools like the PTV app allow you to find real-time departure info, so you'll never miss your tram. And even if you linger over a long goodbye and miss one, there's no need to stress – trams come along as often as every five minutes or so during the week and every 10-20 minutes on weekends. Top up your myki before you get on board (or set up an Auto Top Up – it will change your life, we promise) and don't forget to touch on. From the zoo to Chapel Street's world-class shopping, there are heaps of fun things to do along the way. Plan your journey and have a brilliant Melbourne adventure.
Prosecco: refreshing, versatile, bubbly. It's a winning combo if you ask us. Now, after a standout debut in 2018, Melburnians will once again be able to indulge their love of the Italian white wine at the Prosecco Festival.On Saturday, February 23, Northcote Town Hall Arts Centre will be positively effervescent as it fills with Prosecco lovers. Sample over 40 of the world’s best tasting tipples, talk to the men and women behind the wine and learn what foods pair best with different 'seccos.Pair your Prosecco with classic Italian delicacies like pizza, pasta, arancini, antipasto and cheese platters, gelato, cannoli and more from the likes of 400 Gradi, Milk the Cow, Gelato papa, Eat Cannoli, Arancini Art and Yarra Valley Caviar. You can even try the Meat Room's salami made with Prosecco. Sample drops from the likes of Wines of the King Valley, Box Grove Vineyard, Santa & D’Sas, Symphonia Wines, Regina Vino, Enoteca Sileno and Politini Wines – and if you like what you taste, you can even buy a bottle (or two) to take home.The day will be divided into two four-hour sessions, one from 11am-3pm and one from 4-8pm. The regular ticket (available online for $50) includes Plumm tasting glass, Prosecco tastings, and reusable tote bag. If you’re keen on a splurge, the VIP tickets are available online for $100 and include entry to a Prosecco masterclass where guests will taste four different Prosecco styles paired with antipasto snacks. Put it in your calendar and prepare yourself
It’s a little-known fact that the French Government likes to take care of its film industry. For every ticket sold in France (whether that be for local films or Hollywood blockbusters), the State takes a percentage of the sale and invests that into French films. The results of this ongoing investment are on clear display in the Alliance Française French Film Festival (AFFFF). Alliance Française, the French culture and language institution, launched its film festival in Australia way back in 1989. Since then it’s grown into the largest festival dedicated to French films outside of France. This year AFFFF is celebrating its 30-year anniversary with 54 feature films and documentaries (more than ever before in the festival’s history). The films will show across Australia in seven cities from March to mid-April. Here are ten highlights of this year’s festival program. The Trouble With You (En Liberté) Opening night’s crowd pleaser is the new screwball comedy by Pierre Salvadori (Priceless). It involves a widow (Adèle Haenel) who discovers her late police chief husband led a criminal double life. Celebration: Yves Saint Laurent For decades this film was kept locked away from the public eye by the efforts of Pierre Bergé, Yves Saint Laurent’s business and once-romantic partner. Having now been newly edited it has finally been released and will screen at the festival. The film follows French fashion and beauty icon Yves Saint Laurent as he prepares his final collection before s
Returning for its third year, Melbourne Women in Film Festival is designed to redress the relative lack of women in the film industry, celebrating the work of women filmmakers and creatives. This year's program takes the theme of 'Dark Delights' and begins with a triptych of three short films called Freaky, Fantastic and Feminist. It includes Margaret Dodd's startling 1982 short film 'This Woman Is Not a Car', in which men project their lust upon an FX Holden, Jub Clerc’s award-winning Indigenous horror film 'Storytime' (2006), and 'On Guard' (1984), a boldy feminist short focusing on the ethics of reproductive rights in the 1980s. A digital restoration of 1997 Australian rural gothic The Well will screen, followed by a Q&A with director Samantha Lang, and preceded by Jennifer Kent's short film 'Monster', the forerunner to her horror blockbuster The Babadook. Keep an eye out for Angie Black's new film The Five Provocations, an ensemble drama about love, loss and gender identity, with a range of cabaret stars playing the mysterious 'five provocations'. The Late Night Screaming session pairs Ursula Dabrowsky's 2014 horror thriller Inner Demon with witchy short 'Blood Sisters'. Other sessions include Stranger than Fiction, a program of documentary shorts; Sinister Shorts, a session of weird and dark films; and a Q&A screening of Mairi Cameron's 2018 suspense movie The Second. A series of workshops and panels will also take place, aimed at women filmmakers.  Closing f
This rocking play with music was a big hit when it premiered at Belvoir at the end of 2017 (read our four-star review of that initial season below), so it was a no-brainer to bring it back to be seen by an even bigger audience in 2019. Belvoir will again be transformed into a sticky pub and Ursula Yovich and Elaine Crombie will reprise their roles. The Australian theatrical canon sometimes feels like we've run the national identity through Instagram; we put the filtered, carefully curated version of ourselves on display, keeping our mess neatly cropped out of frame. But Barbara and the Camp Dogs, Ursula Yovich and Alana Valentine’s devastating new musical, rips away the strategically placed curtain of performative Australian identity to reckon with the country's true nature: an open wound, raw and angry-red. Still weeping. Barbara (Yovich) is ferocious. A pub singer with a quick wit, healthy sexual appetite and unceasing reserves of anger, she performs with her sister René (Kiki and Kitty's Elaine Crombie) and their band the Camp Dogs. Gigs can be hard to come by in the Sydney of today, the one where the few live music venues left are curfewed by lockout laws. They don’t make much money, which is suddenly an unignorable problem: their mother Jill is dying, and they need to pull together funds for a trip to Katherine to say goodbye. Barbara doesn’t want to go. She loves Jill, the woman who raised Barbara when her own mother couldn’t, but Katherine has come to represent her
1. Phuket Elephant Sanctuary At this safe haven and “retirement home” for elephants, they believe that people are not meant to work the gentle giants nearly to death, parade them in city streets or even ride on their backs. Visitors to the sanctuary are instead invited to feed, scrub down and bathe or just generally chill with a handful of injured, aged and traumatised elephants rescued from logging camps and circus-like attractions. This is one of the most ethical ways to see elephants up close in Phuket. No trick shows, no tourist rides – just elephants being elephants. You can book for a morning, afternoon or full-day experience. www.phuketelephantsanctuary.org. 2. Islands of Phang Nga Bay Jump aboard a speed boat and take a day trip (or two) out to explore some of the hundreds of tiny paradise islands. Dozens of tour operators offer many different day trips out from Phuket. If you’ve only got one day, head out on a Phang Nga Bay/James Bond Island trip, which takes you to the jaw-dropping limestone cliffs jutting out of the sea that were made famous by the 007 movie The Man with the Golden Gun, plus a few other small islands. 3. Bangtao Beach There are dozens of beautiful beaches on Phuket – Mai Khao, Kata and Karon all deserve a mention – but Bangtao Beach is the pick for many in the know. An 8km-long stretch of soft white sand lapped by crystal clear water, Bangtao Beach is home to some of Phuket’s best-regarded restaurants and resorts. 4. Bangla Road Running
