...according to Zoe MacDonald, 33.
No one knows Melbourne in quite the same way as a tour guide. For the last six years, 33-year-old actor and writer Zoe MacDonald has been leading tourists and locals through the laneways and arcades of the city, observing the rhythm of the crowds and cafés, meeting baristas and shopkeepers, and occasionally, discovering slices of Melbourne’s history hidden in plain site.
“In the Crabtree and Evelyn shop in the Block Arcade, there’s a beautiful mural on the ceiling that was painted for the opening of the Singer sewing machine store that used to be here,” says MacDonald. “Most people on the tour, especially locals, see the mural and go, ‘Oh my God, I never knew it was there!’ Something I realised when I started doing the tours was that we don’t look up at all.”
When MacDonald first started working for Hidden Secrets Tours – a popular walking tour company that opened in 2004 – the eight-person groups were mostly made up of tourists. But these days, she’s noticed that there are at least two locals in her Saturday tours. “I think the concept of discovering our own city is becoming more popular,” she says. “Local people can make little discoveries that they can show their friends.”
Hidden Secrets runs a variety of tours, from history walks to a ‘progressive degustation’, which sees groups tasting dishes and meeting chefs and sommeliers at restaurants all over the city. MacDonald usually runs the ‘Lanes and Arcades’ tour, which touches on architecture, history and hard-to-find cafés, and generally ends at Peruvian restaurant Pastuso, hidden at the end of ACDC Lane. Often, the thing that surprises her groups the most is the way that Melbourne “re-images space. We sometimes go underground into Campbell Arcade which links Flinders Street Station to Degraves Street, and I’ll say, ‘This used to be a ticketing booth, and now it’s a little café and there’s only enough room for two people.’ The way people use space in Melbourne is really creative and I think that what excites people.”
Hidden Secrets Tours operates across various times and locations across Melbourne.