Unless I’m mistaken, the whole reason VicUrban redeveloped Melbourne’s Docklands was to stop people from climbing the Rialto Tower and asking Melbournians what the hell that big open space with nothing much going on was to the west of the city.

Well it’s 2009 now and sadly nothing much has changed.

Melbourne’s Lord Mayor, Robert Doyle made the news over comments he made recently about the Docklands;

Docklands lacks the “social glue” of other suburbs and needs urgent reinvigoration, says Lord Mayor Robert Doyle.

Cr Doyle said he was “very worried about Docklands”, which lacked the “social glue” that other suburbs took for granted. “At the micro level it doesn’t work. Where would you take your kids to kick the footy? Where would you have a casual beer?”

“I think one of the key things is to link Docklands better with the city,” he said, adding it was almost like two cities, with “a very clear separation between the two”.


Now this was back in March and I made a note on my list of stuff to write about to get down there and check it out. Here we are at the end of May and I finally managed to get down there to take it in for myself.

Yes, that’s how much of a joke it is going to the Docklands. Despite living just fifteen to twenty odd minutes away by bike I had to actually plan a trip down there because apart from observing how deserted and crap it is, there really isn’t much reason to go there. Tasmania feels closer to Melbourne then the Docklands does.

Anyway, last Saturday I trudged out on my bike on a reasonably sunny day and armed with my camera decided to document whether the place was swimming in success or drowning in decay. Here’s what I found:


This is the first thing you see coming from the city to the Docklands by bike. It’s some dark and uninviting street with some buildings and two trees. There was absolutely nobody around except for one guy crossing the street, mind you this was lunchtime on a reasonably sunny Saturday too.

It looks like an utter hole.

This theme is continued throughout the suburb, or more appropriately ‘bunch of tall buildings with roads’.


I have no idea what the barriers were doing there on the road. Perhaps the council was protecting people from something even more depressing then the vast nothingess surrounding the area. It was probably an open lot child graveyard. Infact I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what the barriers were protecting me from.

The change from the CBD to the Docklands is dramatic. I could have stripped down and rubbed myself all over those posts and nobody would ever know


As you’re walking around pretending you’re Will Smith from ‘I am Legend, you’ll easily notice the huge areas of grey nothingness. Giant football fields of concrete are reserved for art sculptures that take up about 0.1% of the space they sit on.

Yes that metal spaghetti thing in the middle is a sculpture and yes it probably cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars...


I mean what, did the developers seriously think thousands of people were just going to come to the Docklands to stand around in big open spaces to look at sculptures? It’s not a once or even twice off thing either, it seems everywhere you look there’s another giant slab of concrete with some obscure uninviting piece of urban art on it.

The main walkway and when I say main I assume it’s the main walkway because there a few people about, was littered with overpriced trendy cafes. The cafes seemed to be doing ok but why you’d come out all this way just for a $15 coffee is beyond me.


The shopping district was a similar story to the rest of the place. Most of the stores there seemed to be clearance shoe stores and really… there’s only so many pairs of shoes you can buy.


One thing I did notice when cycling around was that the Docklands is the most bike friendly suburb in Melbourne. All the streets seemed to have a bike lane and there was ample parking facilities everywhere, even if there was nobody around to use them.


To top it off pretty much no matter where you go in the Docklands, you’ve almost always got a visual on what was supposed to be a huge tourist puller, the Southern Star Observation Wheel. I won’t go into the details here as I’ve already covered its collosal failure earlier this year.


The only redeeming feature the Docklands has going for it is the Costco store which is currently being built.


Expected to be open sometime in July pending catastrophic heat failure, Costco will actually give people a reason to go to the Docklands as it will be the first store of it’s kind in Australia. With multiple carparks adjacent to the store location though, there still won’t be much incentive to stay around the Docklands after shopping there.

So that pretty much sums up an afternoon at the Docklands. It’s a dark bleak uninviting pocket tucked away in the rectum of the CBD. I have no idea why anyone would want to live there except for the ease of jumping on a tram or walking into the cbd to work. Unless you had multiple levels of awesome in your apartment, I can’t imagine why you’d want to spend the weekend there though.

Apart from stopping by once Costco is open to check it out I doubt i’ll be going back there anytime soon. What a waste of potential and god knows how many millions of dollars.

1. 5 tips for shopping at Costco Melbourne @ Docklands
2. My shopping experience at Costco Melbourne @ Docklands
3. Costco Australia Membership – all you need to know
4. Hypocrisy: Costco anti-competitive over Auburn store
5. Parking at Costco Melbourne is a massive ripoff