Vegan Travel in Australia | Melbourne’s Coffee & Culture | Lee Hawkins

Link for the show notes

In today’s episode, we’re heading to Melbourne, Australia — a city that’s often described as the cultural heart of the country and a paradise for coffee and food lovers alike.

Brighde sits down with Dr. Lee Hawkins, a mathematician, IT professional, and volunteer with The Vegan Society in the UK, who has called Australia home for more than 25 years.

Lee shares his insider perspective on Melbourne’s vibrant vegan food scene, its laneway culture, and why this city manages to feel both cosmopolitan and relaxed at the same time.
We’ll explore where to find the best vegan jaffles, pizza, and oat lattes, and discover what makes Melbourne such an incredible destination for plant-based travelers.

There are a lot of great spots and recommendations in this episode, so make sure you check out the show notes and blog post to get all the details!
Let’s chat with Lee!

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Transcript

Ep 0 Lee Hawkins 

[00:00:00]  

Hello Lee and welcome to The World Vegan  

Travel Podcast.  

Hi Brighde, thanks for having me.  

I am thrilled to have you on, to talk about this amazing city in Australia, Melbourne, a place that I love, and has the most amazing vegan food, but I can't wait to hear from you about your perspective as somebody who actually lives there. So before we get into all of that, would you mind telling us a little bit about what it is that you do in the vegan space? You do a lot.  

Yeah,  

I do a few things in the vegan space. I've, I guess, my most recent work is with the UK's Vegan Society. I moved to Australia about 25 years ago, to Melbourne, and I've been here ever since. And I was very fortunate. I came to Australia without a job, took the first job I could find, and ended up in the same job for 21 years. So that was pretty fortunate. That job came to an end in 2020, so I found myself with a  

bit of time on my hands, and I noticed that the vegan society were looking [00:01:00] for volunteers to do some proofreading for them. So I thought, oh, maybe I could do that. They were keen to, sort of, remote volunteering for the first time because of what time it was in 2020. I became their first Australian volunteer. They started to enjoy the challenges of time zones working with me as a volunteer. Did a lot of proofreading for them for a few years, but in more recent times with them, I'd been doing more web research projects for them. So looking at their website, doing SEO stuff, accessibility testing. Testing the new website that they're building at the moment. All that kind of cool stuff just to leverage. My career, it's been in IT, so that was a good sort of place to leverage those skills as well. And writing a few blog posts for them. I think they do great work, so I'm very happy to be part of that. 

They really do. I mean, they were the original vegan organization, I believe, right?  

Absolutely.  

Yeah. They do a lot of really good advocacy work in the UK. It's been a good way for me to get more involved in the vegan community and sort of contribute in my own way to it, I [00:02:00] suppose. Not everyone's out there being a sort of high profile activist or something, so this was a way to use my sort of writing and IT skills to benefit them and give me a spot in that vegan community as well. 

I love it. Thank you.  

So let's get people oriented about Melbourne as a destination. Where is it located? What's the climate, the geography? How can people get there? 

So Melbourne is located on, sort of, the southern coastline of Australia, the Southeast specifically. So it's being on the South, on this part of the globe, means it's the cooler part of the country, not the warmer part of the country. So we do have a distinct, sort of, four seasons here in Melbourne.  

It can be  

very hot in the summer. So 40 degrees Celsius plus in summer is fairly common, but quite cool in winter. It's winter here at the moment. Our days are pretty cool. We can get sort of light [00:03:00] frost and things like that. It's a cooler part of Australia. But yeah, also can get very warm. It's an easy place to get to, in the sense that there's lots of flights from pretty much anywhere in the world to Melbourne. It is of course, a very long way from everywhere else, but that's just one of the joys of being in this part of the world butvery accessible. Most major cities in the world connect up to Melbourne pretty well these days. It's remote, but still accessible, I guess, is what I'd say to that. 

Yeah, that's perfect. Thank you so much. Okay. What makes Melbourne special, out of all of the places that you've lived? 

It is an interesting place. Like it's actually a big city. Melbourne's a city of about 5 million people. So it's a fairly big city, at least by Australian standards. But it still has something like a large town vibe to me. Like it doesn't feel quite as manic as some big cities. It's a bit more spread out. It's not quite as hectic, compared to Sydney or London or places like that. It just feels a bit turned down. It's a little bit more understated [00:04:00] to me. That was one of the things I noticed when I first started visiting here, is there is just that little bit more understated, and maybe not quite as in your face as some cities. So I like that. You can walk around the city center quite easily. There's good public transport. I love that about Melbourne. When I first came here, and I still do. It's also a city that's got very, sort of multicultural history to it. So that's resulted in lots of different, very distinct areas of the city with very different vibes, depending on the sort of migrant history of those areas. So that's fantastic because that means, you've got a huge variety of cuisines in particular. 

As vegans you can try pretty much any cuisine on earth in Melbourne, and get a vegan version of it. So that's a really nice aspect of Melbourne. I think that makes it different to a lot of places. 

So for listeners who don't know so much about Australia, there's a very big rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne. What would you say the key differences are between Sydney and Melbourne? 

Yeah, I think [00:05:00] international people think this rivalry  

is a lot bigger than what people within Australia  

think it is. But, 

 It's interesting that the cities are basically the same size in terms of population at around 5 million each. It'sevened out a bit. 

 They're just so different. I enjoy Sydney too, but to me, Sydney feels more like a big city. It feels more like London to me, whereas Melbourne is a bit more understated. I think things have just turned down a little bit. Melbourne doesn't have that sort of whale factor of the Sydney Harbor, the Opera harbor Bridge, 

all that stuff. So tourists attractions in Sydney are much more obvious I think, than they are in Melbourne. It's right there. You're in the city, you see all that great stuff in Sydney and that's awesome. But the vibes within the cities is very different. Within Sydney, CBD or the central business district, it feels more like a business area, right? 

 There's not much going on at night there. It's much more focused on the business and offices, whereas Melbourne within the city is actually pretty vibrant. All the time. It's busy in the daytime with [00:06:00] workers, but it's also very busy in the evening. And we have this kind of laneway culture where people do go out and eat ,and spend time doing things within the city that are not working. 

 That helps create a very different vibe within the city centers. But yeah, they're just very different. And, if someone's going to travel all the way to Australia, then they should go to both. 

Tell us more about this 'laneway culture' that you've referred to. I think I know what it is, but I think I can picture it, but, could you explain it to us? 

Yeah, so I guess, it's like many big cities. Within the city center of Melbourne you've got your main streets, lots of skyscrapers and big buildings. And then between the buildings, sort of laneways for access to whatever needs to be accessed between buildings. In a lot of cities, those laneways become pretty unpleasant places, I guess, just by the nature of what they are. But in Melbourne, they've reversed that to make those laneways like destinations in themselves. So there's [00:07:00] laneways that have been converted into cafes and restaurants and shops. So you think in narrow, bustling, laneway field to those. You've got some that have been converted, perhaps unintentionally, into street art destinations. 

So lots of good street art in Melbourne has become very famous for that. They tend to be destinations that people will use all the time. So they'll be busy in the daytime for office workers, maybe grabbing lunch or something. But then in the evenings they'll be also busy with people just using the city to go out for dinner and for entertainment. That keeps the city center very busy all of the time. I feel like Melbourne is very safe to explore even within the city center, late at night because there's just so many people around those laneway sort of settings. 

You touched on cafes down the laneways, and that reminded me that the cafe culture is very important. In Australia ,generally, and I think, Melbourne specifically. Can you talk to that a little bit? I think Australian coffee is some of the best in the world, and I [00:08:00] don't think I'm the only one. It's not just Australians that say that either. Can you talk to that as well, please? 

Yeah, I was going to mention the coffee thing. There is this perception here that Australia has the best coffee, and Melbourne has the best coffee in Australia. That's potentially true. Again, the sort of migrant history of the city does help. I think that a lot of Italian migrants here. So they brought espresso to the city a very long time ago. So there's a long history of good coffee here. And certainly, the city, and even suburban areas. There's a plentiful supply of good coffee shops now, which is great. I love my coffee. I run a blog about coffee, pretty, pretty interested in that. 

 One of my tips actually for traveling outside of Australia, is whenever I go to a new city, I just look up coffee shops owned by Australians and then I go there because you can often, and that was a treat in London for example, where it was quite difficult to get good coffee until fairly recently. 

But lots of Australians running coffee shops there.  

Australia generally, and Melbourne definitely [00:09:00] sits. 

So we've got a choice of really any sort of cuisine we want. And lots of great vegan options right in the city. 

Well, we'll talk more about the vegan options in a minute because there is a talk about Melbourne, I just want to agree with you, like with the coffee scene. It just seems so strange to me and wonderful to me because, obviously, North America, Vancouver, North America, Canada, and the United States, also have a hugediverse population, that have come over hundreds of years. But the coffee is not as good. And until very recently, drip coffee was like the main coffee that everyone had, but I believe it's since after the second World War, when there was this huge influx of migrants from Italy and Greece and places like that, and that they brought their espresso machines.  

So what's happened more recently, is that drip coffee has taken off here, which is interesting. 

So before we get into your favorite restaurant [00:10:00] recommendations, I'm sure you have a lot. I'd love to know what are the main draw cards for people to come to visit Melbourne. We can start with activities and things to see and do. 

Yeah, so in the city, I guess, one of the main things in the city, we've got the Melbourne cricket ground is a big draw.  

So there's a lot of cricket there, obviously, but also a lot of football played there. There's  

often concerts there which seats around a hundred  

thousand people. It's a big stadium. The stadium tour there is excellent actually, even if you don't like cricket. So a lot of people come to Melbourne for sporting things. 

So Melbourne Cricket Ground, the Australian Open Tennis is in Melbourne in the summer, so that's a big draw card for people. In terms of like more general tourist attractions, most people head out of the city for the tourist attractions. So we have the Great  

Ocean Road, which is a  

 pretty well known tourist coastal drive, which is beautiful. That's well out of Melbourne. The Philipp Island Penguin Parade is another very popular tourist [00:11:00] attraction. So that they have these tiny little penguins called fairy penguins that come home every night. They nest on land, so you can watch them come in from the water and place called Phillip Island. Again, that's fairly well outside of Melbourne. Within the CBD, we've got a few things. The city is situated on the Yarra River. Yarra River's quite pretty now, but they've developed both sides of the river into entertainment, dining, cafes, that kind of stuff. So it's very pleasant along the river there. 

There's something called the Melbourne Skydeck, which is one of the tallest buildings in town from which you can go to the observation deck and look over the city. That's pretty good. I enjoy that. There's a few sort of central things within the city, but most are the big ticket things that people seem to want to do in this part of Australia. Things like the Ocean Road and Phillip Island are a little bit further out of town.  

I've been lucky enough to do both of those activities. I'm sure  

you too. Right? 

Yeah.  

 We had a wonderful time on both those activities. So the Great Ocean Road, [00:12:00] when we went, we had hired a car and we went driving along, as most people do. I think you can book excursions where you will like just be driven along it. 

And I think you can do it over two or three days and stay in like a hotel or a hostel or something like that. But when I did it with Seb, we had hired a car. There are some really cool places as well as this beautiful scenic road. There's also opportunities to see koalas in the world. 

I remember  

Yes.  

that. There's another couple of places where you can stop off and parrots will come and sit on your head. We had a picnic one time by the water and then cockatoos were like trying to get our sandwiches. 

Yep. 

And that was really cute. And then, when we went to the Philipp Island to see the penguins there. I don't know whether it's the case now, but at that time, there were a few choices. You could go on like with everybody else, and pay like the basic rate. 

And you would sit there on these decks and the penguins [00:13:00] would pass underneath you and then you could pay some more money. And it was very limited in spots, but you could go into this quiet beach quite far from anyone, and they gave you night vision goggles.  

Oh, cool.  

So you could watch the  

penguins come in. Cool.  

In. And  

they are so  

cute.  

 If you go to a place called St. 

Kilda, which ispretty much the closest beach side suburb from the city. It's literally about five kilometers away. There's a pier there at St. Kilda and there is a fairy penguin colony at the end of the pier there. 

You can just walk out onto the pier and watch them. There's not as many there of course, but it's certainly a much easier way to go and see them if you don't want to spend the whole day traveling to Phillip Island.  

 The Great Ocean Road, just to return to that,I think the mistake people make with the Great Ocean Road, is trying to do it too quickly. 

 It's not very far, but it's a very slow road as it's very windy and you're trying to take in the scenery, and there's some nice little towns along the way there. One of the towns along there actually even has a vegan cafe at the moment, so that's pretty exciting. It's a beautiful [00:14:00] drive, beautiful scenery. Just take your time if you're going to do that. 

Agreed. Agreed. You touched a little bit on St. Kilda as being one of the suburbs or the neighborhoods. In Australia, like suburbs is a little bit different meaning to suburbs in North America. When we think suburbs in North America, they're far out. I think that a better translation for North Americans would be neighborhoods. 

So, could you talk a little bit about your favorite neighborhoods or suburbs in Melbourne, and what makes them unique? 

Yeah. I'll start with St Kilda since we were talking about that. So again, it's the closest beach, pretty much to the city. So if you want to check out an Australian beach without going too far, St Kilda is a good spot. Nice little suburb. Lots of cafes and restaurants. 

 People go there to eat out, and go to concerts, and pubs and stuff like that. So that's got a pretty unique feel to it. In terms of the vegan scene in particular, is centered around different suburbs, or different neighborhoods, I should say. 

 Much closer to the city, particularly, an area called [00:15:00] Brunswick and Fitzroy and Collingwood. They'reinner city localities. Traditionally, they've been working class neighborhoods in the past. They've become much more gentrified in recent times, but they're still a little bit edgy. They're the sort of choice of the more, sort of, alternative community, as a place to live and to do things outside of work. So they tend to have the more alternative lifestyle. 

The main sort of well-known vegan cafes and restaurants, and venues, within Fitzroy, Brunswick, and Collingwood. So we go there a lot. It's the hub for the vegan community in Melbourne, I would say. 

Let's talk about your favorite restaurants. I'm very curious as to whether my favorites are still there. What are your favorite vegan eateries in Melbourne? I know there's a lot, so we might just be able to touch on your favorites. 

 Unfortunately, there's not as many as after the pandemic, but we're still pretty well served. And it's actually good to see a few new places starting up now, so that's good. So I'll start right in the city, the first one, I was there just last week, is a [00:16:00] place called UNION KIOSK, that is all vegan. The smallest possible cafe you can imagine. Just a tiny 'hole in the wall' place. But that's expanded to a much bigger sort of premises. That's in a laneway setting in the city. And it's famous for a thing called jaffles. Maybe I need to explain what a jaffle is. Yeah, so jaffle 

is basically a toasted sandwich. Two pieces of bread toasted with some filling. And the thing that makes it a little bit different, is that it's sealed all the way round. I don't know what that's called other places. 

But yeah, so it's like a fully enclosed toasted sandwich. So that's their specialty. It's become a bit of a thing here, actually, jaffles, but, they're very good at it. Everything's vegan there. So they have this ridiculous array of fillings that you can choose from in your jaffle. And that they have some really bizarre sort of combinations. 

 I just picked their last weekly special here as an example. It was chili con carne, baked potato, pickled onion, and jalapeno cream cheese inside a toasted sandwich. So there you [00:17:00] go. So they're pretty amazing. And they do great coffee there. They have a really good range of cakes and pastries as well. It's open seven days a week. It's right in the heart of the city. It's very limited. They just do jaffles coffee, and cake. There's a place called, I'm probably going to mess this up, it's Italian, but, Funghi e Tartufo, which I believe means mushrooms and truffles. That's more of a restaurant style. It's very authentic Italian food, but all done vegan. It's in a place called Hardware Lane, which again, is right in the middle of the city. 

 Very popular. Great vibe there, particularly in the evening. And that's in a really nice restored building there.  

 This particular Italian place also has seating out in the laneway, which can be great in the warmer times. And a little bit further out the city, one that's maybe less well known, is a frozen yogurt place, which is all vegan.  

 This all vegan one is in a suburb called Yarraville, which is a pretty hip suburb. It's about 10 kilometers out of the [00:18:00] city. You can get there by train. They have a huge range of toppings there. So they're always changing. So you can always make something a bit different.  

I love it.  

Goje in Yarraville. That's very cool.  

 Famous ones in recent times, is a place called Smith and Deli. That's in Collingwood, which is one of the suburbs I mentioned before,that's been in sort of various incarnations, but is now in this place in Collingwood. A very, probably the most famous kind of vegan name here in hospitality, at the moment, is someone called Shannon Martinez. She runs Smith and Deli. That's very popular. It'schanged its vibe a little bit. It kind of struggled after the pandemic to get going again. Red Sparrow Pizza is another one. All vegan pizza shop that's been there a long time, also in Collingwood. Yeah,there's just so many actually, which is a good problem to have. 

 As I say, Shannon Martinez is everywhere in the vegan scene here. She runs vegan hotel, restaurants and [00:19:00] various things around the country, yep. 

That's great.  

Oh yeah. Yes. 

Are there any other additions that you would like to make to that list? 

Yeah, there is a couple, that are maybe real touristy things, but they're actually very good. So the first one I would recommend is the Old Melbourne Jail.  

It has a bit of history in Australian terms, it's where the bushranger, Ned Kelly came to his end in the 18 hundreds. It's the original Melbourne, it's the oldest prison in this state. They've fixed it up a little bit and you do tours around there, and they lock you in a cell and do some role playing and all this stuff. 

So it is actually much more fun than it sounds. We only went there because we had some visitors from the UK here, and they thought it would be a good idea, but it actually was a lot of fun. It's a good place to go, just to hang out for a couple of hours and check it out. The building is quite interesting itself. Another good one is the Immigration Museum, which again, is in a beautiful, restored building on the banks of the Yarra River. It's the old customs house, actually, that's been restored there. [00:20:00] It's a beautiful building in itself, but it has lots of interesting exhibits there. There's a big sort of migrant history here, obviously, in Australia. For example, the world's largest Greek population outside of Greece is in Melbourne. There's a lot of migrant history, obviously, and they, I think they treat it pretty fairly in the Immigration Museum.  

And I believe the Botanical Gardens in Melbourne are pretty special also. 

They are pretty special. Probably not given them the credit they deserve, especially by locals. But, right on the fringe of the city, I can easily walk there from the city center. I think Melbourne has one of the largest, sort of, percentages of parkland of any city in Australia. 

The Botanical Gardens are part of that beautiful setting. Again, you on the banks of the river. So you'll wander through there. There's a nice cafe in there too, actually. And yeah, it's a good spot. The Botanical Gardens is a very popular sort of running destination. People run around the town, as they call it, run the town, which is four or five kilometers or something around the edge. But yeah, nice destination, nice place to [00:21:00] get away from the crowds. 

Yes. I think it's always fun to go to botanical gardens, but in Australia, I think, it's really fun, especially if you're not from Australia, because flora is  

just so unique and special, and it's nice to be able to see it, and get some explanations about it, and see all the more unusual bits of flora from around the country because there is some really crazy stuff, for sure. 

There's lots of crazy plants and lots of crazy animals here. That's true.  

 You've already touched on Great Ocean Road and Phillip Island, there are quite a few other places that people can head to if they have extra time in Melbourne. One of them, coincidentally, is where my mom was born, which was in  

Ballarat.  

Ballarat. So can you talk to Ballarat and Bendigo and maybe some of the  

other places.  

Yeah, sure. Ballarat and Bendigo are fairly close together and they were both towns that were a big part of the gold rush here in Victorian times. Ballarat was where they first struck gold really. So all around [00:22:00] Ballarat and towards Bendigo were opened up for mining. That's when Melbourne really took off through the gold rush there. Both Ballarat and Bendigo have some beautiful, original, pretty fancy buildings that they used some of the money for from the gold. 

And they've been kept pretty well there. So there's lots of nice history in those two towns. They're not too far from the city. You can drive there in a couple of hours or there's trains there from the city. They're fairly large towns by Australian regional standards. So it's really for history, both of those towns. And yeah, you can still do mining too. You can go down gold mines, and in Bendigo to have a look, that kind of thing. There's limited mining. They've certainly kept the history there if you're interested in that kind of origin story 

 for why Melbourne evolved into one of the richest cities in the world at that time. 

  

Apart from those two, another fairly close sort of town, there's a town called Daylesford which is, maybe, 90 minutes drive from Melbourne, something like that. Daylesford rose to prominence [00:23:00] after the discovery of mineral spas there. So it's a spa town. You can still taste the mineral waters there. 

It's a pretty little town, lots of boutique shops and it's a very popular weekend destination, like a weekend pampering destination. Lots of massages and couple type retreats and things like that in Daylesford. Very pretty, it gets very busy at weekends because it's so close to Melbourne. It's an escape for Melburnians there too. One of our other favorite places is a place called Port Fairy, which is much further away. That's about three and a half hours drive from Melbourne, but that's a lovely little coastal town, one of the oldest towns in Victoria. It's both on the river and on the ocean. Sort of unique feel to it. It's very pretty place. It's pretty quiet. It's a good option at the end of the Ocean Road if you've got time. If you keep going past the end of the common spots on the Great Ocean Road, you would get to Port Fairy as well. 

 And if I was being selfish, I would recommend where we live, which is a place called Portarlington on the Bellarine Peninsula. It's only just over an hour by ferry from the Melbourne City Center. [00:24:00] So that's a beautiful area too. Lots of nice wineries, and one of the most beautiful wineries in Australia here actually, a place called Jack Rabbit Winery, which is literally five minutes from my house. It just has the most spectacular view. It's beautiful. Have a very good vegan menu there too, coincidentally. Yeah, the Bellarine Peninsula is a bit overlooked by Melbourne people. The other side of the bay, which is the Mornington Peninsula, tends to be much more popular.  

It feels like you need at least two weeks to do Melbourne and the surrounding area.  

I think that would be a good length of time. To do the Ocean Road, probably, you could easily spend three or four days just doing that.  

It's a pretty easy place to go around. Once you get out of the city, like fairly straightforward by road. You have a reasonable train system. So it's not too bad to travel around. 

 That would lead me onto my next question about getting around. Do you have any tips on how people might get around Melbourne and the surrounding area? 

So within the city, public transport, I would say, is very good. Melbourne's [00:25:00] one of the few cities in the world that kept it's tram network. A lot of cities tore them out, when the car arrived, including Sydney, although Sydney's putting it back in. Melbourne always kept it to trams, which has turned out to be a great move. So the tram network within the city center is fantastic. It's actually all free as well now. So anywhere within the main city square, if you like, all trams are free. You don't need a ticket of any sort. You can just hop on and off wherever you want. So that's pretty handy. There's a tourist tram that literally goes around the border of the city called the City Circle, which, as the name suggests, just does that circle all day long, every day. And that includes commentary on places you might want to hop off and do things as a tourist. It's not fast. It's not like European fast trains or something. But again, the good news is there, you never pay more than $10 to get anywhere in Victoria.  

That is wild. 

It is wild. 

Yeah. 

Because Victoria is not small. We are talking like [00:26:00] several times bigger than the UK. And all trains are $10. Okay. I did not know  

that.  

 It used to be the regional trains were priced differently to city trains, as you would expect, since they go a lot further, butthey just set everything to be the same after the pandemic. Yeah. So you can get pretty good value out of that if you don't mind taking a bit of time to get somewhere.  

I'd say, that's amazing.  

 Perfect. Lee, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and talking about this amazing city of Melbourne. I feel like it does get overlooked by international visitors in favor of Sydney. But it really is such a cool, fun place to go. And you've made me want to go back there again and just do all of the things that you told me about. 

I haven't been there for a long time. I can't wait to go  

back.  

Can you tell us please, how people might follow along? Follow the work that you do. I believe you mentioned you have a blog as well, about coffee culture. Please let us know how people can keep in touch and [00:27:00] follow what you're doing. 

 You can follow my blog page called theperfectoatlatte.au and on Instagram @theperfectoatlatte. Any any coffee shop I go to, I'll stick a review on there too, whether they're vegan or not, most coffee shops are not. But thankfully, we actually get good oat milk these days for baristas, so we can actually get nice coffees. So I'm enjoying doing that. You can search for my stuff. If you're interested in the vegan society stuff, you can just search for my name there to see the stuff I'm doing. I blog for them occasionally.Otherwise, the best bet probably is just on LinkedIn. That's my profile of choice. 

I love it. Thank you, Lee, for finding the time. Thanks, Brighde.