Clearing the fog off Melbourne, one laneway at a time

FOG puts the whole planet under fog and gives you no way to remove it except walking. Melbourne is one of the better cities to try that in, because the grid hides twice as many streets as it looks like it has.

A grid with a second grid inside it

The centre of Melbourne is the Hoddle Grid, laid out in 1837 as a plain rectangle of wide streets. Collins, Bourke, Lonsdale and Flinders run one way, Swanston, Elizabeth, King and Spring cross them. That much you can see on any map.

What you cannot see until you walk it is the second layer. Between every pair of big streets sits a little street, Little Collins, Little Bourke, Little Lonsdale, and threaded between those are the laneways proper. Degraves Street, Centre Place, Hosier Lane, Block Place. They are short, they are narrow, and there are a lot of them. In fog terms this means the CBD is deceptively expensive. You can walk the main grid in an afternoon and still have a dense mesh of unlit alleys sitting inside a rectangle you thought you had finished.

A route that covers the good part

Start at Flagstaff Gardens and cut diagonally through the grid, dropping into every little street you cross, down to Flinders Street Station. Cross Princes Bridge onto the south bank of the Yarra and take the Southbank promenade west past the arts precinct, then come back over the river on the pedestrian bridge into Federation Square.

That gives you about five kilometres and a very satisfying block of cleared map, because you have hit the grid, the laneways and the river in one loop. If you want more, keep going north up Nicholson Street into Carlton, past the Royal Exhibition Building and the Carlton Gardens, then out along Lygon Street.

The other classic is the northern run. Brunswick Street through Fitzroy, across to Gertrude Street, then Smith Street in Collingwood. Three long parallel strips of shopfronts and terrace housing, all flat, all connected by side streets you can zigzag through.

Why the fog behaves the way it does here

Melbourne is flat, which is rare and useful. Almost nothing stops you walking further except your own legs. The inner suburbs are laid out in regular blocks with back lanes behind them, so once you leave the CBD the map fills in neat rectangles rather than the ragged blobs you get in an older European core.

The problem is scale. Greater Melbourne sprawls for a very long way, and the outer suburbs are wide, curved, low density streets built around cars. Out there the city percent barely moves no matter how far you walk. The honest advice is to treat the inner ring, roughly Fitzroy to South Melbourne to Richmond, as the achievable target and let the rest arrive slowly.

The tall end of the CBD, around Collins Street and the Docklands towers, can make a phone location wander a little between buildings. It settles once you are back on a wide street.

Weather, and the long way round

The line about four seasons in one day is not really a joke. A walk that starts warm can finish cold and wet, which mostly means carrying a jacket rather than cancelling. Summer heat is the more serious limit, and on a forty degree day the sensible plan is early morning or the shaded lanes.

If you want a green stretch, the Tan track around the Royal Botanic Gardens is just under four kilometres and closes a loop cleanly. St Kilda gives you the beach path, Acland Street and the pier. Both are easy additions to a tram ride out, walking back.

FOG keeps revealing while the app is closed and the screen is off, so it works fine tucked in a pocket for a whole day of wandering.

Questions people actually ask

Start with a dark map.

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