Exploring Every Suburb in Melbourne. 

FOLLOW ALONG WITH THE SERIES ON YOUTUBE, TIKTOK, INSTAGRAM, OR FACEBOOK

At the start of Jan 2021, I set myself the challenge to visit every suburb in Melbourne. I had spent the better part of 2020 in lock-down and felt like I lost the first year of my thirties and had to make up for the lost time (little did we know we would spend 2021 in and out of lock-down as well). After researching and discovering there are over 300 suburbs in Melbourne, my partner and I decided to cut it back to 150 and the “Every Suburb in Melbourne Series” was born.

WHY EVERY SUBURB?

Long before lockdowns, I felt stuck in my own little bubble. I experienced a case of reactive arthritis at the end of 2016 and my joints completely seized up. I couldn’t walk for a long time, let alone drive or travel.

I spent the next few years finishing my bachelor's degree and working on my health but unfortunately, I experienced joint pain daily and major flair-ups regularly (along with a slew of other new and weird symptoms). Driving or sitting in a car for even half an hour would cause severe pain, especially in my hips and usually, my immune system would crash. Even though I felt helpless (especially because I had loved ones who lived far away who I wasn’t able to visit) I didn’t want to give up or feel like my life wasn’t joyful.

While seeking out all sorts of different healing modalities like purchasing a sauna and seeing a Chiropractor and Osteopath, I decided to set this challenge so I could slowly get my body used to travel again. I started with nearby suburbs and as I grew more confident, I started branching out to suburbs that were further and further away. While I still have some rough pain days and there is still a limit to what I can do (so far) I am so much more confident with driving and travelling now since falling ill.

Sometimes people even reach out to me on social media and tell me they wish they could do what I did. If only they knew how hard travelling and driving actually are for me! On top of all of this, I absolutely adore Melbourne and I wanted to give myself the chance to explore my own backyard while I was working on my healing journey.

How we decided which suburbs to visit

When I set this challenge, it quickly became clear that we couldn’t visit every suburb unless we wanted to spend many years on the project. To make it achievable, we decided on 150 suburbs. We did this by cutting out suburbs that were industrial estates, townships, several suburbs that were on the smaller side, and the “north” and “south” of suburbs. For instance, we did Clayton but didn’t do Clayton South.

CHALLENGES ALONG THE WAY

When I first started making videos, TikTok and Instagram only allowed 30-second videos. Thankfully this has changed so our suburb videos don’t seem so rushed and crammed. Throughout the process, YouTube Shorts came along so I was able to share on YouTube as well.

In the beginning, I didn’t have a smartphone with great camera quality so I filmed with my point-and-shoot camera making the videos slightly shakey and a pain to edit. I’ve since purchased a better smartphone and have invested in an editing app called Splice to make my life a whole lot easier. After experiencing hundreds of hate comments on TikTok, I also decided to turn comments off on TikTok to protect my mental health while we finish this challenge.

While visiting the suburbs themselves, we also discovered it was far better to research where to go instead of winging it. We would often see somewhere cool and go and visit it, only to find out later it was actually a different suburb or places would be closed. We also discovered not to visit any Pokies throughout our suburb videos as some social media platforms would delete videos containing gambling. On top of all of this, many suburbs we completed during lock down when we only had a small radius from our home to work with, so many places weren’t open but we did our best!

WANT TO SUPPORT THE ‘EVERY SUBURB’ SERIES? CONSIDER SHOUTING US A COFFEE. IT’S NEVER EXPECTED BUT ALWAYS APPRECIATED.