It looked like a typical spring evening on Melbourne’s Canning Street when a few dozen picnickers gathered on the grassy median strip on Friday, with drinks in hand. People in one group who’d come with a full alfresco setting chattered as they ladled punch out of a glass bowl on a wooden table, set with a tablecloth and yellow flowers in a vase. Others sat on picnic blankets, passing around bags of chips.
What set this gathering apart was that it was actually against the rules, given the new ban against drinking on the strip. And the picnic had been organised in protest, part of a political saga that is unfolding on one of inner Melbourne’s most beloved streets. It began on Monday, when a local bar and bottle shop, the Wine Corner Store, announced on Instagram that, “due to a few unrelenting miserable neighbours who have been non-stop complaining to the council”, consuming alcohol had been outlawed on the median strips on Drummond, Rathdowne and Canning Streets in Carlton North.
The council was reverting to a former classification of the median strips – which are much wider than a typical nature strip – with the effect that they are no longer treated as park spaces. The council said residents had complained about noise, rubbish and unsafe behaviour. The community fought back to keep a tradition that has endured for many years.
While the council ban followed an initial 29-signature petition that a resident submitted in August, a counter petition calling on council to revoke the ban gathered more than 7,707 signatures in just a few days. The protest drinks on Friday were civilised. Amid the uproar – and with people loosely uniting under a banner of Free the Strip! – Adam Pulford, the Greens candidate for the seat of Brunswick at the state election, had posted an invitation on social media for people to join him for a peaceful protest.
People milled around, chatting and offering each other drinks and nibbles, talking about the importance of preserving places for building connections outside work and home. As the groups coalesced, Richmond said it was “the most civilised act of civil disobedience I’ve ever participated in”. However, local councillor Edward Crosling, who represents the Carlton North ward, said there had been “genuine amenity concerns”, especially from people living around the Wine Corner Store, and he believed it was unfair the council had been portrayed in a negative way.
Nevertheless, Crosling said council staff had gone too far in banning drinking outright. Crosling said he was working with the council staff to prepare a motion for their next meeting in October, which he anticipated would re-classify the median as open space, and look at “particular” measures to address concerns surrounding the Wine Corner Store. The venue’s owner, Steve Misfud-Ellul, told Australian his business had wrongly copped the blame for large groups choosing to stop on the grass near the wine bar.
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