The beating heart of Melbourne? Its marvellous culture

October 31, 2026 — 5:00am

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Senior arts writer Karl Quinn and sports broadcaster and columnist Kelli Underwood presented the keynote speeches at The Age’s Melbourne Assembly forum, moderated by Waleed Aly, on the topic, “Sport v the Arts: What is the true heart of Melbourne?” Below is an edited excerpt of Quinn’s speech. Read Kelli Underwood’s speech here.

I grew up in a city where sport versus the arts wasn’t just an abstract topic for debate – it was a genuine life choice. You were either Team Sport or Team Arts, and there was no in-between, and barely any overlap.

That was Brisbane in the 1980s, and it was a place I couldn’t wait to get out of.

I was an artsy, book-reading, model-making, role-playing kind of kid; I loved nothing more than curling up in an armchair and reading for days on end during school holidays, or hunching over the dining room table as I drew or painted my Airfix models or built a diorama of a Roman fort under assault from the Celts, my tongue invariably poking out the side of my mouth as I became lost in concentration for hours at a time.

But I also loved sport. And I played plenty of it. I had a brief dabble with rugby league before realising I possessed a neck, which seemed to rule out that particular code. There was plenty of cricket, athletics, some motocross and BMX – I even have the chipped teeth and scarred legs to prove it – but above all, there was my great and enduring love of soccer.

I started playing when I was about 10, and was still playing until a few years ago when I was forced to concede that the mathematics of it all – 90 minutes of joy followed by three days of hobbling around with aching knees, groin and hammies – no longer stacked up. Unlike the medical bills.

There was a period, though, when I didn’t play at all. That was in the mid-1980s, the peak of Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s corrupt regime, when the battle lines were well and truly drawn: sport and all it represented – extreme blokiness, anti-intellectualism, private-school bonds parlayed from the field to the boardroom via brown paper bags stuffed with cash, and the shady real estate deals they facilitated – was set in direct opposition to the world of culture, or counter-culture, towards which I had increasingly gravitated.

One had to pick sides, or leave. So I headed to London. It was there that I first realised sport and the arts actually could co-exist. I started playing soccer again with a bunch of people I met at an arthouse cinema. The music scene was full of football-inspired fashion. Artists and writers and filmmakers were unabashed in pronouncing which team they supported.

Looking for an Australian city that might similarly play both sides of the Arts/Sport divide, I chose Melbourne, landing here in the early 1990s, just in time for a recession that would drag on for years. I came on a punt (so to speak) and though work was thin on the ground for someone with aspirations to write for a living, I fell in love immediately with the music, the galleries, the theatre, the festivals: St Kilda, Brunswick Street, the Arts Festival, the Writers Festival, the Comedy Festival, the Melbourne International Film Festival, one of the biggest and longest-running in the world.

I loved the cinemas. There were so many back then, long since gone: the Longford, the State, the Lumiere, Village Bourke Street, Greater Union Russell Street, Hoyts Mid-City, the Carlton Moviehouse, the George. And I loved the book stores, too.

I still loved sport, though. I was at the MCG for the cricket World Cup Final in 1992 and again for Australia v Iran and the infamous pitch invasion that cost us qualification for the FIFA World Cup in 1997.

I’ve been there for my share of footy and Boxing Day Tests over the years, and to Marvel and AAMI stadiums and, in the distant past, Princes Park, as well as our ever-expanding tennis precinct for the Australian Open. Hell, I’ve even been to the Formula One grand prix a couple of times – an experience that only served to convince me that no sport has ever been more suited to television........

© The Sydney Morning Herald