Degraves Street

This narrow lane packed with cafe tables is probably where you got your first Melbourne flat white, and fair enough. Degraves Street is the postcard version of Melbourne laneway culture. But look beneath the surface, literally, because there is an entire hidden world down there. The Degraves Street Subway, an underground tunnel connecting the lane to Flinders Street Station, was built in the nineteen fifties just in time for the nineteen fifty-six Olympic Games, Melbourne's big moment on the world stage.

The tunnel's interior was gorgeous: art deco design with black granite columns and soft pink mosaic tiles, with shops lining both sides featuring curved windows and handmade wooden fixtures. For decades, it was home to vinyl record shops, vintage clothing stores, and hairdressers. A quirky underground village. But the arrival of the City Loop train system in the early nineteen eighties took away much of the pedestrian traffic, and the subway slowly declined.

The street itself is named after William and Charles Degraves, brothers who established a steam flour mill on the corner of Flinders Lane and Degraves Street in eighteen forty-nine. That gold rush-era flour mill still exists, and beneath it sits a gigantic underground bluestone cellar, a hidden vault from the eighteen fifties that most Melburnians have no idea is there. The lane is barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side in places, yet somehow the cafes manage to squeeze in tables, chairs, and the occasional busker. On a Saturday morning, it is standing room only, which is remarkable for an alley that started life as a service lane for a flour mill. The gold rush built this city, and the coffee culture finished the job.